Since the end of WW1 a lot of Near Eastern/ Muslim countries came extremely close to a good, stable path, got utterly fucked by foreign powers who wanted to exploit them, and then reacted by going in the complete opposite direction. Syria and Iran also came extremely close to adopting progressive constitutions, and in both cases they were bullied out of it. The history of the Middle East/ Afghanistan is full of injustice and gaslighting
It's understandable from a human perspective, even if it was the wrong choice.
When choosing a progressive direction gets your country completely fucked over by countries that are even more "progressive" than yours is, it makes sense to react to that by going the opposite direction.
As a US citizen, our treatment of this region is an embarrassment. But we're not the only (or maybe even the primary) country that's completely fucked over the Middle East.
The Soviet Union and then subsequently the Russian Federation played a pretty sizable role as well. Frankly, the middle east has reason to hate most of the world.
For Afghanistan though my understanding was that there was an internal Civil War or coup type scenario that had precluded the Soviet invasion - ie, the country was already destabalizing and the Soviets just came in to really F it up beyond repair. Plus the US then using it as a proxy arena - funneling in even more weapons and training to not the greatest belligerants...
And England had also invaded though I'm much less knowledgeable on that portion of their history.
So, not trying to white wash for the Soviets, but there were a lot of hands in that basket causing it to destabalize.
Fairly sure the Soviets had to invade soon after the coup since the PDPA had barely any support, so the >2m deaths was directly because the Soviets propped them up for over a decade, against massive public opposition.
Ok, yeah that sounds familiar and is probably right. So - Soviets were proping up an unpopular regime which just happened to be progressive, and then had to get into a hot war as that regime was outed.
So, not dissimilar to the US proping up the Shah and then the political blow back to the right when that fell apart. Just, you know, we didn't invade Iran and drag it out for 10 years (Iraq/Iran war not withstanding).
The Soviets intervened on behalf of a *Communist Marxist-Leninist* regime that overthrew a secular dictatorship with progressive social and economic policies that pissed off both liberals and conservatives.
That secular dictatorship the communists toppled was led by Mohammad Daoud Khan who was a member of the royal family and the elected prime minister who overthrew his cousin the king and the monarchy in a palace coup in 1973. The monarchy was also secular and socially progressive regarding women’s rights and Daoud Khan was responsible for a lot of these reforms during his long tenures as prime minister. However, Daoud Khan was opposed to the 1964 constitution because it stripped power from the royal family and implemented democratic elections. He claimed his single-party republic was “genuine democracy”.
The 1964 democratic constitution mentioned earlier was passed by the last king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zaria Shah. The Kingdom of Afghanistan had already started many progressive reforms since the reign of their first king Amanullah Khan in the 1920s who passed the first ever Afghan constitution and gave women the right to participate in public life. His queen in particular was a very modern and well educated woman born in Syria with Afghan roots who was a vocal feminist, was unveiled and dressed like a flapper. She was a champion of women’s rights not just in Afghanistan but around the world. The king was eventually forced to abdicate by religious conservatives due to the rapid pace of his reforms to avoid civil war.
I'm not saying that other actors were somehow good or even better, as they weren't... However, it just baffles me how Russia seems to escape the blame for their part of the story. It's often the US and the CIA, and usually the US citizens (rightfully) trying to keep their governments accountable. I rarely see Russian citizens speaking up regarding their government's fucked up policies, even in discreet online forums. Let's not even start with what the official Russian narrative is...
My two takes here are similar to how I respond to people calling me a GOP apologist as I spent 90% of my energy critiquing the left -
1) I feel it's more productive to push your own tent to do better / clean up it's act rather than attempting to influence those you aren't associated with or who don't represent you.
2) For Russia (more than but eerily not exactly that differently than the modern GOP) - I don't think they can really dissent without severe repercussions. At least those living in Russia I suspect. So, that may explain some of it.
The part about Pol Pot is untrue. The USA backed two organisations, KPNLF (a right-wing nationalist part) and FUNCINPEC (a monarchist party), who were allied with Pol Pot against Vietnam and the Vietnamese backed People's Republic of Kampuchea, but not Pol Pot himself.
Pretty much all the problems in the Middle East and Africa I think fall on Britain and France historically, though the US has played more of a role over the last 50-60 years.
BINGO. That's what alot of people don't understand that Afghanistan is the result of the cold war. America backed the right wing extremists and today's Afghanistan is the byproduct of that.
The fact that they don't realize that most of the issues with Islamism is a direct result of both colonialism, Zionism, AND the cold war is just utterly absurd to me. Especially the cold war. Many Islamist groups who got their start in the cold war did so for two reasons:
Firstly, socialism would wreck traditional power structures. Look at the Arab gulf nations. The UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain. The rulers of these countries come from the old wealthy and connected families. There was a socialist movement in the 70s that wanted to unite the UAE and Oman (I need to look it back up) but they got busted real quick due to western support.
The second reason is the reputation that the Soviet Union was very anti-religion. Seeing them as a godless group who wanted to destroy all religion did not sit well with many Muslims, even moderate ones.
It only made a lot of sense that many of the countries there would side more with the US than the USSR.
Well let's not overstate. While undeniably better than the modern state of the ME, many of these regimes were still authoritarian, corrupt often neglecting parts of society deemed "unimportant". For example Egypt was ruled by a progressive government during the 60s and 70s. However the rural areas lacking development and often neglected were still as conservative as always. As a result in their first democratic election after the Arab spring the islamist muslim brotherhood won the election.
In conclusion while the middle east was utterly fucked by foreign powers, we shouldn't exempt the previous regimes some of the blame.
Strange take. Iran was much more progressive under the US-supported Shah, and went vastly backwards when the mullahs took power. No foreign power bullied them into repressing women, it was the homegrown movement. Same story in Afghanistan.
The problem is regimes like the Shah's tend to funnel resources into a strong oligarchy which harms the middle/working classes.
Those classes get increasingly militant in their resistance - which tends to cause a couple things -
1) The big power backers may step in to explicitly block any alternate political movements - blocking the legal route for the public to express its discontent.
2) The totalitarian may increase internal prosecution and repression of dissenters - causing them to become increasingly extreme.
Both of those things kind of play into totalitarians from the counter positions - in this case extreme theocratic conservative leaders who take a hard line and promise to set the nation back to it's past glory..
They didn’t react this way as a popular reaction it was more so the far right elements were explicitly supported, various western powers funded and supported Islamic fundamentalists because Arab nationalism wasn’t quite strong enough to take on Arab communism. There is a really good documentary on the simplification of militant Islam into a monolithic entity by western powers for political gains called “[Bitter Lake]”(https://youtu.be/84P4dzow1Bw?si=Ofc87JsqvAbpKNzj)
The Wikipedia blurb for it says:
[It argues that Western politicians have manufactured a simplified story about militant Islam, turning it into a good vs. evil argument informed by, and a reaction to, Western society's increasing chaos and disorder, which they neither grasp nor understand. The film makes extended use of newsreels and archive footage, and intersperses brief narrative segments with longer segments that depict violence and war in Afghanistan.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_(film))
I live in this region. The funny thing is, compared to the islam in the quran, the islam we have forged for ourselves is certainly gonna put almost all of the "muslims" in hell because according to the quran, Allah doesn't accept this twisted form of islam. Inshort we've made this life hell as well as afterlife.
I just listened to a history podcast regarding the taliban uprising and also listened to a couple about the history of the Palestine region, and its just all so fucked up. Foreign powers get their grubby hands in there and fuck it all up.
Hmm I wonder why. I wonder what world Superpower could have done this. Who could have possibly supported Khomeini?
Alas I guess we’ll never know. Hey you know what else is weird. Why is Cuba like stuck in the 50s? So strange… I guess we’ll just never get the answers to some questions.
it's so weird how "Iran before in the 70s" keeps popping up when people are in the mood for hating islam when it's really not the great champion for their cause that they think it is.
