propaganda. Peace is not wanted, it cuts the bottom line profits way too much. War is a racket and it's big $$$$$ to those on the take. Just a small look at the US defense budget verifies that ...

when the extremists take over.

I think the reason for the OP is that invasions by both the Russians and the US are the MAIN cause for Afghanistan's being 'bombed into the Stone Age.'

...made official by the Taliban artillery-blasting the Buddha statues in Bamiyan, 2001.

When I look at the photos, what I see are women with their faces uncovered, smiling.

Their current status as animals is all due to extremists.

Then declares war on them in an attempt to get their resources. There's always that.

And your explanation is spot on. The Taliban is the dreaded reason, supposedly, that we are there now, but too many people forget that it was our government officials (Poppy Bush, for one) who created the Taliban.

The collapse will come, slowly, grindingly, crushingly, methodically, and will sweep up the populace in its tyranny of surveillance state paradigms, an utter stripping of most productive wealth and resources from 99% of the people, and an utter loss of power to resist this fall in any meaningful way.

Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant

They (Rome) make a desert, and call it peace

Calgacus' Speech to his Troops - A.D. 85

what happens when religious fundamentalists take control of government. It dates back to the "Dark Ages," another time in history when religion ruled.
See, America? See what happened here? This can happen in America so easily. American extremists and fanatics are well armed and very dangerous. They are preparing for war against our "secular" government.
The revered second amendment pales in comparison to the first, which forbids the establishment of religion in government, and that's ignored daily.

A lot of real nutcases were released from all over the Middle East. They emptied their prisons and sent them over there with the fondest hope that they would become martyrs. Instead, they used the fact that they had been tortured by the various regimes as a badge of honor.

but there's no doubting the effect of religious fanatics on the country.

There are actually members of the clergy who would like nothing better than to ordain a King who would impose religious doctrine enforced by the police. Just like they do in Saudi Arabia.

so many choices! Who to lock up first?

....then they go after whites who have a problem with getting rid of the non-whites.

too many Americans are sooo damn gullible and naive. And then they go vote. Around here I now see signs in yards saying "Respect Religious Freedom." Like WTF, do they want crosses burned on our foreheads too. The American Taliban is alive and well and far too many Americans do not get WTF is going on.

They live in Texas. Religion is TAUGHT in public schools in Texas as the "intelligent design theory" answer to evolution ("theory".)

and in our science classes religion/God wasn't mentioned at ALL. Not even "God set evolution in motion" or such. That's how it should be (and of course in public schools, religion shouldn't be taught at all).

They were all taught real science, just like I was. Also had a couple of friends in Yeshiva who were taught real science. In college in DC, I knew students at Georgetown whose science classes were like mine.
Much of this has changed with the fundamental Christians. Liberty U, Oral Roberts U, and the like are religious scams. Michelle Bachmann a proud grad of Liberty!

The priest who was teaching my religion class in junior year (iirc) actually took a bible and threw it on the floor. He said "The physical object doesn't mean anything; it's the words and message inside that matter" (I think the context was a news story about desecrating the Bible... or something similar).

Several of the priests and deacons who taught freely talked about their belief that women should be allowed to be priests. One of my teachers even said he was all for marriage equality during class.

He agreed with Roe v Wade decision. Lost track of him, but I'm sure he's no longer a priest.
As far as religious schools go, I think (my opinion only) Catholic and Hebrew schools have too much respect for education to not teach real science. They were there for the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment and value a real education. The hierarchy of the church is highly educated.
But for the fundamental Christian, "it's my way or the hi way, and my way is the Bible and it means what I say it means, and he who believes in me, oops, Jesus..." well, you know the rest. Jesus plus nothing.

I'm not one myself, but I understand where they are coming from.

until it became Ground Zero in the Lebanese Civil War.

Thank you, thank you for sharing.

over the last 40 years?

Just hard to see against the sky until you blow the photo up a bit.

and lost in the haze with low-contrast 1967 color film.

It's all in how you look at it. Sure, if you're an Afghani it's not so good, but the same could be said for West Virginians who are NOT mountain top mine owners.

it should be easier to dig up all the "rare earths", if you can figure out a cost-effective way to separate the ore from the gore.

