UNESCO Rallies Support for
Afghanistan Libraries, Museums
“Afghanistan’s cultural heritage is under extreme threat,” said Martin Hadlow, representing UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura at a United Nations press briefing December 28 in Islamabad, Pakistan. UNESCO representatives had visited the Afghan capital, Kabul, and met with the war-ravaged nation’s new minister of culture and information, Raheen Makhdoon, who called for worldwide assistance to Kabul public libraries and museums.
The UNESCO visit was an effort to focus international donor attention on the cultural revival of Afghan society, according to a transcript of the press briefing posted on ReliefWeb online. “I walked through desolation,” Hadlow said. “What has happened is a loss of cultural heritage for the world, a heritage which belongs to all humanity.”
In December, the embassy of Iran distributed over 15,000 books to some 50 schools and mosques in Kabul. During the five years of Taliban rule, libraries were closed, and many handwritten books and other examples of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage were destroyed. Qodsi, director of Kabul’s public library, said December 14 in theFrontier Post, an English-language daily from Peshawar, Pakistan, that the books that have survived in Afghanistan are old and outdated and do not include any information about modern technology and science. He also asked international cultural associations to assist in the rebuilding of the nation’s libraries.
Posted January 7, 2002.
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