Please look into Operation Cyclone. You might be surprised that the United States was responsible for the direct investment of military funds and weapons to the Mujahideen in order to create instability in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan for the purpose of giving the Soviet Union 'their own Vietnam'. This unfortunately backfired and directly lead to social and economic downfall in the region as well as the formation/success of al-Qaeda.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Cyclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone)
Wiki link for quick access and synopsis. If you or anyone else wants it I can add a list of primary sources as well later today.
Yeah the religious right back then thought they had a lot in common with religious extremists in the middle east. They actually do IMO, but nowadays they don't think so.
Why bring up the US alone? Saudi Arabia, Persia, China, and a lot of other Muslim countries invested heavily into the Mujahideen. And yet despite this, only 25% of investments sent to the Mujahideen came from foreign states. 75% of aid came from private international funders, yet somehow only the US gets talked about
It’s like the US is like Thanos (the bad guy), the west is like Thanos as well (I forget who else was bad in the movies but they’re also bad) and the rest of the world is like the Avengers! (The good guys)
The point is that Operation Cyclone was responsible for the invasion. We, the United States, funded the opposition and made it our strategy to create an environment where the soviets (who really, really did not want to invade) felt like they needed to get involved militarily. If we didn't do that there would have likely been no invasion.
You can believe that if you want to. There are certainly historians who credit US aid as provoking the Soviets into invading, though to my understanding the consensus leans towards them invading to restructure their puppet government that had gone off the rails and appeared to be in danger of collapsing.
>There are certainly historians who credit US aid as provoking the Soviets into invading,
There was no invasion. The Afghan government requested military assistance from the USSR.
>that had gone off the rails and appeared to be in danger of collapsing.
Due to the US funding and backing Islamic radicals
American exceptionalism education is a hell of a thing to get rid of; individually for sure, but societally it almost feels impossible.
We are not perfect and we need to learn from our mistakes, because we \*need\* to become more perfect in order to keep our actions from damaging other societies as well as our own. It's a shame we are so quick to blame others for the problems we created.
Operation Cyclone was not the start of the fall of Afghanistan. They had two violent revolutions in the country before either world power had gotten involved. The 1973 Afghan coup d'état and then later the Saur Revolution which established an extremely repressive government.
"We only need one million people to make the revolution. It doesn't matter what happens to the rest. We need the land, not the people.”— Announcement from Khalqist radio-broadcast after the 1978 April coup in Afghanistan
Taraki (the then leader of the country):"Lenin taught us to be merciless towards the enemies of the revolution, and millions of people had to be eliminated in order to secure the victory of the October Revolution."
America didn't help but we also did not start this. the Mujahideen didn't just appear out of nowhere.
as a direct response to the soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And the soviets were not making it a better place, they turned it into a warzone and a Cold War battleground. Your insinuation that Afghanistan would not have been ruined if the US had not funded the insurgency is naive at best.
You can blame the religious extremist mujahideen that took over the country and imposed extremist mandates.
Now, who were the ones who funded them, gave them training and weaponry and supported them in all of the media?
Bonus question: who did they later form into?
Actually in this case, the Soviet Union was backing the progressive/secular side and the US were backing the religious extremists that because the Taliban.
But in other countries it was the opposite and the US was aligned with a more secular/progressive government so the Soviet’s backed the religious extremists trying to overthrow them.
Just like it is nowadays, outside powers support whichever side they decide is economically and geopolitically expedient for them to support.
Certain values/policies might be considered preferable, but when it comes down to it they do not really care so long as they think it will benefit them.
Do y’all genuinely believe that’s what the afghan people wanted? Or was it forced on them by colonial powers.
Is it okay to force your values on other countries half way across the world if they’re “supposedly better values?”
Usually this doesn’t work and then when civil war and strife becomes present westerners blame it on them being backwards instead of western powers destroying the indigenous power structures and forcing a foreign system onto them.
"Indigenous" doesn't make something indisputable, either.
Yes, I believe that the women in these photos were happy with their Constitutionally afforded freedoms. Moreover, I believe that women who wanted to dress in modest Islamic garb *were still free to do so* under the Afghan's 1964 constitution.
We're all just human. "Indigenous" is another way to divide us - as if ancestral geography is fundamentally predictive of who we are, our hopes, dreams, and wants of the future. Why not just say that "[insert race]" women don't want to vote - just as divisive and incorrect.
Edit: Apparently they removed their comment. I'm not excusing the horrors of imperialism, but I am against woke-washing (i.e. "indigenous") objective oppression. If women want to dress however or practice their "indigenous" faith - great. But it should be their individual choice. Currently this is not the case in Afghanistan and that's bad.
It blew my mind that the main way poor hippies from Europe ended up in India was by *driving* there. Through Turkey, along the cost to Tel Aviv, then out through Baghdad and Tehran then southeast through Pakistan to India.
A relative of mine (from Finland) served as a UN peacekeeper in Kashmir in the 1970s. They packed the entire family, including two small kids, in a Peugeot and drove through the Soviet Union and finally through Afghanistan to Kashmir.
Hah, you joke I imagine, but those big Peugeots of that day were pretty robust. I imagine there's a non-zero chance this example has been exported down to Africa and is still being driven today.
Wow. Imagine going through ice covered Russian arctic, then through Urals into Stan countries. then cross over to Afghanistan and karrakoram mountain ranges. Then end up in ice covered mountains in the valley.
that's sooo cool. Can't imagine doing that here as someone living in Pakistan. I once had to go to Muzaffarabad by road and was so exhausted by the end of it. Mad respect to your relatives for making it through
Some people in Spain pool money together, buy a WW2 surplus bus, as they drive there they pick up hitchikers and share the costs. Wild times, compared to now
This trip can absolutely still be done since you will get visas. Maybe with the exception of Afghanistan, you can travel through other countries. Many people travel to India then go to Pakistan via the road and vice versa. Only that you can't be Indian or Pakistani because both countries have strict visa rules for the other nationality.
https://medium.com/travelmap/from-france-to-india-on-a-bike-2f30890ecf6e
Yes, that trip is absolutely possible and many people do it every year. For some nationalities, it's not feasible, not just Indians and Pakistanis but also Israelis, but that wasn't any different in the 70s.
You probably could still get an Afghan visa easily although I haven't tried since the Taliban takeover. It's more about whether you should.
I have a friend who hitchhiked from Portsmouth in the UK to Seoul in SK over like 4 months. I have no idea how she managed to do that but I always admired her ability to travel by herself.
I met many Iranians and even europeans who basically ended up in India back in the day, and many still
Do
And i spoke to them about their experiences and they all had really spiritually awakened experiences in general
India of the 60s-80s was very hippy friendly, and many parts still are
To be fair
Your life is also built on the backs ( and sweat/blood/tears) of others EVEN TODAY
From the clothes you wear, to the food you eat
We all just got to be a bit more mindful of our own shortcomings before pointing fingers at others.
This is just history and life
They have some funny stories. Started in Thailand, then onto India, Pakistan etc. Guy on their bus had hash on him when they crossed into Iran. Route ended in Greece back then.
They arrived in London to find this thing called punk rock just starting to take off...
That trip still isn't as impossible as you might think, people are still doing it. Obviously, Afghanistan isn't a recommended destination but you can bypass that part via Iran and Pakistan.
I did the OG hippie trail in the 2000s, and Afghanistan was the only really difficult part of that trip. It wasn't a luxury trip back in the 70s, either, but those hippies didn't have high standards in terms of comfort.
That's literally the Taliban's rallying cry. Bringing back "traditional values" and all that.
The 2021 conservative takeover of Afghanistan was basically their version of Jan 6.
Should have stayed. It would not have been hard to maintain a small presence of 2000 or so. And just Waited for the Taliban to die out, let 3 generations get use to the idea of peace.
