Afghanistan has always been a land at the crossroads of history.Its rugged mountains and hidden valleys have been fought over for centuries, by a succession of foreign powers keen to control this vital gateway to Central Asia.1000 years ago it was at the heart of the Silk Route, a prosperous and cosmopolitan place where caravans brought trade along a road which linked Europe to China.As the task of rebuilding this shattered nation begins, it is a good time to ask : what kind of society flourished here before it was plunged into war 22 years ago? Film footage from the 1970s paints a very different picture of Afghanistan to the one we have become accustomed to.It was a time when Kabul was famed as an exotic stop off point on the hippy trail between Europe and India.
Caption Dr Javid Chancellor Kabul University (1970-): That was a golden period for the Afghans because in that ten years everything was flourishing.
Professor Ahmed Javid was Chancellor of Kabul University at the time.
Dr Javid: Afghanistan was, from the tourist point of view, a kind of paradise….you could come across different cultures of different ages.There was a chance to see a life, a culture which just resembled 2000 years back and also you could come across a very modern society, modern family life, living like Europeans. Cheap hotels…..where everybody used to turn their house into hotels….mostly they were full up of the young ones…the hippies… they felt very free in that country, they could smoke hashish, it was not forbidden. I’m sure at that time you would not have found any Afghan who wanted asylum anywhere in the world.To be an asylum seeker was a (kind of) shame.
Since the 1980s, literally millions of Afghans have fled their homeland. There are 40,000 living in London alone.
Farah Hawaad is one of them. She is a journalist who left Kabul in 1994 and has been living in Britain ever since.
Farah Hawaad, Journalist: Afghanistan was the first asian country that had women in parliament, had senators….so women were progressing, going onto higher education, even abroad.I think that was the best time for women.
Tolerance has been a hallmark for much of Afghan history. The great Buddha statues at Bamiyan, the largest in the world until the Taliban blew them up, reflected the 1000 year period when Afghanistan was a Buddhist country.For centuries different religious and ethnic groups had lived side by side in relative harmony. In the 1970s that was still so. But new pressures from the outside world were beginning to divide and darken the landscape.
Even during this so-called golden era, there remained a serious divide between rich and poor, while ethnic divisions lingered beneath the surface.
Donald Barton, Director British Council in Afghanistan (1977-79): Of course there were some tensions, legitimate criticisms of government as it was at the time….. because it was very authoritarian, but the social atmosphere was very open and friendly.
King Zahid Shah, seen here with President John F Kennedy in the United States, would soon find himself drawn into the cold war struggle between the US and communism. A new Great Game was underway.But beyond the pomp and ceremony the King’s reforms did not go far enough for many villagers still living in poverty.
Barton: There was a great deal of support for the reforms that (king) Zahid Shah had introduced, but by the end of the decade they had ground to a halt or lost their impetus.
Some Afghans, believe that it was the king’s failure to speed up reform which led to some sympathy for the Afghan communist party, long before the Soviet invasion.The Charge D’Affairs at the Afghan embassy in London, who is brother of assassinated Commander Ahmed Shah Masood believes the king had lost touch with his people.
Ahmad Wali Masoud, Chargé d’Affaires Afghan Embassy (London): Because the king was seen as the shadow of God and people had to obey the king, but for many people they were socially so down and were deprived of their rights….even if they wanted to seek social justice they could not achieve it because people didn’t want to be seen as rebelling against the king, against the shadow of God. There was some kind of caste system in Afghanistan… which deprived people of their rights, social rights, economic rights, political rights, they were deprived.
It would be fertile ground for the Soviets who for much of the 1970s provided aid and infrastructure while quietly infiltrating Afghan society.
Dr Javid: Even in the time of the king there was a communist party, called the Parcham…they were there. But they didn’t say they were real communists.
As communist armies begun sweeping into power in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia, so too was Afghanistan being drawn ever deeper into the cold war of the late 1970s.
Soviet Propaganda v/o: Democratic land and water reforms are carried out with the participation of proud masses of peasants. More than 350,000 peasant families have received over 689,000 hectares of land during the post revolutionary period.
Dr Javid: so they never talked about their communism but when the invasion took place, so everything changed.
When the communist revolution took hold in 1978, followed by the Soviet invasion a year later, it would polarise society and create a social revolution of sorts.
