The Afghan War on Rugs
Written by Jacob Anthony
Edited by Emily Vescio
Figure 1. Baluch War Rug, 1980s, wool and cotton, Northwest Afghanistan.
Wool warp, 4 foot 10 inches. Cotton weft, 2 foot 9 inches. Northwest Afghanistan. 1980s. This rug is unusual, and perhaps the only one of its kind. Yet, this list of attributes plus two grainy photos are all that prove its existence. The images (fig. 1) show a typical Baluch prayer mat. Among concentric rows of flowers in the rug’s mihrab, or niche, lies a ring of Soviet hand grenades and a black transport helicopter. Farther down, two tanks, more grenades, and a pair of Mi-28 assault helicopters. This is one of countless “war rugs” that have streamed out of Afghanistan since the 1979 Soviet occupation. Among thousands of its kind, this specimen is one of the few made in a prayer rug format. The furniture.com page documenting this rug mentions another sold by Sun Bow Trading Co.1 But that rug, like this one and most others, has vanished into private ownership. This paradoxical prayer mat is nonetheless an antecedent to the high-art phenomenon war rugs have become. Curated war rug exhibitions are now a politically exotic subject for museums.2 But, despite the rugs’ recent manufacture and living makers, the exhibitions rarely present a weaver’s perspective beyond mere speculation. This is not to say an artist’s opinion is necessary to qualify their work as art. Rather, war rugs’ imperialist origins impugn whether they are genuine artistic expression.
Figure 2. Pile Carpet or “Pazyryk Rug”, 400 BCE, wool, State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
In 1949, the world’s oldest known rug was excavated from a Scythian prince’s grave in Kazakhstan.3 This woolen fragment (fig. 2), now called the “Pazyryk rug,” dates to 400 BCE, evidencing the antiquity and geography of early carpet weaving. After the Scythian prince’s floor decor, the next extant carpets come from the fifteenth century. It was then, during the rise of the Ottoman Empire, that carpet weaving hit the international stage. Rugs were exported to Europe where, due to the popularity of dining tables, they were used as tablecloths.4 However, these rugs were produced in cities. It would take until the rise of rug collecting in the nineteenth century for tribal rugs to gain a Western audience.5 Rugmaking in Afghanistan itself has existed since at least the 16th-century Mughal empire. In those times before oil, rugs were the de rigeur commodity.6
Of the fourteen-plus ethnic groups in Afghanistan, the majority of Afghan rugs on the market belong to one of two: Baluch and Turkmen.7 Turkmen are an ethnicity that occupies Afghanistan’s northern fringes (and the eponymous Turkmenistan), while Baluch people reside in Afghanistan’s south. Both groups’ geographic spreads extend well beyond Afghanistan, so rugs bearing a Baluch or Turkmen designation were not necessarily made within Afghan borders. Moreover, classification of Persian rugs on the whole is notoriously inaccurate due to the countless middlemen involved. For instance, “Bokhara” and “Khiva” rugs are named for the markets where they were sold. The two Uzbekh cities are the largest rug markets on the planet and where most Afghan rugs are sold today.8 Forty years of warfare crippled Afghanistan’s economy and water supply, so much so that its rugs must leave the country in order to be finished.9 Thus, Afghan rug nomenclature most often reflects a point of sale.10
While the rug market is rife with misinformation, there are still a few notable Afghan weaving centers worth mentioning. The northern city Mazar-e Sharif originates most Afghan carpentry, and unlike Bokhara and Khiva, boasts a substantial local rug industry. The Shindand Valley in the west is known for its unique style of elongated humans and animals.11 By virtue of their eccentric approach, Shindand weavers were also quick to adopt war motifs. A cursory search for their rugs will reveal that much of the valley’s current output is fashioned as such.
Figure 3. Adraskand Carpet, 18th century, wool, Shindand, Afghanistan. Reproduced with permission of McGill Rare Books and Special Collections.
