Unexploded Ordnances: Afghan War Rugs 1979-2008
January 18 - March 7, 2008
Online Exhibition
Introduction
"The early Muslims inhabited lands where people were born on carpets, prayed on them, and covered their tombs with them. And in much of the Muslim world, very little has changed. For centuries, carpets have been a currency and an export, among the first commodities of a globalized trading system. Apart from trade, the main form of interaction between nations is war. With their countries decimated, cultures pulverized, and families scattered, they flee, carrying what is often the only portable asset they own--their carpets. For those who remain, the carpet business is one of the only functioning industries left. And when the shooting stops and the bazaar springs back to life as if nothing happened, you can lose yourself there, where carpet deals recline on bolsters, retailing conversation outside time."
-Christopher Kremmer, The Carpet Wars: from Kabul to Baghdad, 2002
War rugs began to be anonymously woven by the Afghan tribal people in response to the Soviet invasion of 1979. Already producing pictorial rugs, a tradition long established, the patterns of plants, birds, animals, and horseback warriors were transformed with the inclusion of tanks, helicopters, Kalashnikovs, and grenades, in addition to other types of weapons. Landscapes were thereafter infiltrated by landmines and soliders, fields of flowers dotted with grenades, and skies filled with fighter jets. During the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989, subsequent Taliban-era, and continuing post-9/11, Afghans escaped war by fleeing to crowded refugee camps in western Iran and northeastern Pakistan. With this significant and repeated shift of people, an exchange of new weaving methods and designs took place. Eventually, non-profit rug workshops began to open up in Kabul. The refugee camps, workshops, and individuals throughout the region continue to supply a diversity of war rugs to the marketplace.
With this cross-pollination and active markets, there are a vast range of sizes, types, and genres--almost as many different takes on rug designs as there are weavers. There are large rugs and very small ones. Some depict Kalashinikovs (Soviet machine guns) and hand grenades like still lives, while others work images of weaponry into the intricate background patterns surrounding traditional motifs like horse riding warriors, symbolic ewers, and trees of life. The rugs are primarily woven by nomadic or refugee women still displaced in camps in Pakistan, although men have become more actively involved in weaving in the camps. The Baluchi tribe is the most associated with the rugs, though the Hazara, Zakini, Taimani, and Turkman are also significant contributors. Workshops have also begun to produce war rugs. There are many sizes, types, and genres--as many rug designs as there are weavers. Personal stories are pictorially inscribed in the warp and weft, yet popular patterns are produce over and over again to capitalize on commercial interest. This is an artform and a livelihood, one of only a few creative and economic options for the Afghan people.
By the mid-late 1980s, a handful of Western collectors in Europe and the United States began to find the rugs intriguing enough to buy. Today, reports tell of retired General Tommy Franks bringing multiple "War on Terror" rugs (see description below) back to distribute to Washington, D.C., friends and colleagues. And rug dealers are regulars at the U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, at Bagram, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Farah. As yet, museums have not begun to collect them.
Ultimately, very little is know about the history of war rugs, though one of the few scholars paying the phenomenon attention states that they reside precariously "alongside contemporary and avant-garde art and political art and propaganda." In an exhibition dedicated to war representations in traditional ethinic textile arts, entitled Weavings of War, Ariel Zeitlin Cooke and Marsha MacDowell included a story about an Afghan woman, named Michigan Hozain, of the ethinic minority Hazara tribe. When interviewed, Hozain shared her family's history of weaving war rugs. Her aunts began weaving designs that depicted traumatic life events living through the tumultous and violent 1980s and 1990s (Soviet-Afghan War and Taliban era). The aunts retell the details of personal memories illustrated in their rugs. Michigan acknowledges that she began weaving as a form of expression and for use in the home but now weaves the rugs in part "because they will sell," a fact discovered by her family when their rugs were introduced to the marketplace. This dichotomy motivated Tim Bonyhady of the Australian National University to define the rugs as follows:
"The characterization of these rugs as both tribal and contemporary art has been vital to their western reception. Yet the international circulation, sale, reproduction, and discussion of these rugs have not depended solely on these classifications. They have also been alluded to as women's work and as children's art, promoted as social and historical documents and marketed as a form of militaria in which particular weaponry may sometimes be identified. Some have been dubbed protest rugs, others have been called victory rugs. Although generally known as war rugs, they also have been interpreted as anti-war rugs."
Whatever motivations initiated and provoke the continued production of such images they are intimately tied to their place in the world and its ever changing circumstances. A country of approximately 30 million people, Afghanistan is a landlocked terrain traversing 250,000 square miles, and divided by the foreboding Hindu Kush mountain range. Bracketed by Iran on the west and Pakistan on the east and south, the Central Asian country was once bordered on the north by the former Soviet Untion and China. Today the northern border is framed by the formerly Soviet "stans": Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Because of this complex location, throughout modern history, Afghanistan has been the battleground of the Russian--then communist--forces, Iran's powerful Islamist influence, and British colonial oversight. Successful attempts at self-determination and modernization have emerged at certain historical moments, only to be squelched by the interests of a powerful neighbor or another ideological force. Today is no different, as a historical trajectory continues. American forces have been present in the country since late in 2001, in response to the events of September 11th and the threat of the Taliban-suppored Al-Qaeda.
Key Styles & Iconographies
There are a number of ways to distinguish the different and emerging
iconographies of war rugs. Scholars, collectors, and dealers have used a number
of different taxonomies to distinguish the diverse range of imagery. Categories
established by collector and dealer Keith Sudeith can be summarized into the
following:
Maps and Landscapes
Many rugs portray maps of
Portraits
Depicting portraits of political and military leaders, or other significant
individuals, pictorial rugs also showcase people. Weaponry is included in portrait
rugs as well, often surrounding iconically represented figures.
Red Rugs
Red rugs are recognizable for their depiction of a myriad of weapons woven
across a single background color, usually red, but sometimes blue or cream.
Obvious Weapons
This category of rug refers to those that depict weapons as dominant and
bold repeating pattern elements. "Unexploded Ordnance" rugs, which
depict labeled detailed images of grenades, land mines and other weapons, fit
into this category. Such rugs are meant to warn people not to touch the dangerous ordnances.
Embedded Weapons
This designation refers to rugs that depict weaponry iconography
embedded in the background areas of a rug design with geometric medallions,
vases, paired ewers, mythological figures and animals, and other traditional
motifs.
War on Terror
The