Hawaad: They claimed that women had equal rights and they should be given an opportunity to demonstrate their real potential. Nevertheless, the fall of women began when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
Propaganda: But despite the savage and inhumane crime being committed by the enemy, the people are heroically taking part in the renovation of their homeland and defend their revolutionary achievements.
Hawaad: They used women as their revolutionary tools for their propaganda and also the opposition used women for their propaganda, so women became the victims of the government and also the opposition.
It is a matter of historical record that the CIA and other western powers supported the mujaheedin resistence to the Soviet occupation.The US backed ten year war would claim more than a million lives.
By the end of the 1980s the Soviet occupation, like so many invaders before them had become untenable.The Soviet army withdrew in 1989 leaving a client government in place under President Najibullah.He would not last long, hung in the streets by victorious mujaheedein in 1992 as they descended on Kabul, sweeping away the last vestiges of the Russian backed government.
But like the traditional Afghan sport of dog fighting, the various mujaheideen fighters then set upon each other, this time according to ethnic divisions; Tajik, Uzbek, Hazzara and Pashtoon.Then in 1994 The Pashtoon dominated Taliban came to power, establishing what they called “the purest Islamic state on earth”.There has even been accusations that the US helped create and support the Taliban from the very beginning.
Masood: The Unicol of America they wanted to have gas and oil from Central Asia to go through Afghanistan to Pakistan. That was their aim. That’s why they participated enormously in creating and promoting the Taliban.
Hawaad: In Afghanistan, women have no rights’, so I say you took this right from us and again you’re killing us. We blamed, at first Soviet Union, the communist regime, then America. We blame America.They put us in hell.
Centuries of foreign interference have made the Afghans suspicious of foreign intentions.Like the Bushkazi horsemen who play their version of polo with a dead sheep or even the severed heads of their enemy instead of a hockey ball, the Afghans are not squeamish when it comes to battling their opponents.
They have been forged as a people by defending a land that many have tried to conquer, since the time of Alexander the Great.All have failed.Today, Afghanistan is once again the battleground for the great powers and the Afghans remain uncertain hosts.
Barton: There isn’t a race of Afghans, there is a nation of Afghans…only when it is under attack from outsiders and when this happens there is a closing of ranks and a tendency towards extremism.
I think the most that outsiders might do is to facilitate - what they shouldn’t do is meddle.
Nobody is suggesting that Afghanistan returns to the society it once was. But there are clues there – and warnings - for the international community seeking a return to a tolerant, broad based society. Uniting the Afghan people again without imposing a solution will be a great challenge. After decades of war, poverty and religious fundamentalism, Afghans are hopeful that a new era of peace might begin in this ancient and troubled land.
Caption Dr Javid Chancellor Kabul University (1970-): That was a golden period for the Afghans because in that ten years everything was flourishing.
Professor Ahmed Javid was Chancellor of Kabul University at the time.
Dr Javid: Afghanistan was, from the tourist point of view, a kind of paradise….you could come across different cultures of different ages.There was a chance to see a life, a culture which just resembled 2000 years back and also you could come across a very modern society, modern family life, living like Europeans. Cheap hotels…..where everybody used to turn their house into hotels….mostly they were full up of the young ones…the hippies… they felt very free in that country, they could smoke hashish, it was not forbidden. I’m sure at that time you would not have found any Afghan who wanted asylum anywhere in the world.To be an asylum seeker was a (kind of) shame.
Since the 1980s, literally millions of Afghans have fled their homeland. There are 40,000 living in London alone.
Farah Hawaad is one of them. She is a journalist who left Kabul in 1994 and has been living in Britain ever since.
Farah Hawaad, Journalist: Afghanistan was the first asian country that had women in parliament, had senators….so women were progressing, going onto higher education, even abroad.I think that was the best time for women.
Tolerance has been a hallmark for much of Afghan history. The great Buddha statues at Bamiyan, the largest in the world until the Taliban blew them up, reflected the 1000 year period when Afghanistan was a Buddhist country.For centuries different religious and ethnic groups had lived side by side in relative harmony. In the 1970s that was still so. But new pressures from the outside world were beginning to divide and darken the landscape.
Even during this so-called golden era, there remained a serious divide between rich and poor, while ethnic divisions lingered beneath the surface.
Donald Barton, Director British Council in Afghanistan (1977-79): Of course there were some tensions, legitimate criticisms of government as it was at the time….. because it was very authoritarian, but the social atmosphere was very open and friendly.
