We often see the arts as only fit for museums, galleries, and film festivals, cloistered in halls only for the intellectual elite. But the arts can help build a nation, or in the case of Afghanistan, are rebuilding a nation, employing its people, and recalling a history forgotten in recent decades of continuous conflict. And a small group of social scientists, architects, and entrepreneurs are using culture as a vehicle to restore Afghanistan, challenging the convention that the arts are only for aesthetics.
“Cultural conservation is directly linked to development and livelihoods here. The historic sites that we’re rebuilding are functioning places, generating revue, providing jobs, and are self-sustaining,” says Ajmal Maiwandi, an Afghan-American architect who returned to the country nearly a decade ago to take up a post with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) to help rebuild Afghanistan’s most historic sites. In that time, Maiwandi explains that AKTC has preserved nearly a 100 sites, even during tense periods of conflict.
Ismailimail 