Tunisia becomes the first country of the Arab Spring to hold a general election. Photo: Gwenaël Piaser (Flickr)

While the world's eyes are fixed on violence in Egypt and Libya, the Arab Spring’s most important step yet will depend not on blood shed, but on votes cast.

Tunisia becomes the first country of the Arab Spring to hold general elections on Oct. 23. Voters will elect 217 members to a general assembly charged with drafting the country’s constitution over the next year. The voting will take place in a system of proportional representation, with parties providing a list of their candidates.

At least half of all listed candidates will be women, per the election’s rules. Though for Tunisia, this is not so surprising. 'Tunisia is considered one of the most liberal Arab countries, with high levels of female participation in public and political life,' according to BBC News.

There are three major political parties vying for votes. The most widely supported is Ennahda, an Islamist party that was banned under Tunisia’s former president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. The two other contending parties are both secular. Each party has said it'd be open to a power-sharing coalition, depending on the results of the election.

Tunisia’s economy is expected to see the highest growth rates out of any country affected by the Arab Spring, and that is due at least in part to peaceful politics. 'We expect activity to continue improving in the coming months particularly if the elections and the political transition thereafter take place in a smooth manner,' said Alia Moubayed, an economist at Barclays Capital who was quoted in Bloomberg Businessweek.

These elections represent the closest any of the Arab Spring countries have come to a full transition of power. As other countries continue to rise up against corrupt regimes, pay close attention on Sunday as 3.9 million Tunisians head to the polls. The fate of the Arab Spring may depend not on how revolutions are started and waged, but on whether they can culminate in new and stable regimes.

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Anger over food prices helped lead to Muammar el-Gadhafi's assassination Thursday. Photo: Thierry Ehrmann (flickr)

Muammar el-Gadhafi gave Libya's people plenty of reasons to hate him. But it may have taken climate change to do him in.

That's the interesting perspective of CSR Talkwire's Francesca Rheannon, who explained last March how, across the Arab world, climate change begat draught begat famine begat unrest:

The recent sharp rise in food prices was the spark to the flame fanned by decades of tyranny, beginning in Tunisia, spreading to Egypt and now roiling Bahrain, Algeria, Oman, Yemen and Libya. Libya imports fully 80 percent of its food; the other countries are also heavy food importers. … While other factors play a role, climate change has been the major driver behind higher food prices.

In May, a study in the journal Science estimated that climate change was responsible for a 3 percent drop in global wheat and corn output, enough to drive commodity prices up 20 percent from where they would otherwise have been, Reuters reported.

The cost of food was just one of many factors in Gadhafi's bloody assassination Thursday. But if the world's fossil fuel dependence continues to drive up global temperatures and food prices, the world's poorest won't be content to be the only victims of climate change. Starving people take governments and leaders down with them—sometimes through violence.

Gadhafi's many sins made his government especially vulnerable. But history may remember him as the canary in the climate-change coal mine.

Nothing builds prosperity better than peace. And sometimes, a new study finds, nothing builds peace better than a few healthy arguments.

As crises and conflicts ebb, international groups are looking to create sustainable peace in places where peace has been the exception of late. One tactic is the promotion of civil society through education and reform campaigns. But is it possible to educate the violence out of a society?

Consider Liberia, which is still vulnerable five years after a 14-year civil war. The UN, in tandem with the Liberian government, has initiated a campaign to resolve current conflicts and prevent future ones by educating citizens on civic cooperation. Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) monitored the results in a robust 22-month study and produced some promising findings.

The campaign was conducted in three of Liberia’s counties most scarred by war and sought to educate citizens on their rights and those of others, to promote collective problem solving, and to encourage non-violent conflict resolution. Citizens went through eight days of workshops and were then asked to teach what they had learned to others in the community.

Afterward, IPA measured the impact of attending the workshops. Little impact was found on political participation, civic knowledge, and awareness of human rights. The study did, however, find a striking impact on the prevalence of disputes and their resolution.

More disputes occurred after the campaign than before, as neighbors were more prone to confront each other over grievances and assert their rights, but overall violence decreased and the propensity to resolve conflicts grew.

The number of overall violent outbreaks and the small sample size call into question the statistical significance of the results, but IPA found that communities that had undergone treatment were 59 percent less likely than untreated communities to experience violent disputes.

