The document discusses Afghanistan's cultural heritage amid ongoing violence and instability. It summarizes an interview with Ahmad Wali Masoud, who believes widespread investment across Afghanistan's provinces would stabilize the security situation and undermine groups like the Taliban. The document also proposes that Canadian museum professionals could help safeguard Afghanistan's cultural heritage by assessing the needs of its museums and working to reorganize the country's cultural institutions. This would counterbalance Canada's military involvement and potentially improve its image. The author, an expert on Central Asia, plans to visit Afghanistan in the fall of 2008 to research trends in cultural heritage policies and produce a report on the continuity of Afghanistan's museums amidst change.

1. Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage – Continuity in Change
by Alessandro Califano, Senior Curator
CRDAV, City of Rome (Italy)
The latest attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7th brings last year’s suicide attacks to
over 140, some of them brought right into the heart of what should be Afghanistan’s most
normalized area. With militias and clans battling each other, diverse military contingents spread
throughout the country, and a crime-ridden economy, the region’s overall situation is not likely to
attract many cultural heritage lovers to museums and monuments in this Central Asian country,
yet.
An interview with Ahmad Wali Masoud [“Ahmad Wali Masoud believes that investment in
Afghanistan may be quite profitable”, Ekspert Kazakhstan – July 2nd, 2008], organizer of a
conference organized in Kyrgyzstan in early June, entitled "Afghanistan, Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, Eurasian Security and Geopolitics", previously Ambassador of Afghanistan in
London, UK, and the brother of the legendary Ahmad Shah Masoud – the Lion of Panshir, who led
the Northern Alliance troops against the Taliban, and was killed by al Qaida members two days
before 9/11 – suggests however a rather different approach:
“Be it the northern or southern provinces, [the higher] the investments, the more stable the
situation will be. Spread investments evenly, in all provinces, and it will be a structure neither
Taliban nor Al-Qaeda will ever destroy. Because you will give the people strength, you will stabilize
the situation and win the people's trust. Moreover, you will win the confidence that people have
something to fight for. It will make your own future secure. […] The Western community […] should
concentrate on the advancement of a dialogue with Moslems and with the Islamic world. Ninety-
nine percent of Moslems are not extremists at all. If you want a dialogue, however, you'd better
make sure that this dialogue is strategic and not tactical…”
From this point of view, building upon the new role that museums, historical monuments and
archaeological areas could have, even in this still problem-ridden area, means to accept the
challenge, and to work for a better change. A “check-up” of museums conditions in Afghanistan,
focusing on losses, balances and mid-term needs of the country’s cultural heritage institutions
should be the first step in a strategy involving Canada’s museum professionals community in
reorganizing and safeguarding Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. It would moreover conveniently
counterbalance Canada’s direct military involvement in the region, and even maybe place it in a
more favourably light.
The proposing Author, Senior Curator at a Documentation Centre for Contemporary Art in Rome
(Italy), a CMA member since 1990, a member of ICOM, and an expert of the Central Asian macro
region, is been working since 2004 at a research project about museum trends and cultural
heritage policies in post-Soviet Central Asian countries. He will be in Afghanistan between
September and October 2008 to collect first hand data, to visit sites and areas of interest, and to
interview cultural heritage protagonists. The resulting product should then be considered as a first
“continuity-in-change” report on Afghanistan’s museums scenery.
© Alessandro Califano, 2008