The last aspect of Afghan carpets worth noting is their physical composition. Afghan rugs were known for their use of natural plant dyes and hand-spun wool. Deep reds came from madder root and cochineal (fig. 3), blue from indigo leaves, and golden yellow from turmeric. No natural green dye was available, so weavers mixed it from blue and yellow.12 And, as the oldest rugs show, the iron-pyrite used for black dye corrodes wool over time. Up until recently, a rug’s coloring reflected the ecology of its provenance, just as its gul, or tribe-specific floral motif, reflected the local flora.13 Now that synthetic dyes are in use (and most Afghan rugs made outside the country), this is less often the case.
In the early 20th century, Afghanistan had a policy of radical neutrality rivaling that of Switzerland (called bitarafi in Farsi/Dari, meaning without sides).14 Yet, the country’s current state is nothing less than war-torn. Like most nations, Afghanistan has known internal warfare, but war rugs are made by and for its conflicts with invading external powers. Let us then examine the parallel paths of imperialism and the rug industry.
Western involvement in Afghanistan began with a game. The “Great Game,” as it was known, was a 19th-century geopolitical competition between the Russian and British empires. Fearing Russian invasion, British India sought to absorb Afghanistan as a territorial buffer.15 The Emirate of Afghanistan was a key trade corridor for both powers, connecting Russia to the Persian Gulf and India to the Ottoman Empire. Hence, the game. A series of wars followed; the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1838 (Afghan win), the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878 (British win), plus two Anglo-Sikh wars and a Russian annexation.16
Textile records from pre-20th-century Afghanistan are scant. But in the few surviving British-era rugs, one will find incipient signs of foreign influence. A 19th-century Qarai rug (fig. 4) from the Sotheby’s auction catalog shows just this. Along its border, small sickle-brandishing stick figures nest within the geometric gul. Upturned shoes reveal the figures to be Russian Cossacks, who were present in Khorasan during the tangle of the Great Game.17 Against the heavily pictographic war rugs on the market today, this rug could be understood as a predecessor. Islam has long forbidden figurative art, instead privileging geometric and abstract forms of the sublime (e.g. fig. 3). So, the inclusion of Cossacks in the Qarai rug marks not only a move towards representational art, but also a departure from Islamic doctrine.
Figure 4. Mina-Khani Rug, 19th century, wool, Qarai tribe, Khorasan.
War machinery did not surface in weaving until 1920.18 The first known rug to show this development bears a lone World War I biplane over a landscape of date palms and pomegranate trees.19 It took another 60 years until the 1979 Soviet invasion for war implements to resurface, upon which the rug industry was subject to three developments:20
- A disruption of rug production
- An exodus of Afghan refugees to neighboring countries (namely Pakistan)
- An influx of new rug motifs
A motif that has dominated the war rug industry and remains bound to a specific event is the “Soviet Exodus” (figs. 13-16).21 The final section will explore these rugs in more depth, but in sum, these rugs show (with little variation) the 1989 Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, wherein tanks make a diagonal retreat to the rugs’ top-left corner while Kalashnikovs blaze below. Shoddy translations are the most individualizing aspect of these rugs. In one (fig. 14), a block of text reads:
USSEWANIEDANIEDAFGHANISTANISPEOPLE
IUHISPARTJOINIINGBUIUSSRCANNOT
HAVEAFGHANISTANISAREAFORMUJAHDENGIVE
In other words, “The USSR wanted Afghanistan’s people to join the USSR, the USSR cannot have Afghanistan, the area is for Mujahideen.” Notice that the text here is in Latin script, not Cyrillic. This is because the manufacturer had American buyers in mind. Earlier rugs bear similarly scrambled Russian text, but the earliest have Arabic captions. Ergo, it is plausible that the Exodus style began as an Afghan commemoration of victory, but was commodified soon thereafter.
War rug production more or less halted between the Soviet retreat and the US invasion. A 1997 Times article quotes Mohammed Raheem, an Afghan refugee and rug producer: “Mr. Raheem said that since the war ended in 1989, weaving of war rugs has ceased in the villages and only a few refugee camps produce them.”22 Raheem’s remarks build towards the argument made here. There is no doubt that the war’s trauma remained in the minds of refugees, even after Soviet surrender. Why, then, would the weaving of these so-called “expressive documents” come to an end? While it is possible that a culture of forgetting could be responsible, the truth is likely darker. With text that is evidently illegible to their makers, war rugs may be merchandise for an imperial appetite.
