8 ms·

Afghanistan in the 1950s and 60s

106 points by wsieroci 13y ago

Dewie 13y ago
> 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. ... lies, damned lies and statistics. Why do people keep on using the mean for lifespan, when so many interpret it the wrong way?
- antocv 13y ago
  I suspect there is a point or ideological agenda to the lie "People earlier in more 'primitive' cultures were lucky to live to see their 30th birthday", its the old "life was brutal without civilization and a state to keep you safe and well" which then suggests we should also be lucky today to have all this modernism and be thankful to have "progressed" so far as to live to 31.
  - derleth 13y ago
    > "life was brutal without civilization and a state to keep you safe and well" It was. Children died in infancy, which is why the life expectancy was so low. If that isn't brutal, you need to redefine the term.
- TeMPOraL 13y ago
  Somebody once told me something along the lines that using mean means that if you integrate it over time, you'll get actual population numbers. It might be a useful measure in that case, but it's definitely misleading in discussions like these. I do strongly believe we should stop using it.
- mikeash 13y ago
  People use it because they interpret it the wrong way.
Sharlin 13y ago
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. 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, once you survive childhood. It's the massive infant and child mortality - the norm everywhere before the 20th century - that drags down average life expectancies at birth.
- speeder 13y ago
  Cannot emphasis this more. Also dangerous professions tend to kill people a lot. When I mention the age that several famous romans died when they were not warriors, people act surprised (Cato the Elder for example died at 85, I forgot the names, but I even made once a list of senators that died past 90). Here in Brazil life expectancy is 73 years old, and for example the sole reason it is not much higher, is traffic accidents (it was calculated that if pedestrian crossings were strictly enforced for example, this would bump up our average life expectancy by 3 years!)
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Right. Looking at just average life expectancy makes differences in medical technology seem more dramatic than they are. In the U.S., average life expectancy at birth has increased from 50 to 76 in the last century (26 years). But remaining life expectancy at age 60 has increased only 7 years, from 14 more years to 21 more years. Most of the increase is the result of lower mortality among children, and lower mortality among young adults as the result of a shift from dangerous factory/mining jobs to service jobs.
- gadders 13y ago
  Is it possible to get these adjusted figures anywhere? EG average life-span excluding those that died before the age of (say) five for Romans, Medieval Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa now etc.
  - smsm42 13y ago
adamlj 13y ago
It's really sad to see how effective they have been in ruining this society. More like this: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a_time_in_afghanistan http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a...
- freehunter 13y ago
  Foreign influence didn't help, either. It wasn't all the fault of Afghanis.
anderspetersson 13y ago
As someone who served in Afghanistan last year, very interesting.
rtpg 13y ago
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. 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.
- OhHeyItsE 13y ago
  >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. That's quite a bomb you just threw there. Source?
- Tomis02 13y ago
  Let's not forget Iran in the 50s.
  - genwin 13y ago
    Yes, and especially that the US toppled its democracy to install a brutal dictator. The Iran hostage crisis was largely in response to that.
  - phaer 13y ago
    Iran is such a good example, it's not even funny. I crushes my heart every time i see or hear something about the living conditions and images of a possible future in Iran during the Mosaddegh government and compare it to the current situation.
- rayiner 13y ago
  > 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. Yeah, no.
  - CleanedStar 13y ago
    Yes. One must remember that pre-colonization India, say, the Mughal empire, included not only India, but modern Pakistan and Bangladesh of course. Not a central point, but an important one. In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith goes on about "the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies". Acts of Parliament in 1700 and 1720 forbid import of fabric from India. Later on, England began forcing English textiles in India itself with various laws. England purposefully destroyed the thriving textile market of India (again India being India/Pakistan/Bangladesh in the time before and during the British occupation).
jread 13y ago
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.
- barry-cotter 13y ago
  the war will fade Afghanistan is now and has ever been a war zone. Why would that change just because the Americans declared victory and went home?
  - jread 13y ago
    I'm not arguing there will be peace - I'm referring to the Nato war, and I don't think anyone familiar believes it is ending in victory.
- cstavish 13y ago
  I didn't realize Thomas Friedman was on HN.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    You realize your comments adds absolutely nothing to the discussion, right? To respond to the OP: >>Nato will leave, the war will fade, and they will choose their destiny. I'm not sure if NATO will leave in the foreseeable future. Even if they withdraw troops, their presence will always be felt in the region.
gautamsomani 13y ago
Looks so peaceful then .... I wish it goes back to then.
chrisdevereux 13y ago
Some context here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/09/kabul_city_number_one.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/09/kabul_city_num... 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. 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. Lots of great BBC archive footage in there too. Hopefully it's viewable outside the uk.
- teh_klev 13y ago
  I love Adam Curtis's work and that is a great series on Kabul. Sadly a lot of that footage isn't viewable outside the UK. It's a shame he's not permitted to publish those videos on YouTube or Vimeo.
DrinkWater 13y ago
The sad thing is: this is almost analogue to Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, etc, the list goes on an on... I wonder when (and if) the middle east will become again what it used to be.
- beat 13y ago
  When the oil runs out, so they no longer have influence over the rest of the world, and the rest of the world has no interest in them. Afghanistan may not directly have oil, but it plays into other things. It's a symbolic point for both the Muslim world and the outside world. Militancy is funded by Saudi oil money. Invasions are funded by the US (and previously, by the Soviets). Pouring billions of dollars of outside money into resource/cultural wars in otherwise poor and isolated nations turns them into nightmares. Afghanistan is just another tumor in this cancer.
codegeek 13y ago
This reminds of the book The Kite Runner. It describes a very different Afghanistan in the 70s before the Soviet intervention.

