The American Conservative: The official report on Biden’s Afghanistan disaster places the blame squarely on the U.S. government. The final report of the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) confirms what most of us already knew: The collapse of the Afghan army and government was mostly our fault… SIGAR found that the single most
By RFE/RL, EPA-EFE: A group of women in Herat have dedicated themselves to continuing a nearly long-lost, centuries-old tradition of woodcarving that is unique to Afghanistan. Click here to view photos (external link).
A 12th-century mosque and minarets from 1417 are visibly cracked, with ornate tiles falling to the ground in Herat, Afghanistan. The ancient monuments had been neglected even before Afghanistan’s severe 6.3-magnitude earthquakes in October, in which more than 1,000 people died. Now the Herat monuments are showing significant signs of damage while the Taliban government
The Art Newspaper: The Zinda Jan and Injil districts sustained the worst of the damage. Arash Boostani, a project manager for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) in Afghanistan, who had visited some of the villages in those districts over the years, says many of them contained ancient vernacular architecture structures that dated back
Science.org: Looting of archaeological sites in Afghanistan is continuing, despite vows by the Taliban government to protect the nation’s cultural treasures, a recent analysis finds. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to help comb through a trove of satellite images, researchers at the University of Chicago’s (UC’s) Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation found that looters are still
Khaama: Princess India, daughter of King Amanullah Khan and Queen Soraya, has passed away in Rome, as confirmed by her daughter Soraya Malek via her social media on Saturday evening. Click here to read more (external link).
The Guardian (UK): The Intercontinental Hotel, Afghanistan’s first luxury hotel, opened in 1969. It was built in a time that feels much further away than the year suggests. Afghanistan was at war for more than 40 years. Rulers came and went, and every one of them was here, at the Intercontinental. Its former luxury has
8am: 130 years ago, on September 25, 1893, Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, the then King of Afghanistan, issued an order to massacre the Hazaras of Uruzgan Province and its suburbs. “When the Hazara tribe’s acts of rebellion, including residents from Daia and Folad, Zawoli, Sultan Ahmad, and other regions, escalated to the point where all
8am: Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former leader of the Jamayat-E-Islami party, met his demise at the hands of a suicide bomber who allegedly concealed a bomb in his turban. At the time of his unfortunate death, Rabbani held the esteemed position of leading Afghanistan’s High Peace Council. He had also been a prominent figure within Afghanistan’s
Roshan Noorzai VOA News September 13, 2023 WASHINGTON — The Taliban government has been pressing for the extraction of copper from Afghanistan’s Mes Aynak mine as an additional revenue source, but the mine is located at an ancient historical site, which worries some archaeologists. The mine is more than 40 kilometers southeast of Kabul in the