Since peace and prosperity often go hand in hand, such civic education programs may come to show that how well we live is a function of how well we get along.

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

Fifteen-year-old Mayol Dau started a cell phone business, with help from Mercy Corps, to help his family buy food. Now he's also using the money to pay for school fees to further his studies. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

This has been reposted from the Mercy Corps blog.

Mayol Dau is 15 years old and is an entrepreneur in Aweng, Twic County. Twic County is a remote area of South Sudan that has no paved roads and very little infrastructure, but that has not slowed down the business instincts of this teenage boy.

During the civil war between north and south Sudan, he lived in the north for 11 years. He left his home in the south when he was too young to remember it. Mayol returned to Twic with his family in 2005, when the peace agreement was signed and the bloody civil war ended.

When they returned back to the south the situation was very difficult.

“We didn’t have a house and lived in a camp for returnees,” recalls Mayol. “We didn’t have enough to eat most days and there was no school when I first came.”

He started a business in 2006 to help his family get money to buy food. He does three things: credit card transfers over the phone, repair of mobile phones and recharging of mobile phone batteries. Mercy Corps assisted him in starting his business as part of its micro-enterprise program.

“Mercy Corps helped me with money to buy the locking cabinet for my phones and they provided a generator so I could charge the phones,” explains Mayol. “Now my business is good. I make 70 Sudanese pounds (about US$26) a day. I use the profit for food and to pay my school fees.”

Mayol’s cousin works at the shop while Mayol goes to school in the day. In the afternoon, Mayol works in the store until evening and then studies before going to bed.

He is filled with hope for the future, and plans on being a doctor when he is older.

Soldiers, the traditional actors in a war, patrol in remote Afghanistan. Not shown here are those that provide comforts on the U.S. bases nearby. Photo: The U.S. Army (flickr)

At the end of a movie, the credits run for cast and crew. At the end of a war, soldiers receive Purple Hearts and well-earned pensions. But when is the production crew of a war recognized?

Lacking in grandiosity, working at a McDonald's inside a U.S. military base isn’t going to win you any medals. And yet, you face the same mortar attacks, the same war zone threats, as soldiers.

In a recent article from The New Yorker, Sarah Stillman reveals the rampant deception involved in recruiting these laborers from the developing world and the slavery-like conditions that prevent them from returning home.

The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, eat at meagre chow halls… A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law.

In recent years, federal officials have been spurred into action. The Department of Defense (DoD) initiated an investigation in 2006 following several such grievances. According to the Pentagon-issued directive, FRAGO 06-188 [Trafficking in Persons], (pdf) which went into effect later that same year, “an inspection of contracting activities supporting DoD in Iraq revealed evidence of illegal confiscation of worker (Third Country National) passports by contractors/subcontractors; deceptive hiring practices and excessive recruiting fees, substandard worker living conditions at some sites, circumvention of Iraqi immigration procedures by contractors/subcontractors and lack of mandatory trafficking in persons awareness training.”

Based on a yearlong investigation, Stillman discloses that despite the directive against human trafficking and the Department of Defense's efforts to increase subcontractor accountability, poor workers are still being manipulated, swindled, and robbed.

A typical manpower agency charges applicants between two thousand and four thousand dollars, a small fortune in the countries where subcontractors recruit. To raise the money, workers may pawn heirlooms, sell their wedding rings or land or livestock, and take out high-interest loans... Many learned [upon arrival] that they were to earn as little as two hundred and seventy-five dollars a month as cooks and servers for U.S. soldiers—a fraction of what they’d been promised, and a tiny sliver of what U.S. taxpayers are billed for their labor.

Taking advantage of the least advantaged is despicable enough, but these workers not only lose money and freedom but sometimes their lives. Stillman writes that "for the first time in American history, private-contractor losses are now on a par with those of U.S. troops in both war zones [Iraq and Afghanistan], amounting to fifty-three per cent of reported fatalities in the first six months of 2010." Yes, that is more than half of the total fatalities—and, she notes, the true number is probably higher. The official number is based solely on what the private contracting companies report.

