| For many Afghanis, forced
into exile in Pakistan and Iran in the
years after the Soviet invasion of their
homeland and kept away by the ongoing
insurgency against the fundamentalist
Sunni Taliban party now in power, the
answer has been to fight back with their
craft. Woven among the traditional
figures of dogs, birds, mosques and
flowers are chunky assault rifles, tanks
and helicopters. Ornate border designs
reveal themselves as hand grenades,
armored personnel carriers, cartridges.
Some rugs are entirely patterned with
jets and helicopters, back to front in
alternating strips so regular they aren't
immediately noticeable. Others are
virtual catalogues of arms and military
transports: columns of tanks rumbling
along dirt roads, clusters of houses,
formations of jets. It is no longer
unusual to see a two-foot rug, the
Afghani equivalent of a folding stool,
carrying the image of an AK-47 assault
rifle. Allan Janus, a photographer and
museum specialist at the Smithsonian's
Air and Space Museum, first bought a few
war rugs as a curiosity a couple of years
ago. He gradually began selling them
online as his collection outgrew his den
(www.digizen.net/member/janus/rugs.htm).
[Barry] O'Connell, a computer systems
consultant who has become an acknowledged
expert in the course of acquiring his
collection, runs an extensive Web site on
the subject
(http://earth.oconnell.net/rugnotes/cry-
havoc.htm). He identifies pieces by type
of wool, dye colors, knotting techniques,
the number of fibers in the warp, the
length of fringe. One of the first to
study the symbols as a record of actual
events, O'Connell has found clues to the
rugs' origins in the specific martial
images they incorporate.
Reproduced with permission of the
copyright owner. Further reproduction or
distribution is prohibited without
permission.
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