Most likely we'll be as welcome as herpes in Afghanistan after we withdraw our occupation forces. Just like Iraq. So it'll be China who benefits.

are, in fact being dug up. There is a site (I can't remember the name) that is right in the middle of a centuries old important archaeological site. The scientists are working like crazy to rescue as much as they can!

now that we have forced a little freedom and democracy on them?

its amazing.

to KEEP it that way. REMEMBER - the CIA installed Saddam as leader and he KEPT A LID ON IT. You remember, don't you?

Who in the WORLD would blow up beautiful cultural spaces or icons in Afghanistan? You remember, don't you?

Perhaps it is time to post pictures with more like a timeline with CAPTIONS giving an idea of what who when?

I have a friend who was an embassy brat. That was back when the us gov. sent the embassy employee families over on the SS United States - that sort of thing. Guy's got stories, but I hardly ever go visit him as he is a drunk and a vapid tea partier.

They still have this old website up - http://www.afghan-web.com/

Lots of things there that aren't there anymore, lots of things to be nothing but sad about...

without being accosted on the street by the religious police and flogged or stoned to death?

I hope that one day Islamic fundamentalism will cease to exist and that these countries can become modern democracies.

--got his start throwing acid in the faces of women like that in the 70s.

Pictures of Iran not the place you would think

Is a good watch. They hate us so much that their road signs are in English and Farsi. Just watch and see how much they hate us. Some of the mosques are beautiful.

Was the Taliban just always there?

The pictures are great, but are the changes in Afghanistan due to the wars or were the wars due to internal changes in Afghanistan that preceded the wars?

the Cold War devastated Afghanistan, it's a horrendous crime of epic historical proportions.

You need to read the modern history of Afghanistan. Also the word Taliban is a western thing like Al Qaeda. Taliban means simply Student just like Al Qaeda simply means The List. The Taliban were actually Mujahideen, but the western powers don't like to admit that since we trained, equipped, and funded the people that they eventually called the Taliban. Just like Al Qaeda. Ironic isn't it, our proxy wars with the Soviets eventually bit us in our ass.

Not to mention the afghan vest to go with bell bottoms

translated to war on Afghanistan. I feel sorry for any country after WWII that America decided to keep safe for democracy, but leaving some countries to their own devices can result in disaster as well.
I can't even pretend to know enough to argue intelligently about this.

I think the religious fundamentalism is the problem. It was always there, but only emerges as the dominant political power when there's a vacuum, such as when the Soviets pulled out.

to rehabilitate western Europe and it worked amazingly well. Oh, what America can do when intelligent people are in charge. We do have the capability, but we also have Republicans. And, yes, I know Ike was a Republican, not the same thing as the current GOP.

European states enjoy higher standards of living, are much better educated, happier and healthier than we are.

Ironic.

But we make the finest weaponry money can buy. Shows where our national priorities are.

A lot of the strains we grow in Northern California are Afghani, so all the hash that winds up on your fingers and clippers during processing is pretty much the same dark gooey stuff I used to get in the 70s. Very potent indeed.

No. That part isn't included. Those were some amazing little bricks!

War = a racket = $$$$$ for the oppressors.

eom

I hope you sent it to him, though I'm not sure that would be safe.

I fear Bush would find it too entertaining.

STOP IT!

It's a shame what has happened over there.


(And for those who didn't know, ConsAreLiars, who had been TSed from DU for some unknown reason, did pass away last year.)

I do remember reading his / her posts on Afghanistan and seeing the pictures.

I'm sorry for your loss.

whom I came to know quite well through the photo group. He was one of my biggest boosters and mentors when I was first learning photography skills. I imagine that it was something he posted in the I/P forum that ruffled some feathers and got him banned.

He was a great guy.

courtesy an acquaintance whose family left when the Russians rolled in. He was a kid and the family was wealthy enough to own cameras. He said they all dreamed of going back to their home and their land but know nothing is left but rubble and mined fields.

These pics look like they were taken by Russian "tourists" right at the beginning of their occupation.

it must seem like a never-ending bad dream to watch the disintegration. Looking through family photo albums must be an incredibly painful experience.

http://www.businessinsider.com/astonishing-photos-of-prewar-afghanistan-show-everyday-life-in-peaceful-kabul-2013-2#-54

(I was unable to copy and paste the picture...)

Very sad.

I had no idea that Afghanistan had ever been so beautiful.