According to the Trafficking in Persons Report 2011, the United States is ranked in Tier 1. This means that the U.S. government has identified human trafficking as a problem and is implementing preventative and remedial laws and programs. After reading Stillman's article, you might question the United States' rating.

Modern conflict reaches all parts of society. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

For developing countries, war is rarely "good for business." War can destroy what few possessions and opportunities the poor have, trapping them in an endless cycle of violence and economic misery. That's the idea driving the World Bank's new effort to fight poverty through conflict reduction.

Violence is becoming the primary cause of poverty, The Economist reports, citing information from the World Development Report. World Bank officials are calling for an international effort to break what is now being called the "violence trap" for 1.5 billion people in perpetual penury, rnw.nl reports.

The Economist specifically describes the experience of two small African states, Burundi and Burkina Faso. Pre-1990, the two countries had similar rates of growth and income, but in 1993 a bloody decade-long civil war began in Burundi, killing 600,000. Peaceful Burkina Faso is now 2.5 times richer.

All 39 countries experiencing civil wars since 2000 went through a previous civil war in the preceding three decades, The Economist writes—indicating a pattern of repeated violence. And wars are only one example of violence. Far more countries suffer from exceptionally high murder rates, political turbulence, organized crime, and low-intensity conflicts. In Guatemala, for example, more people are murdered annually (mostly by gangs) than died in the country's 1980s civil war. These cycles of political and criminal violence wreak havoc on poverty-reduction strategies. Comparing stable peaceful countries to their opposites found the latter suffered from:

• 20 percent higher poverty rates
• Twice the malnourishment rate
• Twice the infant mortality rate
• Three times the probability of a child's being out of school
• Far higher rates of forced displacement (42 million annually)

In fact, no poor, violent country has achieved a single millennium development goal, The Economist noted.

Escaping the violence trap is difficult because the economic damage caused by conflict sows the seeds of further upheaval. The Global Peace Index showed that economic factors are at the heart of unrest. According to a World Bank survey, 40 percent of youths join gangs and rebel groups due to unemployment, only 10 percent due to beliefs.

So, what's the answer?

The World Bank is focusing on government stability, legitimacy and effectiveness to break the violence trap. This reflects the reality that, as Reuters wrote in May, interstate conflict is decreasing while adverse relations between people and their governments (and chronic crime) is rising.

"Conflict [and] security are not conventional topics for the World Bank and other international development institutions," chief World Bank economist Justin Lin said in April, according to Agence France-Presse. "However, conflict and security are closely related to development."

This has been reposted from the Mercy Corps blog.

On March 1, I entered Libya from Egypt with the Mercy Corps emergency response team. The situation at the border was chaotic. Thousands of foreign migrant workers were trying to cross into Egypt to escape the violence in Libya. Many of them were stranded in the no-man’s land area between the two countries, waiting for transportation and permission to enter Egypt.

The customs house, the duty free shop — literally every building at the border — had become temporary shelter for the thousands of people who were stuck there. More were camped out on the sidewalks and parking lots. Most of them had only the belongings they could carry by hand and very little money or resources to cope. Fortunately, the majority of the people were Egyptians and so they did not have to travel too far to reach home and the Egyptian government was assisting their people in getting back there.

Since the unrest and violence began in Libya there is the refugee crisis as the migrant foreign workers try to flee the violence. More 170,000 people have fled from Libya — thousands are still stuck in the border of Tunisia without adequate financial resources, shelter or food.

The situation on the Tunisia border, where Mercy Corps has another emergency team deployed for this ongoing regional crisis, is much worse than on the Egyptian side. The people fleeing into Tunisia are also largely Egyptian, but they have to get transportation on planes or boats to get home. The numbers are massive and they are forced to wait several days for transport. There are also reports that, as they come through Libya, they being harassed by pro-Gaddafi forces and some have been forced to pay bribes and give away the few possessions they brought as bribes to pass.

The United States and other governments have sent planes and boats to help the people evacuate, and the border situation has improved in the last day — but thousands are still waiting.

There is also concern if there is an increase in airstrikes and violence in the west of Libya that more people will try to cross the borders to escape. If this happens, the crisis could spiral out of control.

The situation here in Libya is changing by the minute as the opposition advances from the East and then is beaten back by Gaddafi forces, and then advances again. Airstrikes are ongoing and we are preparing for the worst, but hoping for a quick end to this terrible violence.