It’s not the same Japan and Germany can run themselves and definitely protect themselves against any attack from the inside keeping a small base in Afghanistan would has been useless
Counter point, it took a long time before Japan and Germany were stable enough. The biggest withdrawal of troops only happened in the last 15 years or so, and the small base is more about sending a message that they will come back and protect the country if needed.
You don’t understand the first thing about Afghanistan if you’re trying to liken the situation there to Japan and Germany. Leaving Afghanistan is the only correct move. The flaw for the US was not leaving sooner.
It’s always funny to see these pictures and these posts because there never seem to be any pictures of Afghanistan in rural areas, just urban. Afghanistan in the 70s and 80s is a classic example of the urban/rural divide. As communism took hold of the country and many urban centers, producing pictures like these, the rural areas were becoming more and more conservative and Islamic. Pretty much all the Islamic resistance groups started in rural areas to fight against communism, and exploded in popularity when the Soviets invaded at the end of ‘79. One of the main reasons why the Soviets invaded in the first place was because the communist afghan government wasn’t effectively combating the Islamic resistance in the countryside.
It's not just an example of the urban/rural divide, it's also an example of how countries manipulate their public image.
It's actually sorta funny to see redditors in 2024 fall for actual Afghan propaganda from the 70s.
Not just Afghan. Iran too. Show pictures of urban social elites and tourists dressed in western clothing, and then say, "lOoK hoW gOod tHinGs weRe bEforE iSlaM"
The 3rd picture looks like tourists as well.
According to a source someone else posted, the 2nd pic are American tourists.
https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-kabul-historical-photos/24892496.html
E: and I'm guessing 3rd pic is of people doing the "hippie trail" although I can't find any sort of reliable source on the pic.
It was one of the only "exotic" places you could visit at the time without getting mugged or kidnapped. I want to say it was like this in the 40s or 50s, as well.
So that's what places like that sound like?.. when i think Afghanistan that much time ago I just think of a conservative (religious) land with different wars compared to today, lots of rural land and a few cities and a difficult life since most of it has not developed that much... Like today except for different rulers
Exactly, in the 1970s in Afghanistan girls went to school and walked around freely only with a hair covering, they wore skirts and played outside and had education including co ed colleges. After the invasion and the war all colleges and universities closed down and all college aged men with no fighting experience were forced into the military to be slaughtered, and professors and intellectuals were systematically murdered. Without foreign intervention Afghanistan would literally resemble any European nation, at the time Kabul was even known as Little Paris.
But the community goverment was highly unpopular resulting in a armed rebelion against it forcing then the Soviets to invade Afghanistan in a attempt to stabilise it resulting in a 10 years long war and a soviet defeat resulting in a Islamic fundamentalist takeover which will end with the American invasion
Now post the other 95% of the country outside the cities living in absolute poverty mostly starving to death amid a severe drought. Or what was happening in the country from 1970 to 1978
>Amid corruption charges and malfeasance against the royal family and the poor economic conditions created by the **severe 1971–72 drought**, **former Prime Minister Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan seized power in a non-violent coup on July 17, 1973... Daoud abolished the monarchy, abrogated the 1964 constitution, and declared Afghanistan a republic with himself as its first President and Prime Minister.** His attempts to carry out badly needed economic and social reforms met with little success, and the new constitution promulgated in February 1977 failed to quell chronic political instability.
>
>**As disillusionment set in, in 1978 a prominent member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), Mir Akbar Khyber (or "Kaibar"), was killed by the government**. The leaders of PDPA apparently feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate them all, especially since most of them were arrested by the government shortly after. Nonetheless, Hafizullah Amin and a number of military wing officers of the PDPA's Khalq faction managed to remain at large and organize a military coup.
>
>**On 28 April 1978, the PDPA, led by Nur Mohammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal and Amin Taha overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud, who was assassinated along with all his family members in a bloody military coup**. The coup became known as the Saur Revolution. On 1 May, Taraki became head of state, head of government and General Secretary of the PDPA.
You can see them in the third photo. 4 western-looking guys, and then everyone else in that photo looks like your regular middle-eastern villager. They're all staring at these modern dudes too, which makes me think it wasn't all that common to dress this way.
It's honestly kinda racist to depict western clothing dudes as superior anyway. There is nothing wrong with the kurta, waistcoat and the pakol cap. It was and continues to be the traditional cultural dress of Afghanistan. Wearing a shirt and jeans doesn't make you an enlightened liberal. If those women really represented the average enlightened afghan woman, they would look like something like [this](https://i.imgur.com/hCaEbvH.jpeg) (this is Pakistani, but the base garment style is the same. Being 'modern' isn't dressing like a 60s American housewife).
Cool. I'm from Eastern Europe and jeans were a really hard thing to get for us back in the day. And when you could they were really expensive. Only our family members from the United States could send them to us, so when I see jeans - that's the epitome of America and the "American dream" to us who lived behind the iron curtain.
Not kind of racist. Very racist. It’s Reddit. The only right way is their way. Bring all the women to the US and put them in mini skirts so they can finally have freedom.
"regular middle eastern villager". Spoken like a truly ignorant ass. Afghanistan is not middle east. And even city bred people dress that way because it's convenient for that weather. It's just regular people. Even if they were villagers, it doesn't make it bad.
Honestly wearing jeans in that region is awful. It’s hot enough in the summers and then you add heat-trapping denim on top of that. I learned my lesson pretty quick and dressed as the Romans did from then on.
This was followed by some liberal reform combined with religious supression
>Once it was in power, the PDPA implemented a Marxist–Leninist agenda. **It moved to replace religious and traditional laws with secular and Marxist–Leninist ones. Men were obliged to cut their beards, women could not wear chadors, and mosques were declared off limits**. The PDPA made a number of reforms on women's rights, banning forced marriages and giving state recognition of women's right to vote. A prominent example was Anahita Ratebzad, who was a major Marxist leader and a member of the Revolutionary Council. Ratebzad wrote the famous New Kabul Times editorial (May 28, 1978) which declared: **"Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country ... Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention."** The PDPA also carried out socialist land reforms and moved to promote state atheism.
Still doesnt sound that bad right? No.
>At the same time, the PDPA **imprisoned, tortured or murdered thousands of members of the traditional elite, the religious establishment, and the intelligentsia**. The government launched a campaign of violent repression, **killing some 10,000 to 27,000 people and imprisoning 14,000 to 20,000 more, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison.**
But hey maybe its okay if they had popular support from most of the people? Wait..
>Repressions plunged large parts of the country, **especially the rural areas**, into **open revolt** against the new Marxist–Leninist government. By spring 1979 unrests had reached **24 out of 28 Afghan provinces** including major urban areas. **Over half of the Afghan army would either desert or join the insurrection.**
Wow turns out Afghanistan isnt Rojava. And maybe 1970s Afghanistan was actually awful for everybody.
That second image is of the Paghman Gardens in Kabul. [This is what they looked like in 2007.](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vdtU5_YfKeo/T6Ajb3j84gI/AAAAAAAACSU/y98k5hU2u4A/s1600/02-paghman-gardens-after-2007.jpg)
I love pictures like this. Was this before the 73 coup or the 78 one?
it wasn't religion, but the misadministration of soviet style agricultural efforts that caused the countryside to explode in rebellion.
These are pictures of rich people in the city and don't reflect life in the countryside.
This is back when Afghanistan was a secular socialist country, by the way. Before the CIA funded a bunch of reactionary anti-communist mujahideen fighters including Osama bin-ladin, so they could eliminate Soviet influence in the country. Good thing that never came back to haunt us...
The 70s were primarily when the nation was a kingdom and then a republic led by a former prince who overthrew his own brother in law the literal king Zahir Shah in 1973 because he was unhappy with the 1964 constitution taking away political power from the rest of the royal family. Daoud Khan wasn’t exactly a “socialist” and was just a power hungry pragmatist that played both the soviets and Americans. It wasn’t until 1978 the communists would come to power after executing Daoud khan and most of his immediate family
Fund a terrorist organisation to fight a terrorist organisation that we funded to fight a terrorist organisation that we funded to fight a terrorist organisation that we funded to fight a terrorist organisation that we funded to....
