Afghanistan

Once a center of world civilizations, often at the crossroads of flourishing international trade routes, Afghanistan is now one of the poorest nations in the world. After thirty years of conflict, its people endure one of the world’s lowest per capita income levels (less than $900 per annum) despite a quadrupling since the fall of the Taliban regime. The devastation of war has not yet been erased by reconstruction. Private sector investment remains limited and exports few. Heavy reliance on the narcotics trade has spawned corruption and worsened the insurgency.

For over two thousand years, Afghanistan played a pivotal role on the Silk Road, connecting India and China with the Mediterranean and Russia. The continuing conflict had almost destroyed its unique traditions of Islamic art and architecture.

But Afghanistan's great cultural tradition perseveres in the bustling bazaars and workshops of Kabul, Ghazni, Mazar-i-Sharif and Maimana. The famed school of miniature painting from Herat was collected throughout the Mughal Empire, Europe and the Ottoman Empire. The Buddhist sculptures of Bamiyan were famous in China. Exquisite gold jewelry of the Scythian period and the sculpture of the Gandharan period were the luxuries of their time.

Intricate tilework, calligraphy, embroidery, and virtuoso woodwork, once patronized by royal courts, are now endangered art forms. Of the historic structures that have survived, many are now under threat from unregulated development. So too are the incomes which support Afghanistan’s hundreds of thousands of craftspeople. Finding international markets for their high-quality, sophisticated art works, made with skills passed down through the centuries, is essential to ensure the survival of Afghanistan’s ancient and rich cultural heritage.