On a recent trip to Afghanistan, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox drew fire for calling it “a broken 13th-century country.” The most common objection was not that he was wrong, but that he was overly blunt. He’s hardly the first Westerner to label Afghanistan as medieval. Former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince recently described the country as inhabited by “barbarians” with “a 1200 A.D. mentality.” Many assume that’s all Afghanistan has ever been — an ungovernable land where chaos is carved into the hills. Given the images people see on TV and the headlines written about Afghanistan over the past three decades of war, many conclude the country never made it out of the Middle Ages.
Click on the first image Capital City and then just click through. There is also a great shot of one of the Giant Buddha in the Shangri-La valley that the Taliban destroyed There are efforts underway to restore both.
There are pictures of Blue Mosque, or the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif. I was there in Sept. ’02 delivering supplies to the hospital which was damaged in the fighting. It’s also the city where the recent backlash over the burning of the Koran took place and 11 UN workers were brutally murdered.
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Back in the before time
A photo essay of what once was.
Images of Afghanistan in 1976-78
Click on the first image Capital City and then just click through. There is also a great shot of one of the Giant Buddha in the Shangri-La valley that the Taliban destroyed There are efforts underway to restore both.
There are pictures of Blue Mosque, or the Shrine of Hazrat Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif. I was there in Sept. ’02 delivering supplies to the hospital which was damaged in the fighting. It’s also the city where the recent backlash over the burning of the Koran took place and 11 UN workers were brutally murdered.