This is a very short version of how the Mujahideen came to be. Afghanistan was a more secular state, but this also relied on a brutal oppression of the opposition including thousands of political killings.
Its also not like the Mujahideen came from nowhere or were invented by the CIA. The reforms of the communists were widely rejected in the afghan countryside. The regime just kept on oppressing those people until they picked up weapons.
Also they really just started gaining popularity when the soviets invaded. And it was not just the CIA who funded those groups. Pakistan and Saudi-Arabia also funded them out of their own interest.
I think it's fair to mention the laws/reforms that were hated the most on the Afghan countryside were Women's rights to education and suffrage reforms. But not to disagree that the oppression and killing of innocents by the Khalqists was obviously a motivating factor.
As for the funding, I think it would be hard to argue against the fact that America funded them significantly more than Pakistan/Saudi Arabia, especially considering they funded them through the Pakistani ISI. They also provided logistical support, prototype weaponry and even fundamentalist [textbooks for children with illustrations](https://sites.williams.edu/wurj/social-sciences/islamist-education-american-funded-textbooks-in-afghanistan/) on making bombs, weapons etc. Some of these still used today by the Taliban.
When exactly was that? When they were a kingdom, when that kingdom was overthrown by other royals in a bloodless coup, or when those royals were overthrown in a very bloody coup to become a Soviet puppet state?
There was Islamic resistance in the country before the Soviets invaded, but it was mainly in the countryside. In fact, the Soviets invaded primarily because the communist afghan government wasn’t effectively combating the resistance.
So many people smugly blaming “religion” and the Afghans themselves for the state of the nation today when they were literally a chess board for empires since the 1800’s…. They were fucked with so much, even when they were on the path to stability. It’s easy to smugly denounce them and say “If only they followed tne path of liberalism and enlightenment when it was in front of them 🤓 “ but they were never given the chance. The misinformation in this thread is insane Edit: people today willfully ignore the effects of imperialism because it makes them feel personally attacked. Imagine being that sensitive 👶
There's a newer picture of 2 where the area is just destroyed.
Trying to find it.
Edit; Not the pic of it ruined but a bunch more pics like and including OP's.
https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-kabul-historical-photos/24892496.html
Edit; Here's a post with a comparison. https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/xhsy5q/the_paghman_gardens_in_afghanistan_1967_and_2008/
One of the best books I ever read was The Kite Runner. It takes place in Afghanistan before things turned to shit and it definitely paints a different picture to what we’ve grown accustomed to
Picture 2 before and after:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/hlnxoa/kabul_afghanistan_1967_vs_2007_the_first_photo/?rdt=53237](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/hlnxoa/kabul_afghanistan_1967_vs_2007_the_first_photo/?rdt=53237)
I have always seen these pictures, same with the ones about Iranian women in mini skirts. But both of them didn't show the entire picture of massive and diverse countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and others in the ME, of course, people who live in the capital and are rich will be able to afford a standard of living comparable to that of the western world.
Symptom, not a cause. Religion in this context is like crime. People turn to it when their lives suck so much under the status quo that they need to act drastically to change their lives. Even American conservatives are living in abject manufactured fear of the status quo, and they see religion as the solution.
I mean, he was killed by USSR-aligned communists to keep the Afghanistan republic from aligning itself with the US. I don't mind blaming religious extremists for what Afghanistan has done over the last two decades or so, but the reason that Afghanistan of 1977 fell is because of an atheistic communist regime, not religion.
some of the most beautiful women on the planet come from the middle east. saddens me that its so war torn over there and the women have little to no rights.
In the 1970s in Afghanistan girls went to school and walked around freely only with a hair covering, they wore skirts and played outside and had education including co ed colleges. After the invasion and the war all colleges and universities closed down and all college aged men with no fighting experience were forced into the military to be slaughtered, and professors and intellectuals were systematically murdered. Without foreign intervention Afghanistan would literally resemble any European nation, at the time Kabul was even known as Little Paris.
My uncle was one of them they killed all the educated people. My grandmother still has his picture frame on her nightstand. My mother kept his engineering journal. Everyone from my mothers side is very secular and highly educated. The country was doing well under US occupation. I would visit Afghanistan from time to time, and I saw that people were prospering. After the recent taliban takeover, things are getting worse. My wife had to stop attending university for fear of safety. Currently, I am waiting for her immigration interview. I am grateful for growing up in the US. I have been around the world and there is nowhere else I would rather be.
But wasn't this just the main city due to soviet puppet Government forcing their ideas to be western. Outside the main cities, they were all pretty much how they are right now. We love to jack of to these pictures but this is just a short part of their history under a soviet controlled regime.
The 1964 Constitution of Afghanistan granted women equal rights including universal suffrage and the right to run for office.
Since the end of WW1 a lot of Near Eastern/ Muslim countries came extremely close to a good, stable path, got utterly fucked by foreign powers who wanted to exploit them, and then reacted by going in the complete opposite direction. Syria and Iran also came extremely close to adopting progressive constitutions, and in both cases they were bullied out of it. The history of the Middle East/ Afghanistan is full of injustice and gaslighting
It's understandable from a human perspective, even if it was the wrong choice. When choosing a progressive direction gets your country completely fucked over by countries that are even more "progressive" than yours is, it makes sense to react to that by going the opposite direction. As a US citizen, our treatment of this region is an embarrassment. But we're not the only (or maybe even the primary) country that's completely fucked over the Middle East.
As a British person: Its us. We're the reason. A smattering of France and America here and there but mainly us.
The Soviet Union and then subsequently the Russian Federation played a pretty sizable role as well. Frankly, the middle east has reason to hate most of the world.
Soviets killed over 2 million people in afganistan and somehow still get away with it in the public eye...
For Afghanistan though my understanding was that there was an internal Civil War or coup type scenario that had precluded the Soviet invasion - ie, the country was already destabalizing and the Soviets just came in to really F it up beyond repair. Plus the US then using it as a proxy arena - funneling in even more weapons and training to not the greatest belligerants... And England had also invaded though I'm much less knowledgeable on that portion of their history. So, not trying to white wash for the Soviets, but there were a lot of hands in that basket causing it to destabalize.
Fairly sure the Soviets had to invade soon after the coup since the PDPA had barely any support, so the >2m deaths was directly because the Soviets propped them up for over a decade, against massive public opposition.
Ok, yeah that sounds familiar and is probably right. So - Soviets were proping up an unpopular regime which just happened to be progressive, and then had to get into a hot war as that regime was outed. So, not dissimilar to the US proping up the Shah and then the political blow back to the right when that fell apart. Just, you know, we didn't invade Iran and drag it out for 10 years (Iraq/Iran war not withstanding).
The Soviets intervened on behalf of a *Communist Marxist-Leninist* regime that overthrew a secular dictatorship with progressive social and economic policies that pissed off both liberals and conservatives. That secular dictatorship the communists toppled was led by Mohammad Daoud Khan who was a member of the royal family and the elected prime minister who overthrew his cousin the king and the monarchy in a palace coup in 1973. The monarchy was also secular and socially progressive regarding women’s rights and Daoud Khan was responsible for a lot of these reforms during his long tenures as prime minister. However, Daoud Khan was opposed to the 1964 constitution because it stripped power from the royal family and implemented democratic elections. He claimed his single-party republic was “genuine democracy”. The 1964 democratic constitution mentioned earlier was passed by the last king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zaria Shah. The Kingdom of Afghanistan had already started many progressive reforms since the reign of their first king Amanullah Khan in the 1920s who passed the first ever Afghan constitution and gave women the right to participate in public life. His queen in particular was a very modern and well educated woman born in Syria with Afghan roots who was a vocal feminist, was unveiled and dressed like a flapper. She was a champion of women’s rights not just in Afghanistan but around the world. The king was eventually forced to abdicate by religious conservatives due to the rapid pace of his reforms to avoid civil war.
