Utilizing pure wool and pure dyes, Afghanistan’s handmade carpet-making custom dates again a number of centuries, and its artisans have excelled in producing precision and wonder, a heritage acknowledged by UNESCO in 2003. These rugs carry tribal and regional parts, which distinguish numerous areas of manufacturing. In London, a collection of mesmerizing Afghan “battle rugs,” militaria on textile displaying singular vignettes of international invasions, is on view on the British Museum. One thread at a time, these distinctive carpets present a putting visible report of greater than fifty years of political turmoil, bringing a recent twist to standard tapestry.
Struggle rugs, which combine the illustration of navy objects and scenes into conventional carpet-making, emerged in Afghanistan throughout the Eighties. Struggle rugs are not like the extra frequent examples that includes extremely elaborate geometrical designs embellished with flowery or botanical touches in that they body radically totally different pictorial motifs, such because the Soviet invasion of 1979 and subsequent battle by means of 1989, but additionally the U.S.-led “Struggle on Terror” post-9/11, that culminated within the full withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2021 and the return of the Taliban to energy the identical 12 months.
Nested in its Islamic world gallery behind glass shows, the British Museum chronologically presents 9 of such battle carpets of assorted sizes together with objects utilized in Afghan carpet-making in addition to archival materials, comparable to images. We begin our go to with an early battle rug, a three-tiered design wealthy in plum and ochre colours. At first, it resembles an summary backyard with blossoming flowers. The artists’ subterfuge—assuming that many units of fingers somewhat than one have been concerned within the rug’s manufacturing—is refined. As a substitute of birds, the weavers have included looming Soviet navy helicopters, a substitution which references how Afghans skilled adjustments within the sky following the deployment of airborne troops and gear from the Soviet Union.
The next rug is extra express in its depiction of the brutal ten-year battle that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Mujahideen guerrilla teams, ensuing within the loss of life and compelled displacement of hundreds of thousands of Afghans, together with in neighboring Iran and Pakistan. The carpet subverts the normal border that sometimes frames a central panel or scene by together with pictures of Soviet tanks, lined geometrically as if rolling in their very own parade. The rug’s discipline concentrates extra visible inserts: Afghans recognizable with their distinctive hats, richly adorned camels, extra helicopters and horn-bearing white demons referred to as “divs” in Center Jap lore, together with inscriptions in Dari, considered one of Afghanistan’s official languages.
This pictorial rug is allegorical. In Shahnameh, a tenth/Eleventh-century Persian poem in style in Afghanistan, poet Ferdowsi narrates how warrior Rustam finally triumphs over the White Div, the chief of demons. The inclusion of those diabolical creatures within the carpet encourages us to see the resistance of Afghans to the Soviet invasion (represented by the mythological divs) as a heroic endeavor in addition to a religious one.
Religious overtones are additionally present in one other carpet produced throughout the identical interval (1980–1990). Labeled Carpet with gun ‘hand,’ an ominous crimson form stares at us: a hand, whose fingers are elongated with the barrels of anti-aircraft weapons. Apart from the recurrent pictures of tanks and the inclusion of latest motifs, comparable to opium poppies, grenades and missiles, the image of the hand hails again to different cultural references.
Because the hand of Fatima, Prophet Muhammad’s daughter, the image is used for cover throughout the Islamic world, however right here it almost definitely nods to the requirements used throughout Shi’a ritual processions commemorating the martyrdom of Husayn and Abbas within the battle of Karbala in 680 CE, through which the latter misplaced his fingers in an act of sacrifice and loyalty. Straight invoking religion, the rug recollects that the Afghan-Soviet Struggle was additionally about affirming Islam’s place within the social cloth of the nation over the Communist regime’s atheistic tenets.
The final carpets on present bounce to the more moderen interval of the U.S.-led coalition post-9/11. One from 2002 depicts a map of Afghanistan surrounded by its neighbors along with the American and British flags—as members of the multinational navy mission (the Worldwide Safety Help Pressure, or ISAF) energetic by means of 2014. Altogether stripped of its conventional motifs, the carpet reveals navy gear, fighter jets and mountains together with the inscription “Tora Bora,” commemorating the coalition-led airstrikes towards the Tora Bora mountains cave advanced in Afghanistan, the place Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden was believed to cover. Written in English, this carpet is stylized for a Western viewers, marketed as a memento from Afghanistan—for the troopers, diplomats and humanitarians who’ve begun to purchase these memorabilia keepsakes from their time in Kabul and elsewhere.
One can view these battle rugs as a medium for political commentary on ongoing conflicts from the vantage level of native individuals. Not fairly postcolonial propaganda posters-on-textile, the rugs have nonetheless outlined an evolving iconography of battle, resistance and nationwide id. From their rise within the early Eighties, their manufacturing declined after 1992 and the beginning of the Afghan Civil Struggle, a time of dire socioeconomic situations and fierce group infighting. They resurfaced after 9/11 and have solely just lately skilled institutional recognition as distinct artwork types. The Worldwide People Artwork Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Drill Corridor gallery on the Australian Nationwide College organized exhibitions dedicated to Afghan battle rugs in 2020 and 2021, respectively. “Rug-making households needed to report the battle engulfing their nation whilst they have been making a industrial product to be offered, as with all Afghan rugs, primarily to foreigners,” writes Tim Bonyhady, co-curator of “I weave what I’ve seen: The Struggle Rugs of Afghanistan,” in Canberra, Australia, within the accompanying e book of the identical title.
As artistic works primarily destined for the industrial market, these battle rugs query intentionality, viewers and authorship: to what extent are their narrative expressions indigenous or blended with copying formatted or commissioned templates to fulfill consumers’ calls for? A lot of the artists stay, sadly, nameless. Produced in conventional carpet-making studios, additionally they carry the mark of exile, mainly by ladies and women displaced in Iran and Pakistan, a lot of whom are illiterate. Within the refugee communities of Pakistan and Iran, males and boys turned extra concerned in weaving over time.
The rugs embody a type of vernacular-commercial artwork and produce innovation to people custom. Their use has additionally mutated: from adorning flooring to being held on partitions, in galleries or personal collections, they’ve remodeled right into a movable “postcard” of an embattled nation. Previously utilitarian and practical—a carpet to heat and improve the looks of an inside—these battle rugs have grow to be artwork objects.
The British Museum show is somewhat sparse given the richness of the subject material, and one needs for a extra formidable survey. Although weaving gear comparable to looms is included within the exhibition, different objects, like boots as soon as belonging to a member of the Hazara neighborhood in Afghanistan throughout the nineteenth Century or a goat cranium talisman, are much less clearly associated or related to the battle rugs. This creates a complicated, overlapping scenography which tries to inform too many tales without delay: presenting the historical past of Afghanistan, explaining the method of carpet-making, showcasing Afghanistan’s cultural and ethnic range and highlighting latest invasions. Unintentionally maybe, the ethnographic objects feed right into a continuum of empire and violence (the primary Anglo-Afghan Struggle happened throughout 1838-1842), which sees makes an attempt at contextualizing Afghanistan primarily by means of a international gaze.
Crowding out different visible renditions of storytelling, the battle rugs probe the aestheticization of battle and the chance of defining a rustic primarily by its violent previous and current on the expense of different pictures or narratives. Curiosity from Western consumers and collectors could result in an excessive type of commodification and trivialization with out pausing on the situations of manufacturing, their implicit dependencies and modes of extraction, that are very knotty certainly.
“Struggle rugs: Afghanistan’s knotted historical past” is on show on the British Museum by means of September 14, 2025.
Extra exhibition critiques
