Caught in the crossfire

This from the Sydney Morning Herald, via The Telegraph, London.

Australia’s Afghan history: a sorry tale

Here’s the display in the National Museum of Australia.

Some would argue that the White Australia Policy, officially laid to rest in the 1970s, has emerged again in the racially biased attitudes towards refugees and ethnic profiling in the last two decades. Mahomet Allum ran out of time…

Max Allen reviews Enrico Mascelloni: Beyond the West

We are pleased to publish the following review of Oltre l’Occidente – Rappresentazioni estreme nei tessuti orientali (2006), which has been the subject of earlier discussions on Rugs of War. Max Allen is the founding curator of the Textile Museum of Canada where, since 1975, he has curated more than 100 textile exhibitions. His review follows:

Exhibition catalogues are sometimes works of scholarship. This one isn’t. Instead it is a work of narrative imagination and polemics, and as such it is a far more striking object than most of the textiles within it. Aside from the fact that everything is from “The East” – as if that meant anything – there is no coherence to the collection, nor any discernible reason for assembling it.

a post-postmodern map of the world

Here’s an example of a “map of the world” rug where there’s no argument about the date! Except maybe it’s a little too prominent! See our earlier controversy about the attribution of dates to war rugs. In the 1980s and 90s many of the most interesting war rugs (and map rugs) were imported to London by the late Reuben and his son Yuda Ambalo. By Yuda’s account this example was the only map-of-the-world rug they actually commissioned (it’s huge, 3m x 5m) and when it arrived in London it was a great disappointment. Understandably. Beautifully made, but aesthetically morbid. The text in Farsi reads: “ordered by Ambalo, London, 1996″.

Two new war rug collection catalogues

Two new catalogues of Italian collections have been received by rugsofwar. The first, the collection of Amadeo Vittorio Bedini, in Milan, illustrates 28 war rugs. The text is in Italian, and together with Bedini the author Christen Ungennant illustrates the sources of many of the militaria elements in the carpets. The collection is mostly representative of fine examples of the second generation of war rugs (late 1980s and 1990s). We’re awaiting a translation before we can comment on the text. Vittorio assures me the AK47 on the cover illustration is a model!

The second is a wide ranging collection of textiles from the later decades of the 20th century, with 16 examples of war rugs illustrated and discussed (in both Italian and English) by the co-curator/editor/author (and perhaps collector) Erino Mascelloni, from Rome. The catalogue accompanies an exhibition that was held in Todi at the Sala delle Pietre e Monastero delle Lucrezie from December 2006 to February 2007. It’s not clear from the text from which collections these works are drawn, although all the discussions of the texts for war rugs are by Enrico Mascelloni, in a section titled “Asian Modernism”. The author makes a number of claims for an earlier time frame for “war rugs” than accepted by other scholars and collectors, or evidence available to us. He dates some of his “war rugs” back to the 1960s, in one case a rug (purchased in 2006) by interpreting an explicit date woven in the rug (1368/1989 or 1990) by the Turkish calendar! Many of the war rugs have similarly optimistic dates. I will review the text and some of its claims more comprehensively in a later post. The catalogue is published by Skira.

“Mystery” solved: call to prayer

This is not a “war rug”, but given our interest in contemporaneous innovation in Afghan carpets of other subjects, this caught our eye some time ago. In an earlier post, we speculated about the meaning of the cloud of text motif in this image. At 5.15am on my second morning in Istanbul, I awoke to the dawn call to prayer, and this image came to mind. Perhaps the seemingly random “texts” which fill the background of other rugs is explained by this example? If so, it’s an eloquent visual metaphor…

If we had audio, you could see what I’m hearing, over the Golden Horn…

Afghan refugee rugmakers in 1985 National Geographic magazine

At a local charity bookfair this weekend I found a copy of the June 1985 National Geographic magazine featuring the famous cover of the Afghan girl Sharbat Gula.

Debra Denker’s article, “Along Afghanistan’s War-torn Frontier”, is available online, but without the photographs by Steve McCurry, taken in 1984.

We’ve reproduced the images and captions below:

“Carpet merchants, Turkoman refugees from Afghanistan’s north parade their wares along the stalls of Peshawar’s Qisssa Khawani Bazaar, the famed “storytellers’ bazaar”. Lacking stalls of their own, the Turkomans keep moving to find their customers. Many of the Turkomans have returned to join their fellows in the mujahideen, becoming some of the more fierce warriors and battle-smart commanders. Others prefer to remain in Pakistan, pursuing their skills as carpetmakers, the trade of their ancestors.”

“At Swabi refugee camp near Mardan wool is dyed and dried. Thereafter a carpet begins to take shape on a loom.”

“Carpetmaking is a family affair, with everybody participating around the horizontal loom. It can take three months to make a wool rug, a little longer for one of silk. The majority of the carpets are for prayer, but some larger ones are made for use in homes. Thousands of Turkoman refugees equal thousands of carpets – in addition to those locally produced. The Pakistani weavers feel they are being hurt by Turkomans, who pay no taxes and no shop rents, selling their wares in the markets.”

Given women’s traditional involvement in weaving, it’s interesting that the “everybody” around the loom includes only men. This may be a function of the difficulty of photographing Afghan women that McCurry describes in “Arms Against Fury: Magnum Photographers in Afghanistan” at page 131:

“You could never meet your best friend’s wife, or even his sister. He could be your best friend, and you would never meet his wife. There was always a separate room in the house for guests, ad I was never in contact on any level with the women. If you saw a woman in the village, she would be working or caring for the children. You were allowed a single glance … There was no chance to take photographs. You could photograph a young girl running around playing with her friends in the village, but there was never any contact at all with adolescent and adult women. Just none.”