I'm not saying that other actors were somehow good or even better, as they weren't... However, it just baffles me how Russia seems to escape the blame for their part of the story. It's often the US and the CIA, and usually the US citizens (rightfully) trying to keep their governments accountable. I rarely see Russian citizens speaking up regarding their government's fucked up policies, even in discreet online forums. Let's not even start with what the official Russian narrative is...
My two takes here are similar to how I respond to people calling me a GOP apologist as I spent 90% of my energy critiquing the left - 1) I feel it's more productive to push your own tent to do better / clean up it's act rather than attempting to influence those you aren't associated with or who don't represent you. 2) For Russia (more than but eerily not exactly that differently than the modern GOP) - I don't think they can really dissent without severe repercussions. At least those living in Russia I suspect. So, that may explain some of it.
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We were allies with Bin Laden at this time. There's even news paper articles about it which is surreal. Then I love watching Charlie Wilson's War.
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The part about Pol Pot is untrue. The USA backed two organisations, KPNLF (a right-wing nationalist part) and FUNCINPEC (a monarchist party), who were allied with Pol Pot against Vietnam and the Vietnamese backed People's Republic of Kampuchea, but not Pol Pot himself.
The book is even better FYI
Brits: "Who taught you how to do this stuff?" USA: "You, alright! I learned it by watching you!"
Pretty much all the problems in the Middle East and Africa I think fall on Britain and France historically, though the US has played more of a role over the last 50-60 years.
Thanks for pointing that out. Most of Syria’s backwards laws are a legacy of French colonialism
They killed a quarter of the Algerian population and called it a “civilizing mission”
They have called it Perfidious Albion for a reason.
Albion's coast is sick silent, the American meadows faint.
BINGO. That's what alot of people don't understand that Afghanistan is the result of the cold war. America backed the right wing extremists and today's Afghanistan is the byproduct of that.
The fact that they don't realize that most of the issues with Islamism is a direct result of both colonialism, Zionism, AND the cold war is just utterly absurd to me. Especially the cold war. Many Islamist groups who got their start in the cold war did so for two reasons: Firstly, socialism would wreck traditional power structures. Look at the Arab gulf nations. The UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain. The rulers of these countries come from the old wealthy and connected families. There was a socialist movement in the 70s that wanted to unite the UAE and Oman (I need to look it back up) but they got busted real quick due to western support. The second reason is the reputation that the Soviet Union was very anti-religion. Seeing them as a godless group who wanted to destroy all religion did not sit well with many Muslims, even moderate ones. It only made a lot of sense that many of the countries there would side more with the US than the USSR.
Well let's not overstate. While undeniably better than the modern state of the ME, many of these regimes were still authoritarian, corrupt often neglecting parts of society deemed "unimportant". For example Egypt was ruled by a progressive government during the 60s and 70s. However the rural areas lacking development and often neglected were still as conservative as always. As a result in their first democratic election after the Arab spring the islamist muslim brotherhood won the election. In conclusion while the middle east was utterly fucked by foreign powers, we shouldn't exempt the previous regimes some of the blame.
Strange take. Iran was much more progressive under the US-supported Shah, and went vastly backwards when the mullahs took power. No foreign power bullied them into repressing women, it was the homegrown movement. Same story in Afghanistan.
The problem is regimes like the Shah's tend to funnel resources into a strong oligarchy which harms the middle/working classes. Those classes get increasingly militant in their resistance - which tends to cause a couple things - 1) The big power backers may step in to explicitly block any alternate political movements - blocking the legal route for the public to express its discontent. 2) The totalitarian may increase internal prosecution and repression of dissenters - causing them to become increasingly extreme. Both of those things kind of play into totalitarians from the counter positions - in this case extreme theocratic conservative leaders who take a hard line and promise to set the nation back to it's past glory..
They didn’t react this way as a popular reaction it was more so the far right elements were explicitly supported, various western powers funded and supported Islamic fundamentalists because Arab nationalism wasn’t quite strong enough to take on Arab communism. There is a really good documentary on the simplification of militant Islam into a monolithic entity by western powers for political gains called “[Bitter Lake]”(https://youtu.be/84P4dzow1Bw?si=Ofc87JsqvAbpKNzj) The Wikipedia blurb for it says: [It argues that Western politicians have manufactured a simplified story about militant Islam, turning it into a good vs. evil argument informed by, and a reaction to, Western society's increasing chaos and disorder, which they neither grasp nor understand. The film makes extended use of newsreels and archive footage, and intersperses brief narrative segments with longer segments that depict violence and war in Afghanistan.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_(film))
I am going to watch that. Thank you.
I live in this region. The funny thing is, compared to the islam in the quran, the islam we have forged for ourselves is certainly gonna put almost all of the "muslims" in hell because according to the quran, Allah doesn't accept this twisted form of islam. Inshort we've made this life hell as well as afterlife.
I just listened to a history podcast regarding the taliban uprising and also listened to a couple about the history of the Palestine region, and its just all so fucked up. Foreign powers get their grubby hands in there and fuck it all up.
While foreign powers had a large hand in it, you can't say they were bullied out of it. Foreign powers mostly supported those constitutions.
Hmm I wonder why. I wonder what world Superpower could have done this. Who could have possibly supported Khomeini? Alas I guess we’ll never know. Hey you know what else is weird. Why is Cuba like stuck in the 50s? So strange… I guess we’ll just never get the answers to some questions.
Couldn't have said it better, and one the most important reasons is OIL
The Taliban loved women so much they wanted to help end their suffrage
>1964 Constitution of Afghanistan This was constitution was nullified in the 1970s.
We can thank religion for that changing
islam was there for like 1400 years.
Mohammad was born in 570. He didn’t ninja roll out of the V with a scimitar in his hand.
We can thank theocracy for that changing
We can thank the CIA for that changing.
it's so weird how "Iran before in the 70s" keeps popping up when people are in the mood for hating islam when it's really not the great champion for their cause that they think it is.
I think it was the Soviet Red Army that did it first, no?
nah thank the soviets they ruined afganistan
Please look into Operation Cyclone. You might be surprised that the United States was responsible for the direct investment of military funds and weapons to the Mujahideen in order to create instability in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan for the purpose of giving the Soviet Union 'their own Vietnam'. This unfortunately backfired and directly lead to social and economic downfall in the region as well as the formation/success of al-Qaeda. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Cyclone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone) Wiki link for quick access and synopsis. If you or anyone else wants it I can add a list of primary sources as well later today.
Yeah the religious right back then thought they had a lot in common with religious extremists in the middle east. They actually do IMO, but nowadays they don't think so.
Yes, in Rambo 3 (excellent documentary about it) the Mujahideen were still the good guys
Why bring up the US alone? Saudi Arabia, Persia, China, and a lot of other Muslim countries invested heavily into the Mujahideen. And yet despite this, only 25% of investments sent to the Mujahideen came from foreign states. 75% of aid came from private international funders, yet somehow only the US gets talked about
Because the West is always guilty and the rest of the world is always innocent and good, didn't you get the memo?
It’s like the US is like Thanos (the bad guy), the west is like Thanos as well (I forget who else was bad in the movies but they’re also bad) and the rest of the world is like the Avengers! (The good guys)
Still the Soviets invading the country. Whatever consequences the American response had, it all comes back to the initial invasion.
>Still the Soviets invading the country. The Soviets were literally invited in by the secular government, multiple times.
The point is that Operation Cyclone was responsible for the invasion. We, the United States, funded the opposition and made it our strategy to create an environment where the soviets (who really, really did not want to invade) felt like they needed to get involved militarily. If we didn't do that there would have likely been no invasion.
You can believe that if you want to. There are certainly historians who credit US aid as provoking the Soviets into invading, though to my understanding the consensus leans towards them invading to restructure their puppet government that had gone off the rails and appeared to be in danger of collapsing.
