Another experiment I’ll conduct on you, dear reader. Consider, if you will, the photos below. All were made in the 50s and 60s in a certain country that shall be unnamed. I would like you to take an educated guess where these are from.
First, we have some people window-shopping at a clothing/textile shop at night:
Next, a milk bottling textile plant:
Next, a biology class at the university:
Finally, a record store:
Ok, make your best educated guess about the country and scroll down.
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And the winner is…
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Afghanistan!
Indeed. Here is the full story on ForeignPolicy.com. It contains some vintage photos from an old book showcasing the country in the 50s and 60s. It’s an incredibly sad story because contrary to popular opinion, Afghanistan was a fairly decent country at the time with Western education, industry, arts, a growing economy, an improving health system, an internal vaccination program, the ability for women to enter most fields of public life and so on and so on.
When my mate Alan saw this he said the Taliban have a lot to answer for. Too right. But before that there was (as I just learned) a socialist revolution, followed by the US and the Soviets and the next 30 years of almost continuous war are, as we know it, history.
The other important thing is once again about stereotypes. The image of Afghanistan most of us invariably have is of wild-bearded mullahs throwing acid on the faces of schoolgirls for going to school and so on. It’s easy to imagine Afghanistan’s always been at war since if you’re under 31 or younger then for you it has. This is a myth that needs to be dispelled.
But the main point is about how our perceptions of, say, Afghanistan affect what actions we support. In the charity world, there is the concept of certain bits of advocacy as being dehumanising. Disaster portn, in a nutshell. Think of a stereotypical image of an “African” child skeletonised by malnutrition with flies on his/her face. It’s not just dehumanising in some abstract way — I have no sympathy for arguments that have to do with some vague mystical “human dignity” as divorced from actual harm. It can also have a very tangible effect — for instance reinforcing that “these people” aren’t worth helping. Or that it’s their fault since they’re suffering so much (the psychological literature is pretty clear that we often do this on a subconscious level to overcome our cognitive dissonance).
I think the stereotype of Afghanistan as primitive, backward anbd so on is likely to affect our attitudes towards it. If we can’t even conceive the possibility that it could be a decent place you’d want to (FSM-forbid) visit one day, then nothing will happen. And yet, look back at the photos…
5 comments ↓
Briliant. I reposted here.
I think you’ll find that the second photo is of a textile plant, not a milk bottling plant. The key is that the white “bottles” are differing diameters. Plus one wouldn’t put filled bottles horizontally on top of the machines – they’d be going down the assembly line.
Wow, amazing photos.
Right after the overthrow of the monarchy, I travelled through Afghanistan in 1976 — Herat, Kandahar, Kabul …. And again in 1980.
It looked nothing like those photos. Well, Kabul was very modern but the rest of the country is as it is depicted today. At least those are my impressions.
In fact, on that trip I said several time, “Looking at place now, makes you wonder why Alexander the Great would ever want to conquer it.”
Barry: thanks, fixed.
Sabio: the article itself spoke of most of this happening largely in Kabul, but there was apparently a sign that progress was beginning to filter out to the countryside — now even that seems gone. Historically, I believe there were actually times where people emigrated from India to Afghanistan as it was considered more civilised at the time.
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