When women lived FREE in Afghanistan: Pictures show how they were once able to study, wear skirts and mix freely with men - before civil war, invasion and the Taliban enslaved them

Photos by Mohammad Qayoumi show the free life Afghan women enjoyed

Kabul-born Qayoumi went on to become an engineering professor in the U.S

Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 was condemned for its oppression of women



Women in Afghanistan were brutally repressed under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001 – but a series of fascinating old photographs show how women there used to live freely.



The Taliban were condemned around the world for their treatment of women.



Under their rule they were forbidden to be educated, publicly beaten for showing disobedience and forced to wear burqas – a garment that covers the whole body, apart from the eyes.



Women browse in a Kabul record store Women in a biology class at Kabul University

However, Mohammad Humayon Qayoumi, who was born in Kabul in Afghanistan, and went on to become an engineering professor at San Jose State University, wrote a photo-essay book called Once Upon A Time in Afghanistan that documented how life before the Taliban used to be very different for women.

His photographs from the 1950s, 60s and 70s show how they used to be afforded university-level education, browse record shops in short skirts and study science.



Indeed a State Department report from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 2001 explains how women were given the vote in the 1920s, were granted equality in the Afghan constitution in the 1960s and by the early 1990s formed 70 per cent of school teachers, 50 per cent of government workers and in Kabul, 40 per cent of doctors.



This picture of Afghan women attending university in 1967 could have been taken anywhere in the Western world

Women nurses tend to babies in a hospital infant ward A laboratory at a Vaccine Research Center Afghan women being taught biology Kabul university students chat in-between classes

Mr Qayoumi said: ‘Remembering Afghanistan’s hopeful past only makes its present misery seem more tragic. But it is important to know that disorder, terrorism, and violence against schools that educate girls are not inevitable. I want to show Afghanistan’s youth of today how their parents and grandparents really lived.’



Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai recently endorsed a code of conduct that would prohibit many of the scenes shown in these photographs.



It states that women are not allowed to travel without a male guardian and must not mingle with strange men in public places such as schools, markets and offices.



Happier times: Afghan women taking part in a Scout scheme The modern transport of the day: Female bus passengers in Kabul Afghanis mingle freely in a cinema

Wife-beating is only prohibited if there is no 'Shariah-compliant reason', it said.



Mr Karzai insisted the document was in keeping with Islam and did not restrict women.



'It is the Shariah law of all Muslims and all Afghans,' he said.

Nurses arrive at the house of an elderly villager