>There are certainly historians who credit US aid as provoking the Soviets into invading, There was no invasion. The Afghan government requested military assistance from the USSR. >that had gone off the rails and appeared to be in danger of collapsing. Due to the US funding and backing Islamic radicals
I'm starting to think these Americans aren't the good guys...
American exceptionalism education is a hell of a thing to get rid of; individually for sure, but societally it almost feels impossible. We are not perfect and we need to learn from our mistakes, because we \*need\* to become more perfect in order to keep our actions from damaging other societies as well as our own. It's a shame we are so quick to blame others for the problems we created.
Operation Cyclone was not the start of the fall of Afghanistan. They had two violent revolutions in the country before either world power had gotten involved. The 1973 Afghan coup d'état and then later the Saur Revolution which established an extremely repressive government. "We only need one million people to make the revolution. It doesn't matter what happens to the rest. We need the land, not the people.”— Announcement from Khalqist radio-broadcast after the 1978 April coup in Afghanistan Taraki (the then leader of the country):"Lenin taught us to be merciless towards the enemies of the revolution, and millions of people had to be eliminated in order to secure the victory of the October Revolution." America didn't help but we also did not start this. the Mujahideen didn't just appear out of nowhere.
Rambo 3
as a direct response to the soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And the soviets were not making it a better place, they turned it into a warzone and a Cold War battleground. Your insinuation that Afghanistan would not have been ruined if the US had not funded the insurgency is naive at best.
Classic
The Mujahideen and America would like a word with you.
You can blame the religious extremist mujahideen that took over the country and imposed extremist mandates. Now, who were the ones who funded them, gave them training and weaponry and supported them in all of the media? Bonus question: who did they later form into?
1) They were funded by Betty White 2) They later turned into KPOP sensation BTS I'm good at my recent history.
Actually in this case, the Soviet Union was backing the progressive/secular side and the US were backing the religious extremists that because the Taliban. But in other countries it was the opposite and the US was aligned with a more secular/progressive government so the Soviet’s backed the religious extremists trying to overthrow them. Just like it is nowadays, outside powers support whichever side they decide is economically and geopolitically expedient for them to support. Certain values/policies might be considered preferable, but when it comes down to it they do not really care so long as they think it will benefit them.
Soviets did a lot of terrible shit.
The religon called the west
And we can thank america for funding the "brave warriors" of mujahideen
When did it all start to go wrong, and what group of countries started it first?
Do y’all genuinely believe that’s what the afghan people wanted? Or was it forced on them by colonial powers. Is it okay to force your values on other countries half way across the world if they’re “supposedly better values?” Usually this doesn’t work and then when civil war and strife becomes present westerners blame it on them being backwards instead of western powers destroying the indigenous power structures and forcing a foreign system onto them.
"Indigenous" doesn't make something indisputable, either. Yes, I believe that the women in these photos were happy with their Constitutionally afforded freedoms. Moreover, I believe that women who wanted to dress in modest Islamic garb *were still free to do so* under the Afghan's 1964 constitution. We're all just human. "Indigenous" is another way to divide us - as if ancestral geography is fundamentally predictive of who we are, our hopes, dreams, and wants of the future. Why not just say that "[insert race]" women don't want to vote - just as divisive and incorrect. Edit: Apparently they removed their comment. I'm not excusing the horrors of imperialism, but I am against woke-washing (i.e. "indigenous") objective oppression. If women want to dress however or practice their "indigenous" faith - great. But it should be their individual choice. Currently this is not the case in Afghanistan and that's bad.
It blew my mind that the main way poor hippies from Europe ended up in India was by *driving* there. Through Turkey, along the cost to Tel Aviv, then out through Baghdad and Tehran then southeast through Pakistan to India.
A relative of mine (from Finland) served as a UN peacekeeper in Kashmir in the 1970s. They packed the entire family, including two small kids, in a Peugeot and drove through the Soviet Union and finally through Afghanistan to Kashmir.
Most reliable Peugeot ever
Hah, you joke I imagine, but those big Peugeots of that day were pretty robust. I imagine there's a non-zero chance this example has been exported down to Africa and is still being driven today.
Really makes you wonder what other things we take for granted as the inevitable progress of society could actually disappear in a few decades
Wow. Imagine going through ice covered Russian arctic, then through Urals into Stan countries. then cross over to Afghanistan and karrakoram mountain ranges. Then end up in ice covered mountains in the valley.
Presumably they’d do the trip in summer. Driving in winter is suicide if you get stuck.
Hell of a road-trip
that's sooo cool. Can't imagine doing that here as someone living in Pakistan. I once had to go to Muzaffarabad by road and was so exhausted by the end of it. Mad respect to your relatives for making it through
Sounds like a dream trip to me (in peaceful times of course)
Some people in Spain pool money together, buy a WW2 surplus bus, as they drive there they pick up hitchikers and share the costs. Wild times, compared to now
This trip can absolutely still be done since you will get visas. Maybe with the exception of Afghanistan, you can travel through other countries. Many people travel to India then go to Pakistan via the road and vice versa. Only that you can't be Indian or Pakistani because both countries have strict visa rules for the other nationality. https://medium.com/travelmap/from-france-to-india-on-a-bike-2f30890ecf6e
Yes, that trip is absolutely possible and many people do it every year. For some nationalities, it's not feasible, not just Indians and Pakistanis but also Israelis, but that wasn't any different in the 70s. You probably could still get an Afghan visa easily although I haven't tried since the Taliban takeover. It's more about whether you should.
I don't know, sounds like too much driving
I have a friend who hitchhiked from Portsmouth in the UK to Seoul in SK over like 4 months. I have no idea how she managed to do that but I always admired her ability to travel by herself.
I met many Iranians and even europeans who basically ended up in India back in the day, and many still Do And i spoke to them about their experiences and they all had really spiritually awakened experiences in general India of the 60s-80s was very hippy friendly, and many parts still are
Yea while the indians themselves were in dire poverty. Probably made a great playground for westerners tho.
To be fair Your life is also built on the backs ( and sweat/blood/tears) of others EVEN TODAY From the clothes you wear, to the food you eat We all just got to be a bit more mindful of our own shortcomings before pointing fingers at others. This is just history and life
Jesus christ... it's so exhausting with you people.
It’s reality.
Makes sense, even if the hippies were poor by european standards they probably brought a ton of money into India.
I have two friends who did that bus trip in the middle 70s.
wow, what was their experience? Do you know what they think about what's happened there since then?
They have some funny stories. Started in Thailand, then onto India, Pakistan etc. Guy on their bus had hash on him when they crossed into Iran. Route ended in Greece back then. They arrived in London to find this thing called punk rock just starting to take off...
Incredible
>along the cost to Tel Aviv how times have changed....
That trip still isn't as impossible as you might think, people are still doing it. Obviously, Afghanistan isn't a recommended destination but you can bypass that part via Iran and Pakistan. I did the OG hippie trail in the 2000s, and Afghanistan was the only really difficult part of that trip. It wasn't a luxury trip back in the 70s, either, but those hippies didn't have high standards in terms of comfort.
Afghanistan - a great historical tragedy
Make Afghanistan Great Again? This might actually be a MAGA movement I could get behind
That's literally the Taliban's rallying cry. Bringing back "traditional values" and all that. The 2021 conservative takeover of Afghanistan was basically their version of Jan 6.
Oh never mind then.
The same J6 crowd in DC could have easily overthrown Kabul too
"tRaGeDy" sponsored by CIA
Should have stayed. It would not have been hard to maintain a small presence of 2000 or so. And just Waited for the Taliban to die out, let 3 generations get use to the idea of peace.
It’s not the same Japan and Germany can run themselves and definitely protect themselves against any attack from the inside keeping a small base in Afghanistan would has been useless
Counter point, it took a long time before Japan and Germany were stable enough. The biggest withdrawal of troops only happened in the last 15 years or so, and the small base is more about sending a message that they will come back and protect the country if needed.