Some of the thousands stuck at the Salloum border between Libya and Egypt. The situation on the Tunisian border is much worse. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Electronic companies say it is impossible to trace the source of minerals used in products. But, a dealer in Eastern Congo shows minerals from a rebel-held mine and non-conflict minerals. Photo: Grassroots Group (flickr)

To cut costs, some U.S. companies source and assemble materials overseas, which can make it hard to track a complex global supply chain. It also means that a product designed by a U.S. company but manufactured in China could be considered a Chinese export. For example, take the iphone, designed by the California-based company, Apple. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on findings from researchers at the Asian Development Bank that estimate the iPhone contributed $1.8 billion to U.S. trade deficit with China last year because technically, the iPhone is a Chinese export.

The problem, according to the Asian Development Bank researchers, is that the trade imbalances are determined through an outdated measurement system that doesn't really work for today's globalized economy. "[T]raditional ways of measuring global trade produce the number but fail to reflect the complexities of global commerce where the design manufacturing and assembly of products often involve several countries," they explain to The Wall Street Journal. According to the current measurement system, American products manufactured overseas can be categorized as as U.S. import.

Going back to Apple's iPhone, The Wall Street Journal explains how the current system gives China full credit for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, even though Chinese labor only accounts for 3.6 percent, or $6.50, of the total $178.96 estimated wholesale cost. Even WTO director-general Pascal Lamy agrees that the concept of country of origin as a way to measure exports has become "obsolete," according to The Wall Street Journal. Lamy adds that using a value-added approach would be more appropriate for today's globalized economy.

Mr. Lamy said if trade statistics were adjusted to reflect the actual value contributed to a product by different countries, the size of the U.S. trade deficit with China—$226.88 billion, according to U.S. figures—would be cut in half...If China was credited with producing only its portion of the value of an iPhone, its exports to the U.S. for the same amount of iPhones would be a U.S. trade surplus of $48.1 million, after accounting for the parts U.S. firms contribute.

But, the lack of transparency and inability of U.S. companies to accurately track their supply chains, prohibits a value-added approach from being used. This can create real-world consequences, explains The Wall Street Journal article, because political battles are waged on the basis of these trade figures.

Ambiguous supply chains are exacerbating other hot-button topics like human rights and fair labor issues. Consider Coltan, or tantalum, which is a metal used for various consumer products. Around 80 percent of the world's known coltan deposits are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is deeply entangled in a violent civil war that has claimed over 4.5 million lives since 1998 and is the deadliest conflict since WWII, according to The Calgary Harold. Militias fight for control of a number of resources to sell and use the profits to continue the violence. And utter lack of a system to track where minerals are coming from is a problem. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said it's challenging and problematic to trace origins of minerals to determine which are conflict minerals. In an effort to help companies better understand where their materials come from, Apple and Research In Motion (maker of Blackberry) recently met to discuss a program to help identify conflict-free smelters. This dialog shows that there is some action on the part of industry, albeit slowly, writes the The Calgary Herald.

If companies and their suppliers were able to keep better track their complex global supply chains, trade experts like Pascal Lamy from the WTO would be better positioned to follow a value-added approach to calculate accurate trade statistics.

It seems that with the incredible amount of innovation and design going into technology, surely someone could come up with a viable system to track these very complex supply chains? Isn't there an App for that?

This has been reposted from The Mercy Corps Blog.

I wish that I were in Tahrir Square right now. After working in the Middle East for the past five years, I’d like to see and feel this historic moment myself. Our friend Nick Kristof of the New York Times is there. He reports that the usual hustle and bustle of traffic in the heart of Cairo has been replaced by throngs of exuberant protesters. The square, he says, “has lost its menace and suddenly become the most exhilarating place in the world.” While the street demonstrations across Egypt have drawn citizens from across generations, religions, political persuasions and socio-economic backgrounds, there is no doubt that much of the energy fueling recent events has been generated by the country’s burgeoning youth population.

