Afghan war carpet

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Example of a war carpet

Afghan war carpets (qualin-e jihad or war aksi; English Afghan war rugs) are hand-knotted, mostly sheep's wool carpets from Afghanistan and Pakistan , which depict military objects and motifs from the war. The motifs are a result of the Afghan war conflicts in recent history. But they also show the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and motifs from the war on terror .

War carpets form an upper category for various sub-categories, such as propaganda, victory, city, commemorative and souvenir carpets.

Emergence

A modern Afghan kilim with war motifs and a dromedary

The exact circumstances of the formation of war carpets have not yet been clearly clarified. Like its neighbors, Afghanistan can look back on a long history of carpet manufacturing. When the Soviet Union invaded in 1979, many Afghans fled to neighboring Pakistan. The refugees' war experiences flowed directly into the carpet design. The carpet mirror and border suddenly showed a mix of traditional ornaments and lined up hand grenades, tanks, helicopters, bazookas and assault rifles from the Russian brand Kalashnikov (AK 47).

A new variant emerged after the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1989, the so-called “Victory carpets ” (Victory over the Soviets rugs). These carpets mostly showed maps or regional maps of Afghanistan. Another novelty was the depiction of a figure with a hammer and sickle on its forehead, the "Soviet jumping jack". This meant the remaining communist president, Najibullah , who was perceived as Moscow's puppet and was overthrown in 1992. The 1990s were marked by a subsequent civil war, which regional warlords of the Mujahideen fought against each other and from which the Taliban emerged victorious.

With the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent NATO mission under the leadership of the USA, there were further variants of the image. The targeted plane crashes on the World Trade Center in New York were a common carpet motif . Also, instead of the Soviet weapon technology, Western weapon technology appeared as carpet ornament. For example, the Soviet MiG-21 was replaced by American F-16 bombers. A new feature since 2014 is the display of combat drones .

Because of their bizarre imagery, war carpets are of great value to collectors and gallery owners. After September 11, 2001, the price doubled compared to standard oriental carpets. The anonymously produced folk art suggests enormous trade margins. It is not clear to what extent this is real folk art, or rather professionally made commissioned work.

actors

Afghan war carpets are knotted by various semi-nomadic groups. These ethnic groups include Baluch , Taymani , Turkmen and Uzbeks . Production is geographically distributed between the Afghan part of Balochistan in the south and the Turkic peoples in the north of the country. The Pashtun people , 42 percent of the Afghan ethnic group, but also main supporters of the anti-image Taliban regime, are not represented.

Rugs knotted by men and boys are nothing special. They were created in earlier times, mainly as part of training programs. The actual, albeit “invisible” actors are women, and maybe even girls, who work on mobile looms for months to knot the elaborate carpets. There are now carpets that are machine-made in Iran and other neighboring countries and that, in proportion and color gradient, enable an image that is almost true to photo. This form of production is particularly recommended for portraits.

The Italian object artist Alighiero Boetti commissioned some carpets for his Mappa Mundi project from 1988. These world map carpets (map qalin-e or map aksi), which, according to his design, show small flags of nations of the world as borders, were created in and around refugee camps in Peshawar, Pakistan . After the artist's death († 1994), these representations continued to be produced and enriched the traditional treasure trove of motifs. Around 1990 numerous carpets with the map of Afghanistan (and later Pakistan) came onto the market. "They were clearly aimed at buyers from Afghans in exile and are sold worldwide through almost all carpet trade channels" (Rolf Sachsse).

Kevin Sudeith became a collector and dealer of Afghan war rugs in 1996. Sudeith is based in Queens, New York, and is very active in the Anglo-Saxon region, both artistically and commercially. Through his public relations work, war carpets are repeatedly discussed in the English-language media.

Nigel Lendon and Prof. Tim Bonyhady from the Australian National University have been scientifically accompanied and currently observed the Afghan War Rugs since April 2004 . The two Australian scientists run the Rugs of War blog . The web project is the result of two exhibitions in 2003 and 2004 in the capital Canberra and in Adelaide .

The German filmmaker Till Passow discovered his first war carpet in 2002 in the living room of an English artist in Karachi . From then on, “the search for the various expressions of war in Afghan carpets has never let go of him and has repeatedly led him to the carpet bazaars of Karachi, Lahore , Peshawar and Kabul .” Over the years, Passow built up his own collection and advised them Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich building their own collection.

Collections & exhibitions

This landscape tapestry shows the attack on Taliban positions in Bagram in October and November 2001

What is probably the first collection of Afghan war carpets in Europe was brought together by the Saladin carpet store in Wiesloch and presented to the public in a colored illustrated book with 57 examples (self-published). These carpets are now part of the collections of the Five Continents Museum , formerly the State Museum of Ethnology in Munich.

The first major exhibition in Germany was in 2001 under the title Afghanistan: Lebensbaum und Kalaschnikow in the Stuttgart Museum of Ethnology . The original reason for the exhibition was the destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamiyan in March 2001 by the Taliban . The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 made the subject even more explosive.

From February 27 to March 20, 2015, the exhibition Linked Memory - Afghan War Carpets from the Till Passow Collection was shown in Berlin . A bilingual catalog was published for the exhibition with the essay Linked Pictures Against Forgetting by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Wasim Frembgen.

Trivia

A certain war carpet plays a very central role in the book The Prophecy of the Afghan Carpet (Le code du tapis afghan) by Jean-Charles Wall from 2013. The French interior designer happened to buy a blue carpet with a modern one in Paris in May 1991 City view and ten planes over a high-rise skyline. When two planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Jean-Charles Wall suddenly recognized the images from television on his carpet. With a tireless obsession he set out to unravel the Persian script and symbol codes on the strange Baluch carpet. During the unusual research, the reader learns a great deal about the manufacture, meaning and history of Afghan war carpets.

literature

Web links

Commons : Afghan War Carpets  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Audio content

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Sachsse: Knotted and woven war , in: Zeithistorische Forschungen, Issue 2/2006.
  2. ↑ Rugs of War: Victory rug with a twist from January 14, 2008 (English).
  3. ^ Nigel Lendon / Rugs of War: Are Afghan Conflict Carpets more like Social Realism than Propaganda? from March 4, 2015 (English).
  4. ↑ War Rugs Reflect Afghanistan's Long History With Conflict, February 7, 2015.
  5. ↑ Christopher Helman: Carpet bombing, Forbes, December 22, 2003.
  6. ↑ Jürgen Wasim Frembgen: Linked pictures against oblivion. In: Linked Memory .
  7. ↑ a b Rolf Sachsse: Knotted and woven war .
  8. ↑ Rugs of War , blog by Nigel Lendon and Prof. Tim Bonyhady ( Australian National University )
  9. ^ Till Passow: From the collector's point of view. In: Linked Memory .
  10. ↑ Violence as an ornament . In: Der Spiegel , issue 23, June 6, 1994, p. 192.
  11. ^ Burkhard Brunn: Decorative bombs . In: taz of November 2, 2001.
  12. ↑ Terror of New York highlights the Afghanistan exhibition . In: Hamburger Morgenpost of September 26, 2001.
  13. ↑ WILD Carpet and Textile Art .
  14. ↑ Michael Schikowski: Line dragging around a carpet , Deutschlandradio Kultur, September 20, 2014.