WarRug
Before I was going to write about it, Boingboing.net had already linked to a site devoted to selling Afghan War Rugs, and unfortunately the traffic overload has knocked the site offline. What they don’t mention is that this site came to the public’s attention via this NPR story on Morning Edition.
What troubles me is the language Mark Frauenfelder chose to describe the carpet photographed in the Boingboing.net entry:
Get your hand-made rugs depicting the Twin Towers being hit by planes here.
There is nothing inaccurate in this description, as it does indeed depict that, but what Mark’s comments overlook is the rest of the rug’s narrative. At the bottom is a US Aircraft carrier shooting missiles, and in the middle are the Afghan and US flags, connected by a peace dove. This is important because it must be understood that these rugs depict the entire narrative of Afghan “liberation” by the Americans, and are not a commemoration of a Terrorist attack, as many might think upon first glance. In fact, (as the radio program points out) these rugs are made primarily to sell to foreign aid workers! Unlike Iraq, there was initially a lot of good will towards America by the Afghans. Unfortunately, we aren’t doing much to live up to it.
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Comments
Hmm, I think we need a nice rug of a group of jews being lead into the gas chamber… Of course there will be a scene of Churchill and Hitler shaking hands below whilst doves fly about.
ANON: Karzai is not Hitler, he faught against both the Taliban and Bin Laden. A more apt analogy would be the difference between how Europe and America treated Germany after WWI and after WWII. The first time they punished them – creating the conditions that led to the rise of Hitler. The second time they rebuilt the country and created a strong democracy. Unfortunately, the US, while not punishing Afghanistan, has abandoned it and is doing far too little to build a lasting democracy.
Actually, this came to the public’s attention in the 22 December issue of Forbes magazine, which ran a cover article on it. Click on my name for the link to the article.
Uhm… That is the “NY Review of books”, not the “NY Times Book review” (cited in the linked article at the end). It is a very well researched piece, as is the Human Rights Watch article it cites (also linked from my post). Moreover, many Afghan friends have asserted similar views to those in the report.
I heard the NPR piece, and saw the mention on BoingBoing. BoingBoing was misleading. This is not sensationalism. It is not necessarily comfortable, either. I was impressed with the degree to which the seller respected people who were repelled by the subject matter. This is a culture’s reflection on the events around it — it is art. While I would never own it, I strongly support its display.
I would not put a large amount of faith in the NY Times account of how effective or supportive the US has been in their efforts in Afghanistan.
Time and time again, the NYTimes has slanted their stories, twisted facts and misrepresented the efforts of our troops abroad.
When i read
” (the US) has not been using its power as effectively as it should to bring the country closer to democratic self-government. ”
i can only wonder who holds this point of view and what exactly are their credentials in estimating the success of the rebuilding of a country. If there were substantiallymore forces in Afghanistan i would imagine we would be criticized by the NYTimes by standing in the way of transferring power to the Afghan people.
If anything, a country torn apart by devastating war for over ten years has made significant progress. It would be difficult to name a country of equal size that has seen so much strife, so i’m not going to rush to embrace the view of the reporters of the NYTimes. I would suggest the same to others.
[...] Not the first time I’ve been linked to by BoingBoing, so I know from experience that after the link disappears from the front page of BoingBoing few of those readers will come back (few even read anything but the linked post), but it is still quite phenomenal to see the difference a link can make: [...]
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An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
I appreciate the feedback on warrug.com. It started as a place to compare war rug styles and structures to facilitate grouping of rugs by location and time. I never expected it would produce this much dialogue.
I second Kerim’s analysis of the rugs. One thing to note is that the folks who weave the WTC and “war on terrorism” rugs were stranded in bleak refugee camps in Pakistan until the US took out the taliban and the weavers returned to their ancesteral homes in Afghanistan. So it is unlikely they are weaving some kind of sarcastic pro-terrorist statement.
Also, we discovered lately that the images in the latest rugs (WTC, war on terrorism, tora bora) are drawn directly from US propaganda leaflets dropped by the million in the region where the rugs are woven.
I also appreciate Tom McNamee’s remarks. I have gotten much hate mail, etc, and its nice to see another reaction.
Regarding the Afghan situation. While I think a democratic or republic style of government would be ideal there, it clashes strongly with their traditional and largely continuing form of government. The tradition is a khan system. Its like, “my immediate family has a patriarch, and all my extended cousins immediate families have patriarchs, and those patriarchs have a clan headman. The clans get together and select a tribal leader or khan.” ‘Select’ is not really accurate because selection is based on things like wealth, power, patrilineage, connections, as well as tibal choice. The head of all the khans is the warlord in the region. This system is ingrained in the trade economy, real estate ownership, customs, family and personal identities, and to some degree it functions locally, albeit violently most of the time.
If there is a one person one vote government it does not satisfy all the needs that the khan system does. If one elects a stranger without any relation of kinship, then the sense of relative identity created by the khan system is lost. On the other hand if one’s rival takes power, ones identity, and ones whole clan’s identity is forged by the rivalry. Again, this is lost in a straight one person one vote senario.
The problem with khan system is it breaks the country into feifdoms, which tend to be adversarial, and therefore the country as a whole never gets anywhere.