After the events of 11 September 2001, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom. This was the title given to the US’s first foray in the Global War on Terrorism.23 Operation Enduring Freedom endured until 31 December 2014, whereupon it was decommissioned and replaced with Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.24 In the context of war rugs, the first operation is indistinguishable from the second. That said, there is a clear distinction between the US and Soviet invasions. M240s replace Kalashnikovs, vehicles begin to look more American, and drones appear. Similar to the 1989-2001 production gap, the fact that this transition is so distinct harms the argument for free expression. It is unlikely that an Afghan weaver illustrating their hardship would devote much detail to the weapons used against them. Yet, as figure 9 shows, graphic accuracy is a selling point for war rugs.
Similar to Soviet Exodus rugs, the US invasion has its own textile trademark. Carpets featuring 9/11 are among the most formulaic and thus identifiable of all war rugs. The “War Against Terror” slogan appears in its many misspelled permutations, the World Trade Center overlays a map of Afghanistan, a missile launches from an aircraft carrier, and sometimes, the dove of peace flies between the American and Afghan flags (figs. 10 and 11). The array in figure 11, ironically enough, comes from an army surplus webstore.25 There, the interested shopper is invited to choose the quality of the rug, from below average to exceptional, and to view the “frequently bought together” item: cargo pants.
Figure 5. Amānullāh Khan Rug with Falcons, 1950s, wool, Mashwani tribe, Afghanistan.
Figure 6. Six Portraits of Amānullāh Khan, 1990s, wool, Mashwani tribe, Afghanistan.
Woven textiles are no stranger to violence. In the Iliad, Helen of Troy debuts alongside the loom where she weaves the story of the Trojan War.26 Likewise, the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry shows William, Duke of Normandy's invasion of England. With 70 meters of embroidered history, it serves as one of the most complete documents of the Norman conquest. This interrelation of cloth and war continues through history. It crops up in Flemish tapestry27 and in Chinese art,28 which tends to be violence-averse. Even in Afghanistan, conflict isn’t specific to war rugs. An adaptation of the myth of Shahnameh appears on a rug from the 1990s, in which the white forces of good scrap with the red devil.29 But war rugs remain unique in that they are the first to incorporate contemporary war images.30 Moreover, they have mirrored the progressive introduction of weaponry since their emergence. The US army’s transition from Predator to Reaper/Predator B drones, for instance, is visible in this material record.31
Thanks to this documentation, the rugs track both transformations in the Afghan conflict and iconographic transformations within weaving itself. Figures 5 and 6 show two portraits of Amānullāh Khan, the national hero who liberated Afghanistan from British rule. In the older rug (fig. 5), he appears in the closest thing to a “naturalistic” portrait Afghan weaving can offer. This example was made 30 years after his revolution.32 His likeness continues to emerge in war rugs, especially in times of Afghan victory like the 1989 Soviet exodus. The later specimen (fig. 6) shows how, over time, the stylistics of Mashwani weaving have subsumed Khan’s portrait. His likeness is shrunk, multiplied, and abstracted, similar to the camels and tanks in figures 7 and 8. In the future, the upright, hand-on-hip posture of Amānullāh Khan could further reduce into another gul in the Mashwani weaver’s repertoire.
In the same vein of Khan’s iconographic reduction, weaving has also transformed existing motifs into images of war. Consider figures 7 and 8. The 19th-century Turkmen prayer mat on the left (fig. 7) shows 14 camels assembled in a grid. On the right (fig. 8), a modern Baluch rug has eight tanks assembled in a similar manner.33 The similarities here are evident. Camel humps have morphed into tank turrets, the left-reaching necks into guns, and even some floral motifs persist. Kevin Sudeith, the purveyor of warrug.com, argues that the “guns up” position in figure 8 indicates retreat, and that this type of rug is thus a victory rug.34 Yet, when placed alongside an older design, this logic falters. What is happening here is not so much a documentation as it is an adaptation. In making the rug, the weaver drew inspiration from existing formats. But as the next section will discuss, the motivation to include weaponry at all is more complicated.
