Afghanistan in the 60's

This showed up on Forum 16. I saw these and other photos 10 years ago of how life was in Afghanistan , or should I say Kabul, back in the monarchy period. I dare say that the villages in the Kunar Valley where I was running around ever looked like this.

However, you would be hard pressed to say if this was 1962 or 2011 Asadabad.(largest city in the Kunar Province)

The Intercontinental Hotel you posted above was still there in 2018 and had been restored. I was sitting in an office with a 2 star general watching random live video feed when it was attacked in January of that year. Here is the video of that attack:

Afghan hotel attack: 18 dead as gunmen open fire inside Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel

A great friend of the family grew up in Lahore, missionaries. Spoke fluent Urdu and Pathan or rather Pashtun. He was caught in Kabul when the Russians invaded. A resourceful individual donned the attire including the chitrali hat then walked and bussed himself through the Kyber pass to Peshawar, Pakistan.

Side note about him was he set up a tiger hunting reserve in southern Nepal. Tigers were a huge problem then. Guaranteed a tiger, of course this was the early 60's

To be fair, there was a war with the Soviets, and then a civil war inbetween when those two pictures were taken. The Soviets were supposedly pretty brutal and destructive.

My dad had a layover flight there once in the 70's I believe, definitely before the Soviet invasion. Had nothing but nice things to say. Enjoyed the food, the people, the hospitality, etc.

Rabid Cougar said:

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Afghanistan in the 60's

This showed up on Forum 16. I saw these and other photos 10 years ago of how life was in Afghanistan , or should I say Kabul, back in the monarchy period. I dare say that the villages in the Kunar Valley where I was running around ever looked like this.

However, you would be hard pressed to say if this was 1962 or 2011 Asadabad.(largest city in the Kunar Province)

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That was my thread. While the stan has long been a backward place, there are 3 things obviously missing even from that pic; islamist flags and graffiti, ak's and rpg's.

The Islmamism started, in a small way, with the socialist aethist overthrow of the king in the 70s. State enforced godlessness didn't go over well in the countryside, leading to the insurgency, which caused the Soviet intervention when it looked like the insurgents were on the way to overthrowing their socialist clients.

When the U.S. got the Saudis to pony up a bunch of money to support the mujahadeen, that brought with it a whole lot more political Islam. A whole lot, if not the majority, of the madrassas in Pakistan that indoctrinate the fighters in Afghanistan, get their funding from Saudia Arabia and the Gulf states.

Then there's the Pakistani ISI, which supports it for it's own reasons.