Arms Against Fury is available online, but there is no direct link – from here, click on “books”.

Steve McCurry also has a web page which includes an Afghanistan gallery.

Spinning and weaving

“Vasco Pyjama” is the internet name used by an Australian woman who until very recently worked for an international non government organisation (NGO) in Afghanistan. She wrote a wonderful journal of her experiences called Pyjama Samsara, where she is now blogging about her new posting in Indonesia.

Given our project, our interest was piqued by a fascinating discussion considering the physical and economic outcomes of carpet weaving on women in a Hazara area in Afghanistan. We’ve taken excerpts of the posts below – click the link at the end of each excerpt for the full entry.

We have been looking for income generation or livelihood opportunities that we can promote for village women. We don’t like carpet weaving, as it is exploitative and causes eye problems. We don’t like gellim weaving, as we did that before, and could not find a market for it. But now, we are thinking… perhaps spinning yarn?

The spinning wheel design was sourced from a museum in France! And then reproduced by a carpenter in Afghanistan. The NGO provides the spinning wheel (for USD12, a third of the USD36 that it costs to make) and the raw wool. Then the women make the margin (price of yarn – cost of wool). Currently, the NGO does all the purchasing and marketing, but they are intending to form women’s associations to do that. (Click here for full entry.)

In response to a question from a reader, she elaborated:

… we have to find a women’s livelihood activity for the long winter months (six months over here). Women now typically either do nothing, or those who are lucky weave carpets. But carpet weaving is hard work. It involves sitting crouched next to two or three others, and having to look in the dim light. Many people have shoulder and neck problems as well as eye problems at the end of it.

But the fate for those who don’t weave the carpets is worse. They do not earn any money and are very poor.

Weaving gellim is better ergonomically than carpets. But it pays less. Spinning pays the most. Also, it does not require you to look at the wool/yarn. You could even spin if you were blind. And you can stretch whilst spinning. And it is not small movements like it is for carpet weaving, or even crochet or knitting. I tried out the machine and the pedal is very sensitive. It does not require any strength, and works when you tilt it forwards and backwards. Also, the woman had a cushion, but we asked her to move positions (she was by the window) as the light was not good there.

Basically, it has less ergonomic problems than even tailoring has. It is the best option there is for now. Also, the women (and even children) spend the summer months doing very very very hard farm labour, like digging potatoes, carrying wood, carrying big bales of hay. When I shake their hands, I am stunned at how rough and calloused they are. They regard even carpet weaving as easy work …

Another thing to take into consideration that the poverty here is extreme. One in four children die before they reach the age of five. One in six women will die in childbirth. Most women do not reach the age of 45. Hunger is extreme. Having this little extra money means that families have fewer hungry days in a year. A few children live a little longer. Girls are married off a bit later. (Click here for full entry.)

Thanks to Vasco Pyjama for her permission to use her text and image.

The other September 11

Most of us have forgotten September 11, 1973, when Pinochet’s aircraft bombed the parliamentary buildings of Chilean President Salvador Allende. This is an embroidered image which depicts those events. In Peru and Chile this form of representation is called arpillera, and there are a number of equally chilling arpilleras in Ariel’s show.

An intriguing find in San Francisco

Nigel has sent us this image, a printed handkerchief sized piece of fabric from the collection of Pat Markovich in San Francisco:

Our friend Maryam Rashidi, the Iranian student of visual art, has provided us with the following translation:

The text at the top is written in Persian Farsi (Farsi Dari, not Pashtu), and it says “mark off (or identify) the mine zone” (mines being a method of warfare – the whole sentence means that they are asking that the mine zone should be known so perhaps they don’t walk through it and get injured!)… The sign on the left top corner is the UN sign, which I guess means that this “mark off the mine zone” is been asked from the United Nations…

Also, the text at the bottom, I guess it must be Pashtu text, and I am again guessing that it must be repeating the same text at the top (“identify the land mines!”)…

Maryam has also researched the “SB 33″ that appears in the lower left of the image:

SB 33 which is written below the drawing of the mine is a type of land mine -

“The lightweight, irregularly shaped SB-33 blast mine (made in Italy) can be scattered in large numbers by helicopters. Its mottled surface makes it difficult to detect by sight. It has an anti-shock device that prevents it from being detonated by explosions or artificial pressure, (source is Landmines: The Invisible Goliath)”

and elsewhere,

“The irregular shape and small size (about 9cm diameter) of the BPD-SB-33 scatterable anti-personnel mine make it particularly hard to locate. A hydraulic antishock device ensures that it cannot be detonated by explosions or artificial pressure. It is also exceptionally light, and can thus be carried and deployed in extremely large numbers by helicopters.” (source is a Russian site, Art of War; the following image is also from this site).

We’re reminded of one of the rugs exhibited in the Rugs of War shows in 2003, “If you see one mine there will always be many others …”

That rug also features the SB 33, but the text is reversed – we’ve rotated the image in the following detail:

The Journal of Mine Action has an interesting – and frightening – article about the use of landmines in Afghanistan. It states:

Although estimates from wartime landmine activities by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan regularly exceed 10,000,000, more realistic estimates are likely to be between 5—7,000,000 with some continuing use and limited access making that estimate impossible to verify. The most heavily mined regions are those bordering Iran and Pakistan. Security belts of landmines exist around major cities, airports, government installations and power stations. Most, if not all, of these are attributed to Soviet occupation or Soviet stocks left in their withdrawal. Kabul, the capital, is considered to be one of the most heavily mined cities per capita in the world ….

Thanks again to Maryam for her assistance.