Figure 7. Shirvan Carpet. 1880, wool, Shirvan, Iran.
Figure 8. Abrash (mottled) Rug, 2000s, wool, Baluchi, Afghanistan.
Figure 9. Zulmai, an Afghan Carpet seller, displays his "war rug" featuring a variety of weapons to Army Lt. Col. Chris Kubik at his shop in Camp Eggers, the US base in Kabul, Afghanistan. Rafiq Maqbool, 12 March 2009.
It is too easy to claim, as many publications have, that war rugs are simply what they appear to be. Take for instance this quote from a 2017 Master’s thesis:
“The designers who found themselves in refugee camps expressed their emotions and feelings in their rug design using images taken from around them – displaying images of hand grenades, AK 47s and other weaponry. Afghan rugs and carpets once famous for their beauty and design morphed into war rugs, reflecting the conflict and frustration at the war zone their country had become”35
At first glance, bold colors and a smattering of war implements pose as the lived experience of Afghan weavers through the filter of an “ancient practice.”36 What many scholars and collectors thus seek in war rugs is a folksy expression of suffering. In reality, war rugs are no more unfettered from the global market than most folk art. That is to say, war rugs are souvenirs.
Figure 9 shows an Afghan carpet vendor at work in his shop in Camp Eggers, a US army encampment in Kabul. Shops like his are among the various amenities of American military bases, and incidentally, where most war rugs change from Afghan to American hands.37 Though little remains to prove it, Russian bases likely enjoyed the same market during the Soviet occupation. Hence, the war rug industry has had a dominant and local Western client since its inception. The fact that war rugs are emblazoned with the weaponry of their buyers only further compounds the implication that they gratify Western interests. A 2008 article for Smithsonian Magazine confronts this paradox head-on:
“‘The rugs are geared for a tourist market,’ says Margaret Mills, a folklorist at Ohio State University who has conducted research in Afghanistan since 1974. ‘And they verbally address this market.’ Sediq Omar, a rug merchant from Herat who dealt in war rugs during and after the Soviet occupation, agrees. ‘Afghanis don't want to buy these,’ he says. ‘They're expensive for them. It's the Westerners who are interested.’”38
Like many folk arts adapted for the souvenir market, the quality of war rugs compared to other Afghan carpets is poor.39 But, since textile machinery has not penetrated Afghan weaving, even rugs of the shoddiest quality can take several weeks to create.40 This concerted investment of labor is rarely met with a satisfactory return for the weaver. Many households are thus incentivized to recruit children for weaving. Because it is a “cottage industry,” so to speak, rug-weaving is one of the few sectors of child labor that does not inhibit children from attending school. Nonetheless, it is deleterious to their health, and makes Afghanistan’s weaving industry one of the worst in the world for child labor.41 Hence, a war rug hung in a Canberra art gallery may not have been the work of an experienced artisan, but that of a child coerced into labor.
Figure 10. Twin Towers Rug, 2004, wool, Kabul, Afghanistan.
Figure 11. 9/11 Pattern War Rugs, n.d., wool, Afghanistan.
Kevin Sudeith is by all accounts the go-to guy for war rugs. When a major news outlet elects to write on the carpets, he is usually the one interviewed.42 Further, his website, warrug.com, is the most complete index of war rugs on the internet. His insights are thus of considerable value. A piece for The Atlantic quotes Sudeith, saying, “If I write a blog post about a particular rug…eighteen months later contemporary, handmade versions of it will appear.”43 Per the argument of the previous section, it is clear that war rugs are made with a Western buyer in mind. What’s more, Sudeith’s comments show that buyers and weavers are in constant (albeit indirect) conversation. Even the bouncy “millennial aesthetic” of recent years has infiltrated war rugs (fig. 12). In spite of their poignant impression on third-world romantics, the laws of supply and demand apply here as much as any other craft. Moreover, the fact that the war rug industry is perceptive and susceptible to market trends is incompatible with the fantasy that the artisans are weaving their truth.