106 points by wsieroci 13y ago

Dewie 13y ago

> 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. ... lies, damned lies and statistics. Why do people keep on using the mean for lifespan, when so many interpret it the wrong way?

antocv 13y ago
I suspect there is a point or ideological agenda to the lie "People earlier in more 'primitive' cultures were lucky to live to see their 30th birthday", its the old "life was brutal without civilization and a state to keep you safe and well" which then suggests we should also be lucky today to have all this modernism and be thankful to have "progressed" so far as to live to 31.
- derleth 13y ago
  > "life was brutal without civilization and a state to keep you safe and well" It was. Children died in infancy, which is why the life expectancy was so low. If that isn't brutal, you need to redefine the term.
TeMPOraL 13y ago
Somebody once told me something along the lines that using mean means that if you integrate it over time, you'll get actual population numbers. It might be a useful measure in that case, but it's definitely misleading in discussions like these. I do strongly believe we should stop using it.
mikeash 13y ago
People use it because they interpret it the wrong way.

Sharlin 13y ago

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. 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, once you survive childhood. It's the massive infant and child mortality - the norm everywhere before the 20th century - that drags down average life expectancies at birth.

speeder 13y ago
Cannot emphasis this more. Also dangerous professions tend to kill people a lot. When I mention the age that several famous romans died when they were not warriors, people act surprised (Cato the Elder for example died at 85, I forgot the names, but I even made once a list of senators that died past 90). Here in Brazil life expectancy is 73 years old, and for example the sole reason it is not much higher, is traffic accidents (it was calculated that if pedestrian crossings were strictly enforced for example, this would bump up our average life expectancy by 3 years!)
- rayiner 13y ago
  Right. Looking at just average life expectancy makes differences in medical technology seem more dramatic than they are. In the U.S., average life expectancy at birth has increased from 50 to 76 in the last century (26 years). But remaining life expectancy at age 60 has increased only 7 years, from 14 more years to 21 more years. Most of the increase is the result of lower mortality among children, and lower mortality among young adults as the result of a shift from dangerous factory/mining jobs to service jobs.
gadders 13y ago
Is it possible to get these adjusted figures anywhere? EG average life-span excluding those that died before the age of (say) five for Romans, Medieval Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa now etc.
- smsm42 13y ago

adamlj 13y ago

It's really sad to see how effective they have been in ruining this society. More like this: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a_time_in_afghanistan http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/27/once_upon_a...

freehunter 13y ago
Foreign influence didn't help, either. It wasn't all the fault of Afghanis.

anderspetersson 13y ago

As someone who served in Afghanistan last year, very interesting.

rtpg 13y ago

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. 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.

OhHeyItsE 13y ago
>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. That's quite a bomb you just threw there. Source?
Tomis02 13y ago
Let's not forget Iran in the 50s.
- genwin 13y ago
  Yes, and especially that the US toppled its democracy to install a brutal dictator. The Iran hostage crisis was largely in response to that.
- phaer 13y ago
  Iran is such a good example, it's not even funny. I crushes my heart every time i see or hear something about the living conditions and images of a possible future in Iran during the Mosaddegh government and compare it to the current situation.
rayiner 13y ago
> 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. Yeah, no.
- CleanedStar 13y ago
  Yes. One must remember that pre-colonization India, say, the Mughal empire, included not only India, but modern Pakistan and Bangladesh of course. Not a central point, but an important one. In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith goes on about "the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies". Acts of Parliament in 1700 and 1720 forbid import of fabric from India. Later on, England began forcing English textiles in India itself with various laws. England purposefully destroyed the thriving textile market of India (again India being India/Pakistan/Bangladesh in the time before and during the British occupation).

jread 13y ago

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.

barry-cotter 13y ago
the war will fade Afghanistan is now and has ever been a war zone. Why would that change just because the Americans declared victory and went home?
- jread 13y ago
  I'm not arguing there will be peace - I'm referring to the Nato war, and I don't think anyone familiar believes it is ending in victory.
cstavish 13y ago
I didn't realize Thomas Friedman was on HN.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  You realize your comments adds absolutely nothing to the discussion, right? To respond to the OP: >>Nato will leave, the war will fade, and they will choose their destiny. I'm not sure if NATO will leave in the foreseeable future. Even if they withdraw troops, their presence will always be felt in the region.

gautamsomani 13y ago

Looks so peaceful then .... I wish it goes back to then.

chrisdevereux 13y ago

Some context here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/09/kabul_city_number_one.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/09/kabul_city_num... 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. 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. Lots of great BBC archive footage in there too. Hopefully it's viewable outside the uk.

teh_klev 13y ago
I love Adam Curtis's work and that is a great series on Kabul. Sadly a lot of that footage isn't viewable outside the UK. It's a shame he's not permitted to publish those videos on YouTube or Vimeo.

DrinkWater 13y ago

The sad thing is: this is almost analogue to Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, etc, the list goes on an on... I wonder when (and if) the middle east will become again what it used to be.

beat 13y ago
When the oil runs out, so they no longer have influence over the rest of the world, and the rest of the world has no interest in them. Afghanistan may not directly have oil, but it plays into other things. It's a symbolic point for both the Muslim world and the outside world. Militancy is funded by Saudi oil money. Invasions are funded by the US (and previously, by the Soviets). Pouring billions of dollars of outside money into resource/cultural wars in otherwise poor and isolated nations turns them into nightmares. Afghanistan is just another tumor in this cancer.

codegeek 13y ago

This reminds of the book The Kite Runner. It describes a very different Afghanistan in the 70s before the Soviet intervention.