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This is a very interesting photo essay of daily life in 1960s Kabul & surrounding areas. My impression is of a nation straddling between traditions and modernity. I think my favorite of the photos is the very last one. This young woman was so fortunate to have the opportunity to spend a year of her youth there and her fond memories have lasted 40 years. She learned much more than had she stayed in Arizona that year!

Remembering 1960s Afghanistan, the photographs of Bill Podlich

Makes you wonder if the troubles that they have now are of their own making or imported.

There is little to wonder. The Soviet sponsored "revolution" in the late seventies set stage.

Outside assistance to the different factions led to the Soviet invasion. It was all downhill after that.

Even the Taliban was foreign made.

Pfft. Afghanistan has been perpetually at war since the dawn of civilization...probably before. In fact the entire middle east is that way.

Let 'em stew in their own juices says I.

(Note: oil is running out worldwide, so soon history will shift away from the middle east again.)

So Afghani women are camera shy or know their place which is barefoot, pregnant where they belong, at home cooking and herding their flock of kids?

Indications are that the Afghani culture of the 1960s was kinder & more promising for the women than it is today. Kabul was no doubt more progressive than the outer lying & isolated villages.

I really have a problem with the treatment of women in fundamentalist Islam. Seems barbaric to me.

Speaking of barbaric, I once asked a professor why the Middle East was so primitive as far as technology and civilization goes compared to the West, which seemed funny considering at one time their mathematicians would the best on the planet while western civilization was in the Dark Ages.

He replied that, unlike the West, the Middle East mixes religion and politics. If it's difficult to get a bridge built normally, how much more difficult would it be if some group declared that the bridge was sacrilegious or that that particular site on the river was holy ground?

Made sense to me...

Saint_;1431789 wrote: I really have a problem with the treatment of women in fundamentalist Islam. Seems barbaric to me.

Speaking of barbaric, I once asked a professor why the Middle East was so primitive as far as technology and civilization goes compared to the West, which seemed funny considering at one time their mathematicians would the best on the planet while western civilization was in the Dark Ages.

He replied that, unlike the West, the Middle East mixes religion and politics. If it's difficult to get a bridge built normally, how much more difficult would it be if some group declared that the bridge was sacrilegious or that that particular site on the river was holy ground?

Made sense to me...


As Accountable once said to me, "Read Guns, Germs and Steel" but Jared Diamond. It all makes a different kind of sense after you've done that.

Here are additional photos of progressive Afghanistan in the 1950s and 1960s. The youths in these photos would be grandparents and great-grandparents onward now, have lived through tumultuous times and I'm sure have some interesting tales to tell!

Afghanistan in the 1950s and 60s - In Focus - The Atlantic

tabby;1447890 wrote: Here are additional photos of progressive Afghanistan in the 1950s and 1960s. The youths in these photos would be grandparents and great-grandparents onward now, have lived through tumultuous times and I'm sure have some interesting tales to tell!

Afghanistan in the 1950s and 60s - In Focus - The Atlantic


Even in those "enlightened" times it is notable how few women show up in the street scenes

Hmmmmm. I'm tipping in the fifties and sixties very few women would have been seen on the streets in western culture also. You can't cook, clean, and run around after a dozen kids and still have the time to go walking.....well you can but not often.

I forgot about this till fuzzy’s comment bumped it!

I’m not seeing any insinuation in either article that Afghanistan at that time was any sort of paradise for women or even men for that matter. The gist as I see it is that slow and late-coming though it may have been, there was both buoyancy and expectation that progress was being made at the time. I don’t think there’s an implication that it was a utopian society but rather a disruption of a work literally in progress.

Well it certainly was a much nicer place back then than it has been for the last decade, or two.