In another example of market attunement, a 2009 docu-short by the Associated Press interviews carpet seller Haji Qandi Shah and his son in their shop. In a soundbite, Shah says, “If the fighting continues, designs of weapons and rifles on the rugs will continue as well. If fighting stops, maybe this custom will change, people will design something else instead of these weapons and guns, they might start designing flowers and other items.”44 Though equivocal as to the rugs’ motivation, Shah’s words attest that weavers have things they would rather depict. Alongside a later soundbite from US Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Holt, the nature of production becomes more clear: “I think it is the fact that [the war rug] is unique to Afghanistan and it shows its history, you know it shows its military history, I mean the rest of their military history. I mean it is a group of people that for two thousand years have been unconquerable. There's a lot of history here.”45 From a perspective such as Lt. Col. Holt’s, the rugs summarize Afghanistan—a culture of so-called “military prowess.” From an Afghan perspective, meanwhile, the rugs account for an unwelcome state of affairs.
Figure 12. Beautifully Handmade Genuine Afghan War Rug, 2021, unknown fiber, Afghanistan.
Returning to the hot pink war rug (fig. 12), we have a case study in commodified victimhood. In the item description, the seller writes, “Afghani Rug makers [sic] make these rugs to express their feelings and show others some of the scenes they have experienced through life in a country that has suffered decades of conflict.”46 Not only does this blurb somehow liken refugees to children in art therapy, but it construes them as underdogs whose very position should enhance the appeal of their product. In reality, this rug and most of its kind prioritize the customer’s idea of victimhood, and not any victim’s actual experience. Nowhere are the ugly realities of food insecurity, environmental degradation, ordnance contamination, poverty, trauma, and death.47 Rather, there are the symbols of the Afghan war—9/11, assault rifles, tanks, and explosives—no more critical of armed combat than a G.I. Joe toy. To be sure, Afghan civilians are exposed to these symbols, but they are of little importance in the daily struggle to survive.
To conclude this section and to again illustrate the cognitive divide, consider this quote from a 2013 Forbes article: “Wayne Anderson of Birmingham, Ala., who also collects the rugs, likes them for a less highbrow reason: ‘They make good high school graduation gifts. The images appeal to teenagers accustomed to violent images in video games.’”48
Figures 13, 14, 15, 16. Exodus-type war rugs.
Up to this point, this essay has argued that war rugs are not true expressions by their makers. But some have refuted such brazen assertions. In her 2009 article, “Battleground: War Rugs From Afghanistan,” Susan Cahill contends that “while there are certainly economic factors at work [in war rug making], reading the rugs solely as commodified interpretations of “Western” desires by Afghan producers ignores other conditions of their production.”49 Although war rugs could indeed result from the “twin needs of subsistence and self-expression,”50 it’s impossible to know whether weavers’ perspectives exist therein until a weaver confirms it so. Until then, one can only draw from the available information which, as it stands, is not conducive to weavers’ agency.
Like the 9/11-type rugs discussed earlier, the “Soviet Exodus” rugs (figs. 13-16) have a standardized format. Tanks exit at 10 o’clock, helicopters fly overhead, a left-pointing Kalashnikov ornaments the lower half, and a mishmash of machinery and text fills the gaps. Yet, in spite of this strict template, the four rugs shown are anything but identical. Considering that each rug is a collection of “half a million hand-knotted pixels,”51 it stands to reason that variation would occur between iconographic analogs, even those from the same workshop. So, while war rugs don’t reflect weavers’ perspectives, they do reflect weavers’ artistry. It is for this reason that war rugs still qualify as art objects.
To this end, Mohsen Keyhanpour and Abolghasem Neymateshahrbabaki of Sistan & Baluchestan University provide insight in their 2018 article for the Journal of Subcontinent Researches. In their study, they divide war rugs into four categories graded by authenticity.52 Their typology is as follows:
- Rugs with no authenticity. They are “war rugs” only for the inclusion of weaponry.
- Rugs that illustrate subjects related to the war. For instance, portraits of Ahmad Shah Massoud, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Amanullah Khan, or events like the Russian military exodus and 9/11. These rugs are also without authenticity.
- Rugs produced through traditional methods and color systems, but with an abundance of war motifs. This group of rugs grew popular when war spread across the country.
- The most authentic group. These rugs use traditional motifs and patterns, with only a few war elements in their design. They are the earliest examples of Afghan war rugs.
