Notes from Afghanistan: Cultural Heritage Protection

Posted by Admin on May 2, 2015 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

I was invited to Afghanistan by the US Embassy in Kabul in tandem with the state department, and specifically they invited me to advise them on their archaeological program and especially on archaeological conservation both in Kabul and in the southern part of Afghanistan. this data cultural heritage preservation in Afghanistan is not good the country has then in the midst of the Thirty Years War they call it the Thirty Years War, starting in 1979 when the Soviets invaded continuing with the Civil War under the mujahedeen and then continuing on still with the Taliban.

Ending in a sense only with the I’m with the Northern Alliance is victory over the Taliban and the entry at the United States and other UN countries into Afghanistan a few years ago, but during that period I mean even after the UN and the US entered Afghanistan not a lot of attention was focused on cultural heritage protection, on the the archaeological conservation, archaeological sites they would trying to get the economy under control and trying to get the political structure under control.

Most of us have an experienced a country like Afghanistan we’re literally everything was broken and had been broken for thirty years, keep in mind there were any archaeological conservators in the country there were barely any functioning museums all love them had been hit by rockets if not during the Soviet invasion then during the Civil War or during the period at the Taliban or they have been destroyed by the Taliban plenty of monuments that dated before the Islamic conquest at the 7th century AD were judged fair game by the Taliban and they were hacked up just as they hacked up the giant Buddhas and balmy on so the monuments were in terrible terrible shape.