Afghanistan has been an ancient focal point of the Silk Road and human migration. Archaeologists have found evidence of human habitation from as far back as the Middle Paleolithic. Urban civilization may have begun in the area as early as 3,000 to 2,000 BCE.[10] Sitting at an important geostrategic location that connects the Middle East culture with Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent,[11] the land has been home to various peoples through the ages[12] and witnessed many military campaigns, notably by Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and in modern era Western forces.[10] The land also served as a source from which the Greco-Bactrians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Timurids, Mughals, Durranis, and others have risen to form major empires.[13]
The political history of the modern state of Afghanistan begins in 1709, when the Hotaki dynasty was established in Kandahar followed by Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise to power in 1747.[3][14][15] In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the "Great Game" between the British and Russian empires. Following the 1919 Anglo-Afghan War, King Amanullah began a European style modernization of the country but was stopped by the ultra-conservatives. During the Cold War, after the withdrawal of the British from neighboring India in 1947, the United States and the Soviet Union began spreading influences in Afghanistan,[16] which led to a bloody war between the US-backed mujahideen forces and the Soviet-backed Afghan government in which over a million Afghans lost their lives.[17][18] This was followed by the 1990s civil war, the rise and fall of the extremist Taliban government and the 2001–present war.[19] In December 2001, the United Nations Security Council authorized the creation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to help maintain security in Afghanistan and assist the Karzai administration.[20]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan


i have read that kabul, before the various invasions, was a wonderful city full of fountains and fruit trees. one can only wonder about what it might have been today without all of the multiple decades of western manipulations.

sad.

Amazing how the color has stood up to time.

ever since WWII, the US hawks have started unnecessary wars every chance they get. There is always loss of life and destruction. It's so sad for me as a "60's peacenik" who really hoped we could put resources into a better world instead of record budgets for weapons. We are not only the world's armory, but we have created a world that hates us - and rightly so.

I'd love to see a woman president, because I think it would be much more likely to get us out of this insane cycle of wars.

"Then years from now, people will have to come to face the fact that the Soviets, overall, we're more succesful in this utopian folly"...

He always was quite the prophet. He also predicted that I would witness people paying corporations for their own excrements. (We have lively debates about this prophecy.. I always argue that the advent of pro-biotic yoghurts validatesthe prophecy..)

Anyway, I wish the people of Afghanistan will get a fair deal somewhere along the line. Surely, it must be their turn too, once.

Afghanistan was a Soviet Satellite from the 1920s onward, just like it had been a Russian Satellite since the British Afghan Wars of the 1800s. Stalin did NOT think Afghanistan was ready for Communism so left the existing political system intact. Khrushchev followed a similar policy. Under Brezhnev Afghanistan became a sore spot in Communist theology, it was within the Soviet Sphere of influence but NOT a Communist state and that had to be change.

Part of the problem under Brezhnev was that the system became so corrupt that it was on the verge of collapsing (and eventually did) but the ideologues stepped in and said the problem was that communism had NOT been implemented enough and the Soviet Union needed to purify itself (Sounds like the GOP of today, except the theology is radical right wing economics not communism). Thus the King of Afghanistan had to be overthrown and replaced with a True Communist Government. This just turned most of the people off from what ever support they had given the Central Government and the situation deteriorated.

Lets remember Afghanistan before the overthrow of their King was more a Geographical expression then a real country. Some wags commented that Afghanistan was created by the British, for it became unfashionable for British Map Makers to mark any area of the globe "Tribal Areas".

When the Russian Empire took over most of what is now referred to as "The Former Soviet Central Asian States" in the late 1800s, even the Czar decided Afghanistan was better left as a buffer state between them and British India then as part of the Russian Empire. Joseph Stalin made the same decision in the 1920s when he drew up the present lines of the various states that made up the Soviet Union (and are now independent nations).

Thus from the late 1800s to the 1970s Afghanistan was a loyal Satellite of Russia and later the Soviet Union. At the same time Russia and later the Soviet Union left it alone.

In the 1970s, the internal conflict between the followers of Brezhnev (mostly tied in with the Military-Industrial Complex of the Soviet Union) and what remained of the True Communists. The True Communists wanted reduced military spending and a more open society (and lead by the KGB, which was a combination of what in the US is the FBI, CIA, and your State Police, Khrushchev was held in high respect by this crew and Gorbachev came out of this crew) and the people tied with with the Soviet Military-Industrial Complex. The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex to defeat the True Communists decided to make a big deal of non-communist elements in the Soviet Sphere of Influence and Afghanistan was the chief example of said non-Soviet communist state within the Soviet Sphere if Influence. Thus they insisted that the King do things to impose communism on Afghanistan, then overthrew the King and replaced him with a Communist Government, and when that Government failed to implement the entire plan, overthrew it and moved the Soviet Army into Afghanistan, all in the name of preserving and spreading Communism.