Two-thirds of Egypt’s 80 million people are below the age of 30. According to Money Week Magazine, 90 percent of the country’s unemployed are youth. Egyptian youth are fed up — frustrated by the lack of job opportunities, disgusted by rampant corruption and poor governance, and tired of having no voice. It appears that they are now on their way to changing their leadership — President Hosni Mubarak is on TV as I write, pledging to step down from office. Young people with similar complaints brought down the government in Tunisia and kicked off protests in Yemen. Here in Jordan, where I am now, King Abdullah responded to young protesters today by dismissing the current government and offering up other reforms.

I am humbled by the determination and courage of young people in the Middle East who are finding their voice and peacefully but defiantly advocating for change. And I am continuously inspired by the youth I meet across the region who are working on a daily basis through our Global Citizen Corps program and other initiatives to address critical challenges in their communities. Young people in this region are not the leaders of the future — they are the leaders of now.

But while this may be an exhilarating moment for people in Tahrir Square and elsewhere, the social and economic challenges facing the Middle East and its youth will not be solved quickly. Years of hard work lie ahead. Youth in the Middle East want the same thing that young people everywhere want: a sense of hope, opportunity, and a chance to be active, productive members of their communities and societies. Our job is to support them in achieving that vision. When the dust in the streets eventually settles, it is critical that governments, the private sector, and civil society organizations like Mercy Corps band together in support of youth in the Middle East, ensuring they have access to the tools and opportunities they need to build a dignified, peaceful, and productive life for themselves and their communities.

Swarms of protests have taken place in Egypt over the last several days. Photo: Al Jazeera English (flickr)

Twitter, Facebook, Myspace -- you name the social network and it's bursting with information about the demonstrations that have taken Egypt by storm in the past few days.

According to The Jerusalem Post, cell phone service and the internet have been cut in effort to make it difficult for protestors to organize. But Al Jazeera and other media organizations have been using twitter to provide live updates on the situation in Egypt, including President Hosni Mubarak's anxiously awaited public statement. Just a few moments ago, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced that he has ordered the existing government to step down with the promise that a new government will be installed tomorrow. At this point he has not said that he will step down.

This The New York Times backgrounder explains how protests in Egypt were inspired by neighboring Tunisia's overthrow of former President Ben Ali.

"The unrest in Egypt — fueled by frustrations over government corruption, economic stagnation and a decided lack of political freedom — came after weeks of turmoil across the Arab world that toppled one leader in Tunisia and encouraged protesters to overcome deep-rooted fears of their authoritarian leaders and take to the streets."

Much of the protesting has been fueled my Egypt's youth population which compromises more than 47 percent of the state's total population. Their concerns for the future and frustration with the job economy have helped propel the demonstrations.

For up to date coverage on Egypt, check out Al Jazerra's excellent live feed.

In a place ravaged by years of war, there is something new taking place: Afghan youth propelled by a deck on four wheels and armed with an abundance of self confidence and a new pair of skate shoes.

Skateistan is a co-ed skateboard school and the group behind Kabul's first skatepark, says the school's founder, Sharna Nolan. The school engages growing numbers of urban and internally-displaced youth in Afghanistan through skateboarding, and provides them with new opportunities in cross-cultural interaction, education, and personal empowerment, according to their website. The main objective of Skateistan is to build the confidence of Afghan kids and to give them a voice, as Nolan explains in the video below. It's been amazing for Nolan to watch these youth become empowered through skateboarding.

There's nothing like watching an Afghan woman roll down a ramp for the first time and she has achieved something she never thought she would.

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

What do you get when you combine 120,000 data points measuring 200 years of income and life expectancy data for 200 countries with the creative genius of global health expert Hans Rosling? This. Watch.

A U.S. soldier in Afghanistan gathers a soil sample as part of his work on an army agricultural development project. Photo: The U.S. Army (Flickr)

The U.S. army’s “surge” in Afghanistan marked a new focus on development in addition to an increase in the number of combat troops. Development has not typically been part of the military’s purview. Yet, this new approach has much to recommend, especially in a country with endemic poverty and an anemic economy. Promoting economic growth and providing aid tends to make military missions more successful, asserts foreign policy expert Reuben Brigety. Having realized the utility of pairing military and development endeavors, the U.S. army is undertaking a host of new projects. But, asks the Economist in a recent article, to what avail?

The Economist questions both the sustainability and the suitability of the projects the army is implementing. These projects include improving telecommunications infrastructure, teaching Afghan farmers how to boost yields, installing generators to provide electricity and establishing markets to encourage trade.

