Things do change.

[rug]

[merrily]

1. And to think, all it took was was the Cold War.

[DreamGypsy]

2. Sometimes for the better ....

1972: Kabul, Afghanistan, before the Taliban



...sometimes for the worse:

[link:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/world/asia/suicide-bomber-attacks-car-of-afghan-womens-leader-3-killed.html|
NOV. 16, 2014 Kabul Attack Intended for Lawmaker Kills 3

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber attacked an armored car carrying a prominent Afghan women’s rights leader and member of Parliament in Kabul on Sunday morning, killing three people and wounding 32 others, Afghan officials said.

The lawmaker who was apparently the target of the attack, Shukria Barakzai, survived the blast, which occurred several hundred feet away from the Parliament building, her destination at the time.

Ms. Barakzai, 42, had once helped run underground schools for girls during the Taliban era. She quickly emerged as a public figure in Afghanistan not long after the American-led coalition toppled the Taliban government.

A member of the assembly that approved Afghanistan’s Constitution in early 2004, she was elected to Parliament the following year and re-elected in 2010.

Two male passers-by and a female university student were killed, said the spokesman for the Kabul police, Hashmatullah Stanikzai.

Video footage posted online by an Afghan television station showed Ms. Barakzai emerging from the back seat of her armored vehicle after the blast and walking away unaided. She was taken to the hospital used by the nation’s intelligence service. A member of Parliament who visited Ms. Barakzai at the hospital, Hillai Ershad, said her colleague had suffered burns to her face and hand. She was expected to be discharged shortly, the authorities said Sunday night.

“I survived because of my people’s prayers,” Ms. Barakzai told Reuters in a telephone interview on Sunday.