Take for example the first rug discussed—the war-prayer rug (fig. 1). Based on its chronology and limited inclusion of war motifs, it would fall under the fourth group; the “most authentic.” Other rugs, like the abrash rug (fig. 8) and the hot-pink Etsy special (fig. 12) would fall in the third and first grades, respectively. In debates of authenticity and commodity, typologies like Keyhanpour and Neymateshahrbabaki’s are invaluable. For one, they provide nuance in a dialogue dominated by sensationalizing news articles. And, seeing as Sistan & Baluchestan University lies 26 miles from the Afghan border, theirs is perhaps the closest perspective one will find to the source.
Since its birth in the 1980s, the war rug has become an art movement without a single artist to speak for it. As Keyhanpour and Neymateshahrbabaki’s study shows, the further the rugs stray from their roots, the less authentic and more commercial they become. Thus, what began as a riff on traditional weaving practices has, for better or worse, become means for economic survival. In other words, the carpets are a necessary cultural adaptation. If this statement seems to homogenize the weavers and deprive them of agency, it’s because they are—nameless, faceless, and many living in refugee camps, yet their work hangs in galleries from Toronto to Berlin. Under such conditions, how can war rugs qualify as free artistic expression?
While the rugs may not be “expressive documents” per se, they are nonetheless products of a conflict. Figures nine through twelve show rugs tailored to Western interests, be it visual trends (fig. 12), confirmation bias (fig. 10-11), or the aesthetics of imperialism (fig. 9). The fact that the occupied make these carpets for the occupant only heightens their embodiment of neocolonial frameworks. This begs the question, are war rugs only the beginning? In an economy of incessant expansion, the war souvenir market could very well spread to other conflicts. War pots from the Maghreb Insurgency, for instance, or war embroidery from Ukraine, all depicting a sterile yet visually titillating idea of armed combat. These are the possibilities created by neocolonialism and fuelled by commodification of the exotic.
Endnotes
“Guide to Afghan War Rugs”, n.d.
Klimburg 2001, 375; Bonyhady, Lendon, and Dhamija 2003; Allen 2008; Wild and Passow 2015; Mascelloni and Sawkins 2020; Bonyhady and Lendon 2021.
Diamond and Mailey 1973, 6; Spooner 2011, 12.
Spooner 2011, 14.
Dimand and Mailey 1973, 286; Spooner 2011, 17.
Kremmer 2007, 299.
Jacobsen 1962, 86.
Jacobsen 1962, 68; Lewis 1913, 278.
Bonyhady, Lendon, and Dhamija 2003, 6.
Clark 1922, 67.
Barmaki 2020, 98.
Clark 1922, 38.
Dimand and Mailey 1973, 286.
Andisha 2015, 1; Andisha 2017, 241, 255. Although bitarafi is now an official policy, it originates from colonial buffer state ideologies.
Ingram 1980, 161; Becker 2004, 16.
Ingram 1980, 168.
Becker 2004, 75.
Spooner 2011, 14.
The rug’s image wasn’t included here since none seem to exist. However, its catalog entry at the Textile Museum of Canada can be viewed here: collections.textilemuseum.ca/collection/22581. See the previous citation for a partial view.
Barmaki 2020, 96.
“Soviet Exodus”, n.d.
Rohrlich 1997. The quoted text represents Mr. Raheem’s remarks in their entirety. His are the only words from a rugmaker turned up in the research for this article.
“CNN” 2001.
Lead Inspector General for Overseas Contingency Operation 2015, 73.
“Afghan 9/11 Pattern War Rugs”, n.d.
Pantelia 1993, 495.
“V&A · The War Of Troy Tapestry”, n.d.
“The Abduction of Helen from a set of The Story of Troy”, n.d.
Bonyhady, Lendon, and Dhamija 2003, 22, 30.
Rohrlich 1997.
Bizzarri 2015.
Molesworth 1962, 93.
The “ten tanks” motif is popular in war rugs, though fig. 8 has only eight because of its reduced dimensions.
“Ten Tank War Rugs”, n.d.
Changis 2017, 9.
Stein 2016.
