Women in Afghanistan were not always under house arrest and forbidden by law to leave their homes unchaperoned by a male relative. Once upon a time in pre-Taliban days Afghan women had access to professional careers, university-level education, shops selling non-traditional clothing, public transportation, and public spaces, all of which they happily navigated freely and without supervision.

According to a State Department report from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 2001:

Prior to the rise of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were protected under law and increasingly afforded rights in Afghan society. Women received the right to vote in the 1920s; and as early as the 1960s, the Afghan constitution provided for equality for women. There was a mood of tolerance and openness as the country began moving toward democracy. Women were making important contributions to national development. In 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan’s highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70% of schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women. Afghan women had been active in humanitarian relief organizations until the Taliban imposed severe restrictions on their ability to work. These professional women provide a pool of talent and expertise that will be needed in the reconstruction of post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Even under Hamid Karzai’s government, with the recently approved Code of Conduct for women, all of the women shown in these photographs, taken in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s, could still can be faulted with improper behavior, according to clerics and government officials. 

 
A record store in Kabul

 
A co-ed biology class at Kabul University

 
Afghan university students, 1967. Photo credit: Dr. Bill Podlich, Retronaut

 
Public transporation in Kabul

 
University students, early 1970s

 
Women working in one of the labs at the Vaccine Research Center

 
Mothers and children playing at a city park—without male chaperones

Queen Soraya reigned in Afghanistan with her husband King Amanullah Khan from 1919 to 1929. She would be slut-shamed or worse for wearing this dress in modern Afghanistan.

Compilation of vintage amateur footage of Afghanistan:

Via Retronaut and Zilla of the Resistance.

 
In this short, but riveting glimpse into the Taliban, Norwegian journalist Paul Refsdal goes behind the lines to film the insurgents from their point of view. This was broadcast on Australian television.

There is no question that the mujahideen are strong willed, relentless, and, in their absolute belief that Allah is on their side, seemingly fearless. Watching the Taliban perched on their mountaintops firing at Americans like targets in a fairground shooting gallery makes me wonder if this war will ever have an end. Too many mountains. Too many men willing to strike in the name of Allah. Too many men with nothing left to lose and, consequently, ruthless and deadly.

Some of the early shots in the video remind me of photos of Che and his guerrilla fighters in the Sierra Mastra Mountains: longhaired, bearded and fiercely determined.