The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex thus provided an area of opportunity for the US to show its opposition to Communism after the US lost Vietnam. The US supported Pashtun tribesmen against the Afghan Government. The Pashtun have always been independent of what ever country claims to rule them, be it British India, Pakistan or Afghanistan. Unlike Iraq tribal tradition (with an elected Tribal head that everyone in the tribe must obey), the Pashtun tribal system is more like the Native North American tribal system, blood relatives who may or may not follow whoever is technically head of the tribe today. Given that the Pashtuns were on both sides of the border, it was thus easy to supply them with weapons and once they had weapons superiority over others (including other Pashtuns) move in to take over land and smuggling routes. Thus once the King of Afghanistan was removed and replaced it was easy to get the Pashtuns to attack and undermine the Government of Afghanistan, and thus force the Soviets to intervene to save the Communist Government of Afghanistan AND once the Soviet intervene to make the situation impossible for the Soviet to win, given 1/2 of the Pashtuns lived in Pakistan.

This was what the Russian Czars had avoided by NOT taking over Afghanistan and what Joseph Stalin avoided by keeping the King of Afghanistan. Notice it was driven by Communist ideology more then anything else. Worse, not by ideologues but by people using the ideology to further they own interest (in the case of the Soviet Military-Industrial Complex to keep money going into buying Military goods).

The cost of the intervention became to high, it took eight years, but the Soviet Union under Gorbachev did pull put, as Gorbachev tried to reduce the power of the Soviet Military-Industrial Complex. The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex revolted against this cut back, but the KGB and the men in the Russian Army refused to back them, and thus the Soviet Union Collapsed. The old Communist Party was dissolved, but it still gets about 1/3 of the vote in every elections (And some observers have remarked that if the elections in Russia where actually fair, they would have won the last two elections). The two groups that had been fighting broke up, the Soviet Military-Industrial Complex people and elements of the KGB formed Yeltsin Government and divided up the assets of the Soviet Union Among themselves. The old true Communist stayed with the party and continue to sell themselves as protectors of the various improvements the people of Russia had when the Soviet Union still existed (and thus why the Communist Party of Russia has been increasing in Strength since the 1990s).

As to Afghanistan, once the Soviet Union withdrew, so did American support and the country then went slowly into chaos, as the Government left by the Soviet Union slowly lost control to various fractions of the opposition. This was the situation in the 1990s, Afghanistan had ceased to exist, it was divided among various war lords who proceeded to exploit the people for they own benefit. Into this mess, Pakistan decided to support various religious elements of the Pashtun (Now called the Taliban) to unify the country. In this regard the Taliban were quite successful, slowing defeating each of the war lords by first undermining their support from among they own subjects, and then moving in. This was successful till they ran into areas with non-Pashtun population. These held out as independent of the rest of Afghanistan till the US intervention (Which permitted the war lords back in and with their reintroduction support for the Taliban increased).

Side note: The best leader of the Anti-Taliban forces was one of the few decent War Lords, he actually tried to accommodate everyone, but did not have enough military might to defeat the other warlords. As the Taliban defeated each of the other warlords, he retreated to the northern part of Afghanistan and was the leader of the opposition, when the Taliban killed him just before the US intervention (Until the threat of US intervention, the Taliban fought against his forces and tried to undermined his support from the people of the area he controlled, but did NOT make a determined effort to kill him. This changed with the possibility of US intervention, then they sent in an agent who blow himself AND this leader up).

More on the Northern Alliance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Alliance

The leader of the Northern Alliance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Shah_Massoud

As to the Taliban, they are creation of the Pakistan Secret Service, to develop Afghanistan as a place the Pakistani Army could retreat to, if they lose a war with India. Thus, the leaders were Islamic, they support was not. The same with the Soviet Intervention, it was in the name of Communism, but more to show that the intervenors were still true communists, and the people who opposed the intervention were not.

Just a background on Afghanistan and note Religion had little to do with the war except to unite the various groups against whoever was ruling Afghanistan (and to keep them united once the Taliban had united most of Afghanistan).