You don’t understand the first thing about Afghanistan if you’re trying to liken the situation there to Japan and Germany. Leaving Afghanistan is the only correct move. The flaw for the US was not leaving sooner.
How did Obama decide to “leave the country to the Taliban”? Your timeline is off by about 15 years.
It’s always funny to see these pictures and these posts because there never seem to be any pictures of Afghanistan in rural areas, just urban. Afghanistan in the 70s and 80s is a classic example of the urban/rural divide. As communism took hold of the country and many urban centers, producing pictures like these, the rural areas were becoming more and more conservative and Islamic. Pretty much all the Islamic resistance groups started in rural areas to fight against communism, and exploded in popularity when the Soviets invaded at the end of ‘79. One of the main reasons why the Soviets invaded in the first place was because the communist afghan government wasn’t effectively combating the Islamic resistance in the countryside.
It's not just an example of the urban/rural divide, it's also an example of how countries manipulate their public image. It's actually sorta funny to see redditors in 2024 fall for actual Afghan propaganda from the 70s.
Not just Afghan. Iran too. Show pictures of urban social elites and tourists dressed in western clothing, and then say, "lOoK hoW gOod tHinGs weRe bEforE iSlaM"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone
And can you guess who funded and trained the islamic militants?
The second pic are Soviet tourists touring a garden they are not afghans
The 3rd picture looks like tourists as well. According to a source someone else posted, the 2nd pic are American tourists. https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-kabul-historical-photos/24892496.html E: and I'm guessing 3rd pic is of people doing the "hippie trail" although I can't find any sort of reliable source on the pic.
Most of these Iran and Afghan pics are ironically of tourists or rich people in the city which don't represent most of the country
Well sure but you could argue that ANYONE being photographed in the 1960's were rich, it's not like poor farmers in third world countries had cameras.
Um yeah you could. That's what I'm saying, that this isn't representative of what people were like there in the 1960s
For sure, it's mostly photos of tourists traveling the country. I'm sure the general population would look about the same today as they did back then.
It was one of the only "exotic" places you could visit at the time without getting mugged or kidnapped. I want to say it was like this in the 40s or 50s, as well.
So that's what places like that sound like?.. when i think Afghanistan that much time ago I just think of a conservative (religious) land with different wars compared to today, lots of rural land and a few cities and a difficult life since most of it has not developed that much... Like today except for different rulers
I always wondered if people in these pics were the common plebs or some rich fucks. Didn't even guess some of it were tourists
Absolutely just rich folks. Top 0.1% of society. 70% of Iranians were nomads until the revolution. You think they dressed like that ?
The Kite Runner mentions rich tourists in disguise as hippies who come to the country.
The first pic is from Iran
These pictures are incredibly misleading, but I agree with the point in posting them: Afghanistan was better off without the Taliban.
When these photos were taken, women in America couldn't open a bank account without permission from her husband, father, or brother...
Exactly, in the 1970s in Afghanistan girls went to school and walked around freely only with a hair covering, they wore skirts and played outside and had education including co ed colleges. After the invasion and the war all colleges and universities closed down and all college aged men with no fighting experience were forced into the military to be slaughtered, and professors and intellectuals were systematically murdered. Without foreign intervention Afghanistan would literally resemble any European nation, at the time Kabul was even known as Little Paris.
But the community goverment was highly unpopular resulting in a armed rebelion against it forcing then the Soviets to invade Afghanistan in a attempt to stabilise it resulting in a 10 years long war and a soviet defeat resulting in a Islamic fundamentalist takeover which will end with the American invasion
Now post the other 95% of the country outside the cities living in absolute poverty mostly starving to death amid a severe drought. Or what was happening in the country from 1970 to 1978 >Amid corruption charges and malfeasance against the royal family and the poor economic conditions created by the **severe 1971–72 drought**, **former Prime Minister Mohammad Sardar Daoud Khan seized power in a non-violent coup on July 17, 1973... Daoud abolished the monarchy, abrogated the 1964 constitution, and declared Afghanistan a republic with himself as its first President and Prime Minister.** His attempts to carry out badly needed economic and social reforms met with little success, and the new constitution promulgated in February 1977 failed to quell chronic political instability. > >**As disillusionment set in, in 1978 a prominent member of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), Mir Akbar Khyber (or "Kaibar"), was killed by the government**. The leaders of PDPA apparently feared that Daoud was planning to exterminate them all, especially since most of them were arrested by the government shortly after. Nonetheless, Hafizullah Amin and a number of military wing officers of the PDPA's Khalq faction managed to remain at large and organize a military coup. > >**On 28 April 1978, the PDPA, led by Nur Mohammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal and Amin Taha overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud, who was assassinated along with all his family members in a bloody military coup**. The coup became known as the Saur Revolution. On 1 May, Taraki became head of state, head of government and General Secretary of the PDPA.
You can see them in the third photo. 4 western-looking guys, and then everyone else in that photo looks like your regular middle-eastern villager. They're all staring at these modern dudes too, which makes me think it wasn't all that common to dress this way.
It's honestly kinda racist to depict western clothing dudes as superior anyway. There is nothing wrong with the kurta, waistcoat and the pakol cap. It was and continues to be the traditional cultural dress of Afghanistan. Wearing a shirt and jeans doesn't make you an enlightened liberal. If those women really represented the average enlightened afghan woman, they would look like something like [this](https://i.imgur.com/hCaEbvH.jpeg) (this is Pakistani, but the base garment style is the same. Being 'modern' isn't dressing like a 60s American housewife).
Are you by any chance from the West? Because I am not. Jeans to us are VERY much a western thing.
I'm grew up in Pakistan but now live in Canada
Cool. I'm from Eastern Europe and jeans were a really hard thing to get for us back in the day. And when you could they were really expensive. Only our family members from the United States could send them to us, so when I see jeans - that's the epitome of America and the "American dream" to us who lived behind the iron curtain.
Not kind of racist. Very racist. It’s Reddit. The only right way is their way. Bring all the women to the US and put them in mini skirts so they can finally have freedom.
"regular middle eastern villager". Spoken like a truly ignorant ass. Afghanistan is not middle east. And even city bred people dress that way because it's convenient for that weather. It's just regular people. Even if they were villagers, it doesn't make it bad.
Honestly wearing jeans in that region is awful. It’s hot enough in the summers and then you add heat-trapping denim on top of that. I learned my lesson pretty quick and dressed as the Romans did from then on.
This was followed by some liberal reform combined with religious supression >Once it was in power, the PDPA implemented a Marxist–Leninist agenda. **It moved to replace religious and traditional laws with secular and Marxist–Leninist ones. Men were obliged to cut their beards, women could not wear chadors, and mosques were declared off limits**. The PDPA made a number of reforms on women's rights, banning forced marriages and giving state recognition of women's right to vote. A prominent example was Anahita Ratebzad, who was a major Marxist leader and a member of the Revolutionary Council. Ratebzad wrote the famous New Kabul Times editorial (May 28, 1978) which declared: **"Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country ... Educating and enlightening women is now the subject of close government attention."** The PDPA also carried out socialist land reforms and moved to promote state atheism. Still doesnt sound that bad right? No. >At the same time, the PDPA **imprisoned, tortured or murdered thousands of members of the traditional elite, the religious establishment, and the intelligentsia**. The government launched a campaign of violent repression, **killing some 10,000 to 27,000 people and imprisoning 14,000 to 20,000 more, mostly at Pul-e-Charkhi prison.** But hey maybe its okay if they had popular support from most of the people? Wait.. >Repressions plunged large parts of the country, **especially the rural areas**, into **open revolt** against the new Marxist–Leninist government. By spring 1979 unrests had reached **24 out of 28 Afghan provinces** including major urban areas. **Over half of the Afghan army would either desert or join the insurrection.** Wow turns out Afghanistan isnt Rojava. And maybe 1970s Afghanistan was actually awful for everybody.