According to Forbes, at least three US Special Forces operatives stationed in Afghanistan are moonlighting as war rug buyers (Helman 2003).
Kirk 2008.
Spooner 2011, 17.
Rohrlich 1997.
International Labor Organization 2018, 25.
Helman 2003; NPR 2015; Bizzarri 2015.
Bizzarri 2015.
Associated Press, dir. 2009.
Associated Press, dir. 2009.
Beautifully Handmade Genuine Afghan War Rug 44x41 cm. 2021. Etsy.
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs 2021.
Helman 2003.
Cahill 2009, 230.
Cooke 2005, 24.
Bonyhady, Lendon, and Dhamija 2003, 22.
Keyhanpour and Neymateshahrbabaki 2018, 230.
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Pantelia, Maria C. 1993. “Spinning and weaving: Ideas of domestic order in Homer.” The American Journal of Philology 114 (4): 493-501.
Rohrlich, Marianne. 1997. “Images of War, Made Graceful on a Rug (Published 1997).” The New York Times, January 16, 1997. nytimes.com/1997/01/16/garden/images-of-war-made-graceful-on-a-rug.html.
“Soviet Exodus.” n.d. War Rugs. Accessed February 11, 2022. warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?ids=4.
Spooner, Brian. 2011. “Afghan Wars, Oriental Carpets, and Globalization.” Expedition 53 (1): 11-20.
Stein, Jenny. 2016. “Voicing Global Conflict, Survival.” The Temple News, March 15, 2016. temple-news.com/voicing-global-conflict-survival.
“Ten Tank War Rugs.” n.d. War Rugs. Accessed February 10, 2022. warrug.com.
“V&A · The War Of Troy Tapestry.” n.d. V&A. Accessed February 10, 2022. vam.ac.uk/articles/the-war-of-troy-tapestry.
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. 2021. “Afghan Civilians | Costs of War.” Brown University. watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/afghan.
Wild, Thomas, and Till Passow, eds. 2015. Geknüpftes Gedächtnis: Krieg in afghanischer Teppichkunst. Berlin: WILD Teppich- & Textilkunst.
Images
Baluch War Rug. (n.d.). Furniture.com. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from furniture.com/rugs/guide/oriental/afghan/war-rugs.
Pile Carpet. (n.d.) State Hermitage Museum. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermitage/digital-collection/25.+archaeological+artifacts/879870.
Adraskand Carpet. 18th century. In George G. Lewis, The Practical Book of Oriental Rugs, 107. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1913.
Baluch 19th Century Mina-Khani Design Rug. WorthPoint. Accessed February 11, 2022. worthpoint.com/worthopedia/baluch-19th-century-mina-khani-design-538042898.
1950's Aman Ullah Khan Rug with Falcons. 2000. War Rugs. warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?idr=1141.
Six Portraits of Amman Ullah Khan. 2021. War Rugs. warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?idr=1381.
19th Century Caucasian Shirvan Camel, Dark Blue and Orange Rug. 2021. Ebay. ebay.com/itm/Antique-Caucasian-Shirvan-BB5356-/182456148674?roken=cUgayN.
Cool Abrash War Rug. 2000. War Rugs. warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?idr=1544.
Maqbool, Rafiq. Zulmai, an Afghan Carpet Seller. 2009. NBC. nbcnews.com/id/wbna30179425.
Twin Towers Rug. 2016. Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. smoca.org/exhibition/afghan-war-rugs-the-modern-art-of-central-asia.
Afghan 9/11 Pattern War Rugs. Kommando Store. Accessed February 11, 2022. kommandostore.com/products/afghan-9-11-pattern-war-rugs.
Beautifully Handmade Genuine Afghan War Rug 44x41 cm. 2021. Etsy. etsy.com/listing/950769499/188-beautifully-handmade-genuine-afghan?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details.
All Yellow Soviet Story Afghan War Rug. 2002. War Rugs. warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?idr=286.
Woven Afghan War Rug. 2010. British Museum. britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_2010-6013-24.
Soviet Exodus Rug. 2007. War Rugs. warrug.com/warrugs/styles.php?idr=760
Woven Afghan War Rug. 2010. British Museum. britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_2010-6013-26.