King Zahid Shah, seen here with President John F Kennedy in the United States, would soon find himself drawn into the cold war struggle between the US and communism. A new Great Game was underway.But beyond the pomp and ceremony the King’s reforms did not go far enough for many villagers still living in poverty.
Barton: There was a great deal of support for the reforms that (king) Zahid Shah had introduced, but by the end of the decade they had ground to a halt or lost their impetus.
Some Afghans, believe that it was the king’s failure to speed up reform which led to some sympathy for the Afghan communist party, long before the Soviet invasion.The Charge D’Affairs at the Afghan embassy in London, who is brother of assassinated Commander Ahmed Shah Masood believes the king had lost touch with his people.
Ahmad Wali Masoud, Chargé d’Affaires Afghan Embassy (London): Because the king was seen as the shadow of God and people had to obey the king, but for many people they were socially so down and were deprived of their rights….even if they wanted to seek social justice they could not achieve it because people didn’t want to be seen as rebelling against the king, against the shadow of God. There was some kind of caste system in Afghanistan… which deprived people of their rights, social rights, economic rights, political rights, they were deprived.
It would be fertile ground for the Soviets who for much of the 1970s provided aid and infrastructure while quietly infiltrating Afghan society.
Dr Javid: Even in the time of the king there was a communist party, called the Parcham…they were there. But they didn’t say they were real communists.
As communist armies begun sweeping into power in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia, so too was Afghanistan being drawn ever deeper into the cold war of the late 1970s.
Soviet Propaganda v/o: Democratic land and water reforms are carried out with the participation of proud masses of peasants. More than 350,000 peasant families have received over 689,000 hectares of land during the post revolutionary period.
Dr Javid: so they never talked about their communism but when the invasion took place, so everything changed.
When the communist revolution took hold in 1978, followed by the Soviet invasion a year later, it would polarise society and create a social revolution of sorts.
Hawaad: They claimed that women had equal rights and they should be given an opportunity to demonstrate their real potential. Nevertheless, the fall of women began when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.
Propaganda: But despite the savage and inhumane crime being committed by the enemy, the people are heroically taking part in the renovation of their homeland and defend their revolutionary achievements.
Hawaad: They used women as their revolutionary tools for their propaganda and also the opposition used women for their propaganda, so women became the victims of the government and also the opposition.
It is a matter of historical record that the CIA and other western powers supported the mujaheedin resistence to the Soviet occupation.The US backed ten year war would claim more than a million lives.
By the end of the 1980s the Soviet occupation, like so many invaders before them had become untenable.The Soviet army withdrew in 1989 leaving a client government in place under President Najibullah.He would not last long, hung in the streets by victorious mujaheedein in 1992 as they descended on Kabul, sweeping away the last vestiges of the Russian backed government.
But like the traditional Afghan sport of dog fighting, the various mujaheideen fighters then set upon each other, this time according to ethnic divisions; Tajik, Uzbek, Hazzara and Pashtoon.Then in 1994 The Pashtoon dominated Taliban came to power, establishing what they called “the purest Islamic state on earth”.There has even been accusations that the US helped create and support the Taliban from the very beginning.
Masood: The Unicol of America they wanted to have gas and oil from Central Asia to go through Afghanistan to Pakistan. That was their aim. That’s why they participated enormously in creating and promoting the Taliban.
Hawaad: In Afghanistan, women have no rights’, so I say you took this right from us and again you’re killing us. We blamed, at first Soviet Union, the communist regime, then America. We blame America.They put us in hell.
Centuries of foreign interference have made the Afghans suspicious of foreign intentions.Like the Bushkazi horsemen who play their version of polo with a dead sheep or even the severed heads of their enemy instead of a hockey ball, the Afghans are not squeamish when it comes to battling their opponents.
They have been forged as a people by defending a land that many have tried to conquer, since the time of Alexander the Great.All have failed.Today, Afghanistan is once again the battleground for the great powers and the Afghans remain uncertain hosts.
Barton: There isn’t a race of Afghans, there is a nation of Afghans…only when it is under attack from outsiders and when this happens there is a closing of ranks and a tendency towards extremism.
I think the most that outsiders might do is to facilitate - what they shouldn’t do is meddle.
Nobody is suggesting that Afghanistan returns to the society it once was. But there are clues there – and warnings - for the international community seeking a return to a tolerant, broad based society. Uniting the Afghan people again without imposing a solution will be a great challenge. After decades of war, poverty and religious fundamentalism, Afghans are hopeful that a new era of peace might begin in this ancient and troubled land.