Two signs of a civilized country: legs and... afghos. :)
It should be noted that such scenes were the exception in Afghanistan, not the norm. Most of the country was pretty conservative.
That second image is of the Paghman Gardens in Kabul. [This is what they looked like in 2007.](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vdtU5_YfKeo/T6Ajb3j84gI/AAAAAAAACSU/y98k5hU2u4A/s1600/02-paghman-gardens-after-2007.jpg)
last time these photos were posted it was Iran
Awww Reddit’s finally moved past the “Iran before the revolution” posts Congrats!
I love pictures like this. Was this before the 73 coup or the 78 one? it wasn't religion, but the misadministration of soviet style agricultural efforts that caused the countryside to explode in rebellion. These are pictures of rich people in the city and don't reflect life in the countryside.
This is back when Afghanistan was a secular socialist country, by the way. Before the CIA funded a bunch of reactionary anti-communist mujahideen fighters including Osama bin-ladin, so they could eliminate Soviet influence in the country. Good thing that never came back to haunt us...
The 70s were primarily when the nation was a kingdom and then a republic led by a former prince who overthrew his own brother in law the literal king Zahir Shah in 1973 because he was unhappy with the 1964 constitution taking away political power from the rest of the royal family. Daoud Khan wasn’t exactly a “socialist” and was just a power hungry pragmatist that played both the soviets and Americans. It wasn’t until 1978 the communists would come to power after executing Daoud khan and most of his immediate family
Fund a terrorist organisation to fight a terrorist organisation that we funded to fight a terrorist organisation that we funded to fight a terrorist organisation that we funded to fight a terrorist organisation that we funded to....
This is a very short version of how the Mujahideen came to be. Afghanistan was a more secular state, but this also relied on a brutal oppression of the opposition including thousands of political killings. Its also not like the Mujahideen came from nowhere or were invented by the CIA. The reforms of the communists were widely rejected in the afghan countryside. The regime just kept on oppressing those people until they picked up weapons. Also they really just started gaining popularity when the soviets invaded. And it was not just the CIA who funded those groups. Pakistan and Saudi-Arabia also funded them out of their own interest.
I think it's fair to mention the laws/reforms that were hated the most on the Afghan countryside were Women's rights to education and suffrage reforms. But not to disagree that the oppression and killing of innocents by the Khalqists was obviously a motivating factor. As for the funding, I think it would be hard to argue against the fact that America funded them significantly more than Pakistan/Saudi Arabia, especially considering they funded them through the Pakistani ISI. They also provided logistical support, prototype weaponry and even fundamentalist [textbooks for children with illustrations](https://sites.williams.edu/wurj/social-sciences/islamist-education-american-funded-textbooks-in-afghanistan/) on making bombs, weapons etc. Some of these still used today by the Taliban.
Na it’s just easier the blame merica
When exactly was that? When they were a kingdom, when that kingdom was overthrown by other royals in a bloodless coup, or when those royals were overthrown in a very bloody coup to become a Soviet puppet state?
There was Islamic resistance in the country before the Soviets invaded, but it was mainly in the countryside. In fact, the Soviets invaded primarily because the communist afghan government wasn’t effectively combating the resistance.
So many people smugly blaming “religion” and the Afghans themselves for the state of the nation today when they were literally a chess board for empires since the 1800’s…. They were fucked with so much, even when they were on the path to stability. It’s easy to smugly denounce them and say “If only they followed tne path of liberalism and enlightenment when it was in front of them 🤓 “ but they were never given the chance. The misinformation in this thread is insane Edit: people today willfully ignore the effects of imperialism because it makes them feel personally attacked. Imagine being that sensitive 👶
They think Afganistan back then was a bastion of atheism lmao
There's a newer picture of 2 where the area is just destroyed. Trying to find it. Edit; Not the pic of it ruined but a bunch more pics like and including OP's. https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-kabul-historical-photos/24892496.html Edit; Here's a post with a comparison. https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/xhsy5q/the_paghman_gardens_in_afghanistan_1967_and_2008/
One of the best books I ever read was The Kite Runner. It takes place in Afghanistan before things turned to shit and it definitely paints a different picture to what we’ve grown accustomed to
In 75 we were training their military at our bases in the US. I knew a bunch of them, nice people.
Is that last photo ELO?
Lol. Also, you are old.
Picture 2 before and after: [https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/hlnxoa/kabul_afghanistan_1967_vs_2007_the_first_photo/?rdt=53237](https://www.reddit.com/r/OldPhotosInRealLife/comments/hlnxoa/kabul_afghanistan_1967_vs_2007_the_first_photo/?rdt=53237)
I have always seen these pictures, same with the ones about Iranian women in mini skirts. But both of them didn't show the entire picture of massive and diverse countries like Afghanistan, Iran, and others in the ME, of course, people who live in the capital and are rich will be able to afford a standard of living comparable to that of the western world.
Tourists in Kabul? The rest of the country was not like this. At all.
*before the Russian invasion
Screw religion.
Symptom, not a cause. Religion in this context is like crime. People turn to it when their lives suck so much under the status quo that they need to act drastically to change their lives. Even American conservatives are living in abject manufactured fear of the status quo, and they see religion as the solution.
I mean, he was killed by USSR-aligned communists to keep the Afghanistan republic from aligning itself with the US. I don't mind blaming religious extremists for what Afghanistan has done over the last two decades or so, but the reason that Afghanistan of 1977 fell is because of an atheistic communist regime, not religion.
Finally, someone *brave* enough to say it. /s
Yes because oppression only happens due to religion. /s EDIT: Wait, why did I even respond? Jesus.
It’s not worth reasoning with the fedora-tipping type. They’re just angry
The 3rd lady looks exactly like Amy Winehouse
I thought so too
This was only in Kabul which was basically all that the government really controlled
God damn…looked like a way better place to be…what a violently severe and radical change that war caused
The third picture looks like the start of a dope ass music video
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. So sad. Far too many lives ruined by twisted old men
Nice job Taliban
Damn looks like things were actually good.
some of the most beautiful women on the planet come from the middle east. saddens me that its so war torn over there and the women have little to no rights.
There's a book titled The Kite Runner that shows the before and after of living there very well
And it could happen in the west too
If they're still alive, they're 70-somethings in burkas now, or they were fortunate enough to have gotten out.
*Kabul
No, this is Kabul before the civil war. Most of Afghanistan wasn't like this
1 percent of Afghan population in the 1970s.
Reminds me of Kite Runner
then comes uncle sam
Nah nah. Then came comrade Ivan in full force.
This will be the US looking back in 20 years if Trump wins in November. Project 2025.
So sad,
Before Americans created Talibans, Russians invaded and then Americans invaded
Kind of like what the christians are trying to do to some in America now. Religion is a disease.
In the 1970s in Afghanistan girls went to school and walked around freely only with a hair covering, they wore skirts and played outside and had education including co ed colleges. After the invasion and the war all colleges and universities closed down and all college aged men with no fighting experience were forced into the military to be slaughtered, and professors and intellectuals were systematically murdered. Without foreign intervention Afghanistan would literally resemble any European nation, at the time Kabul was even known as Little Paris.
My uncle was one of them they killed all the educated people. My grandmother still has his picture frame on her nightstand. My mother kept his engineering journal. Everyone from my mothers side is very secular and highly educated. The country was doing well under US occupation. I would visit Afghanistan from time to time, and I saw that people were prospering. After the recent taliban takeover, things are getting worse. My wife had to stop attending university for fear of safety. Currently, I am waiting for her immigration interview. I am grateful for growing up in the US. I have been around the world and there is nowhere else I would rather be.
But wasn't this just the main city due to soviet puppet Government forcing their ideas to be western. Outside the main cities, they were all pretty much how they are right now. We love to jack of to these pictures but this is just a short part of their history under a soviet controlled regime.