Learn More About Afghan War Rugs With Drones and Other Wartime Imagery
Afghan War Rugs – Over the past weeks, the Nazmiyal Rugs has begun publishing our glossary of antique rug symbols and motifs and their meanings. Our research into the subject of why tribal rug weavers include certain imagery in their antique rugs has shown that weavers tend to incorporate imagery related to their spirituality as well as motifs from everyday life.
Imagery such as local plant life, herding and hunting animals, and scenes depicting religious practice have been common in Afghan rugs for centuries. However, over the past several years, new motifs have been appearing in these artisan weaving: Symbols of war and technology.
The Afghan war rugs, with motifs such as tanks and war planes, began appearing in the 1980’s, when sects of Mujaheddin were engaged in fighting with the Soviets, who had been occupying territory in Afghanistan. Images such as guns, war vehicles, and grenades began replacing the more typical floral sprays and geometric designs in traditional rug patterns and designs.
Collectors and researchers of this trend say that the reasons for the inclusion of such imagery are varied — some rug weavers incorporated these themes as a sort of protest or political statement, while other weavers were just doing what they always had: incorporating images from daily life into their artwork.
As tensions between the East and the West have intensified over the past twenty years, rugs incorporating war imagery have increased. In recent years, imagery of Soviet forces in Afghan war rugs have been replaced by that of the USA military. Most recently, the controversial subject of drones has been woven into Afghan rugs.
Unlike the traditional roles of tribal weavers, in which the women weavers were the primary artisans, many of these Afghan wartime area rugs are being woven by people of all ages and sexes, many of which are refugees. Alarmingly, as the value of these political and timely Afghan war rugs increases, the marketplace is responding: One account tells of a particular war rug design that was featured on a collector’s blog which received a large amount of press.
In a short amount of time, copy-cat rugs of this same design began appearing in great numbers. This awareness of the market value of these unique Oriental rugs implies that they may be being created by a captive workforce, including forced labor or child labor.
Although western collectors have been unable to identify the exact weavers of these controversial rugs, one thing is clear: With over 1,000 civilians in Pakistan alone killed by drone strikes in the past decade, these war rugs continue the weaving tradition of incorporating common aspects of daily life into artwork. Unfortunately, daily life in the Afghan rug weaving industry today is often increasingly war-like.
