<i>Keep in mind, when looking at these images, that the average life expectancy for Afghans born in 1960 was 31, so the vast majority of those pictured have likely passed on since.</i><p>Average life expectancy doesn't really work like that. Your life expectancy even in a "primitive" culture has always been 60 years or so, give or take a dozen, <i>once you survive childhood</i>. It's the massive infant and child mortality - the norm everywhere before the 20th century - that drags down average life expectancies <i>at birth</i>.
It's amazing how much a country can regress due to bullshit pulled by major powers. While I know that "why can't we all get along" is a tired trope, it disappoints me that we can't avoid completely halting a nation's progress for 60 years almost.<p>Like when you hear how India was on track to become a major industrialized nation until the British decided to turn it into the world's biggest piece of farmland.
Some context here: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/09/kabul_city_number_one.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/09/kabul_city_num...</a><p>Great series of blog posts by Adam Curtis on Kabul over the last 50 years. One of his main ideas is that the war on terror is a sort of accidental continuation of the Cold War. The huge leftover infrastructure, bureaucracies and culture needed to do something, so lacking a real enemy, it invented one.<p>If you buy that at all then Afghanistan is really interesting because it was a major conflict in the Cold War, and also (obviously) the war on terror. So current foreign policies and attitudes towards Afghanistan often mirror those of the Cold War in a strange and dissonant way.<p>Lots of great BBC archive footage in there too. Hopefully it's viewable outside the uk.
I just returned. The contrast in culture is striking - flying overhead in a sophisticated aircraft watching farmers till land by hand outside mud huts in remote villages - living life as they have for a millennium. Afghans are resilient - Nato will leave, the war will fade, and they will choose their destiny.
It's really sad to see how effective they have been in ruining this society.<p>More like this:
<a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a_time_in_afghanistan" rel="nofollow">http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a...</a>
The sad thing is: this is almost analogue to Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, etc, the list goes on an on...<p>I wonder when (and if) the middle east will become again what it used to be.
> Keep in mind, when looking at these images, that the average life expectancy for Afghans born in 1960 was 31, so the vast majority of those pictured have likely passed on since.<p>... lies, damned lies and statistics. Why do people keep on using the mean for lifespan, when so many interpret it the wrong way?