Your article, with its account of forced marriage, illustrates how Afghanistan’s 22 million women and girls need to be freed from Taliban-imposed misogyny ( ‘I am still a child, it cannot be good to be married’: how drought forces Afghan families to sell girls as brides, 15 October ). It was not ever thus.

Under Russian suzerainty in 1965, four Afghan women were the first to be elected to the Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament. In 1966, I watched two of them, bare‑headed and wearing western-style clothes, discussing a political topic with three of its male members and the future president Babrak Karmal.

I also saw several post‑puberty girls not wearing the burqa. This, and reforms such as secondary education for girls, was supplemented by highly visible aid. The two-mile Salang tunnel through the Hindu Kush mountains, linking north and south Afghanistan by road for the first time, is a good example.…