Opening remarks of renowned journalist and author Christopher Krammer* at the opening ceremony of "The Rugs of War" exhibition At the School of Arts Gallery of the Australian National University, Canberra, 13 June 2003

From right to left – Nigel Lendon, ANU Prof David Williams, Lindy Allen, Christopher Kremmer, HE Mahmoud Saikal, at the opening ceremony

Welcome to you all on this wonderful occasion and thank you to the Australian National University's National Institute for the Arts for assembling this excellent exhibition and for kindly inviting me to open it.

When Nigel Lendon and Tim Bonyhady first told me about their idea for an exhibition of war rugs over lunch in Canberra earlier this year, I found myself overwhelmed by their enthusiasm. They had assembled a large number of images of the rugs in question, and were asking for my thoughts about them, and even suggesting that I might perform the official opening of the exhibition. This, I must admit, made me feel slightly uncomfortably. No matter how much I tried to fake enthusiasm, my expression must have given away my real feelings.

Eventually, I decided that I must make a confession; I never liked war rugs.

I'm not authority on carpets in general, let alone the Rugs of War, but I did write a book in which carpets and wars were two of the main themes, and which appropriately enough is called The Carpet Wars. Now you'd think with a theme like that I might have dwelt on War Rugs, but in fact, in a book of some 120,000 words, I devote precisely three sentences to them, two of which read as follows:

"Some (rugs) featured battle scenes in which mujahideen shouldered missile launchers to bring down Russian helicopters. The 'war rugs' were part of the country's folk history."

The country, of course, is Afghanistan, a nation that has had more than its fair share of both war and carpets, and which probably has produced the world's most recognisable body of war rugs. So why didn't I concentrate more on the war rugs?

In the early 1990s when I first began travelling in Afghanistan and Pakistan-and becoming increasingly interested in carpets-war rugs were not hard to find. But generally, you didn't find them in the homes of Afghans of Pakistanis or Kashmiris. You found them in the homes and offices of what in those days was the quite large tribe of Westerners camped in Pakistan and running various aid agencies and international organisations servicing the million of Afghan refugees who had flooded into the country during the war the Russians, and then later during the civil war between Afghan militias.

Now these western helpers and observers are not, in general, aesthetic types. Their lives are not lives of leisure. They are busy, workaholic types obsessed by the substance of things, with little time or patience for appearances. So their abodes and workplaces are often quite austere, dominated by grey steel filing cabinets and chipped furniture inherited from their predecessors, or grimy computers and printers covered in a patina of ink and dust. They're often drifters, and their surroundings often mirror this shifting, rootless existence.

So, this was the context in which I would see war rugs, hanging on a wall-probably one of the pins had fallen out, so it was askew. Dulled from years of dust, never having been cleaned. Not an agreeable showcase for them., I'm sure you'll agree.

But my problem with war rugs went much deeper than that. Because when I actually looked at them, I must admit, made me physically ill. These are not, in general, beautiful objects. Their palette is lurid, the motifs, angular and violent. The stories they relate form a narrative of invasion and armed conflict, of displacement and revenge. Look at any one of them, and you'll see what I mean-borders formed by neatly stacked mortars, grenades and shoulder-fired rocket launchers. Instead of floral emblems, tanks and radar arrays, fighter jets and helicopter gunships. Woven slogans exhort the mujahideen, or Islamic resistance, to holy war, and depict their secular enemies dangling from strings dangled by communist puppeteers, or in a few cases, hanging from the scaffold. Most commonly of all, is that terrible icon of lightly armed militias everywhere from Morocco to Manila-the AK-47 Kalashnikov semi-automatic rifle.

Frankly, after a hard day at the office, I needed to be soothed. Especially when 'the office' was the very war these rugs recorded. My eye for a good rug was just beginning to develop, but even an amateur like me could see these were not made by the most technically accomplished weavers. In fact, most of them seemed to come out of the refugee camps in Pakistan, where most of the inhabitants-the ethnic Pushtuns, had been farmers, not weavers. Instead of the ugly war rugs, I preferred the order of Turkmen carpets from northern Afghanistan with their stately array of ornamental symbols, or rich blue and brown palette of Baluchi prayer rugs, or even the bucolic splendour of Iran's nomadic Qashqai tribe.

But after viewing this exhibition, I'm beginning to worry that I may have passed up an investment opportunity. With the benefit of hindsight I can see the historical significance of these dynamic, inventive creations. Their authors may have been illiterate in their own languages-and almost as bad at spelling in English as I am-but that didn't stop them articulating their response to the madness of the war that was destroying their country. Simultaneously, they recorded history, and turned it into art. How many of us could do both, and still make a living? Not content with weaving history, some of them actually predicted it, as in the case of the rug displayed here, in which the former President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Najibullah, who I had the dubious honour of meeting, is strung up by the neck.

Forced out of the homelands, and forced to survive any way they could, these Afghan weavers bore witness to history, and their accounts can hold their own with any textbook. The role of rugs as a vehicle of expression continues to this day, and we in the West might not like the message some of them are conveying. We find ourselves disturbed and intrigued by the matter of fact portrayal of the September 11 terrorist attacks in one of these rugs, which give little indication of where the weavers' sympathies lay.

But if you look more closely, you will also see glimpses of that damaged, but still tremendously resilient and important country of Afghanistan, the crucible of this unique art form. Unveiled nomad women lead convoys of camels carrying their children across the desert. There are mountains, monuments and gardens to be visited. These magic carpets do not whisk us away to distant lands, they bring those lands to us, like woolly windows on another world, complete with maps to assist in our orientation.

There are even signs of the growing sophistication and expertise of the weavers. In some of the grander war rugs displayed here, their palettes become more restrained, their layouts more orderly, and their designs more classical . In them you see the seaseless human imperative to create, to restore, to save

So let's hope that's another prophesy, one that covers the future of Afghanistan. If you're interested in doing something to contribute to a better future for that country, you might consider joining a new group I am part of called the Friends of Afghanistan, and the Ambassador of Afghanistan, His Excellency Mr Mahmoud Saikal, who has kindly consented to be here tonight, can tell you all about that if you ask him.

But for now, please look at these rugs and imagine where they came from. Then you will truly understand the tragedy of Afghanistan. Good night and please join me in thanking the organisers of the exhibition. End

*Christopher Krammer is a member of the Advisory Board of the Cultural and Educational Centre of Afghanistan (CECA) Inc.