A friend of mine told me that some decades ago(maybe in the 60s or 70s), Afghanistan was a well known cultural center worldwide. You know, full of museums and stuff.
I find that a little hard to believe, since this country has seen a few too many wars in its recent history.
What is the straight dope on that?
Didn’t Alexander the Great reach Afghanistan? If so, wouldn’t that make Afghanistan (and most of Central Asia) worthy of further study?
Afghanistan was a better place before the Soviets invaded:
Your friend is wrong. At least in terms of museums, if not in terms of ‘stuff’.
There are certainly a lot of things to find of historical/archaeological and even architectural interest, as Afghanistan was at a crossroads in Asia and at least a few significant states based themselves there or close nearby. Also, as with most places, there is plenty of interesting local cultural flavor.
But Afghanistan has been among the most medieval countries around since shortly after its inception, once the wealthier and more sophisticated eastern conquests ( the Punjab, Kashmir ) were shorn away in the late18th/19th century. Weak central government ( quasi-feudal in nature ), very strong tribal elements, a woeful economy and geographic isolation meant that it was in no position to be a world leader in the arts or just about any other endeavor outside of perhaps bloodfeuds.
What halting and feeble progress it was making towards modenization ended pretty abruptly with the outbreak of civil war and the Soviet intervention.
*It is hard to image that life in Afghanistan in the 1960’s, particularly inside Kabul, was not all that different from the Europe or North America of the same time. *
It is hard to imagine there was much truth to this outside of Kabul, either. I think the above is a bit of a rose-colored glasses syndrome. While things are much, much worse than they were, even then Afghanistan was a hundred miles behind neighboring Pakistan in almost every respect.