Few people dispute that these projects have the potential to lift Afghans out of poverty, but many doubt their long-term viability. The Economist argues that the generators are “clearly unaffordable for the cash-strapped government that must one day take charge of [them].” Karl W. Eikenberry, current U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, agrees. He writes,"[p]roposals to buy generators and diesel fuel for Kandahar would be expensive [and] unsustainable," according to the Washington Post.

So why is the army adamant about undertaking this project? According to a U.S military official at the NATO headquarters in Kandahar, "[t]his [project] is not about development — it's about counterinsurgency." Development, in this context, is a tool to win the hearts and the minds of the Afghan people. By providing goods and services the Taliban cannot deliver, the military hopes to marginalize the insurgency’s influence.

The army’s ulterior motive for promoting development, can produce poorly designed development programs, points out the Economist. A 60 million dollar telecommunications project is just one example of the potential pitfalls of putting the army in charge of development.

The army favors this project because it will provide an alternative to current networks which local Taliban strongmen control. The Taliban's control of telecommunications is a problem according to the military, as they often restrict or shut down access at night to prevent U.S. informants from reporting Taliban movements. But it's uncertain if the addition of another network will directly affect the locals’ security, health or economic well-being. This uncertainty is further called into question by the fact that there are already four other operational networks in the region. Still, the army views it as part and parcel of its development campaign, illustrating how easily the army’s strategic interests can derail its mission to promote development.

The military’s track record in Afghanistan suggests that bringing development and combat operations under the same roof will be trickier than anticipated. Though there is still time for the military’s projects to bear fruit, their lack of success thus far should not be taken lightly. The trend of subsuming development projects under military command is growing worldwide, according to expert testimony given to the U.S. Senate. If this strategy is as ineffectual as Afghanistan may suggest, then we should take note and revisit the practice.

Could Yemen be reaching a tipping point? Photo: Ahron de Leeuw (flickr)

Once called “Arabia Felix” or “happy arabia” by the Romans, today Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East. With dwindling natural resources and a growing, deeply conservative Muslim population of 23 million, Yemen could be reaching a tipping point, claims a recent feature in the New York Times magazine.

Yemen is dealing with a potentially explosive combination of severe poverty, depleted oil reserves, water scarcity, corruption, and rapid population growth, according to Bruce Riedel, an expert in Middle Eastern policy at the Brookings Institution. Corruption is so bad, says the LA Times, that billions of dollars from Yemen's budget go to tribal elders and patronage networks in the form of kickbacks. And tribal feuding has become so dangerous that "as much as a quarter of the population cannot go to school or work for fear of being killed," according to the New York Times feature.

Yemen's ranking on this year's Failed States Index is further evidence of a downward spiral. Overall Yemen came in at 15th, up three spots from its ranking in 2009 and nine from 2007.

In response to Yemen's teetering security situation, Washington announced it was tripling its humanitarian assistance — up to $42.5 million — "to address the root causes of radicalism." But according to the Times report, "no one has a real strategy for Yemen..."

Moving Yemen towards a brighter future requires increasing the country's internal stability. Humanitarian aid projects aimed at meeting needs like food, education, infrastructure and community building are a good start. The World Bank is supporting nearly 40 active projects targeting these areas through interest-free loans, as well as offering microfinance loans through the International Development Association. Hopefully increases in foreign aid and international attention will usher in a better era for Yemen.

In the 50s and 60s Afghanistan had modern, clean health facilities. Today only 13% of children are born in hospitals. Photo: Daveeza (Flickr)

Recall an Afghanistan you probably forgot existed (or maybe you never knew). It's modern, stylish, and humming with productive economic activity. Women work alongside men dressed in form-fitting pencil skirts and kitten heels.

Foreign Policy's photo essay on Afghanistan in the 50s and 60s provides a glimpse into this bygone era. The photos highlight how much has changed since a war with the Soviets, a decade of Taliban rule, and the U.S. invasion.

There are shots of cinemas, homes lit with electricity, and well-stocked hospitals — things that few Afghans enjoy today.

This visual reminder of a long-lost Afghanistan says more than words ever could about how much conflict and oppression has cost the Afghan people.