Education About Asia: Online Archives

Web Gleanings: Afghanistan

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Afghanistan

Afghanistan Online

URL: http://www.afghan-web.com/

This site is updated each day, yielding a great deal of information about present-day Afghanistan. On the left side of the home page are numerous links to topics ranging from cooking to geography to languages. The section on the environment is quite extensive, as are the links to biographies and photos.

Afghanland

URL: http://www.afghanland.com/home/home.html

There are many links on this site, some more useful than others. With patience, however, one can uncover many interesting items. The categories listed along the top of the page will help to narrow one’s browsing.

Country Studies: Afghanistan

URL: http://countrystudies.us/afghanistan/index.htm

This is one of the studies produced for the Library of Congress. It was published in 2001, and most of the chapters were completed in the 1990s. Despite the age of the publication, there is much to be learned here, especially in the realm of history and ethnic groups.

The Economist: Afghanistan

URL: http://www.economist.com/topics/afghanistan

The Economist frequently publishes articles about contemporary issues in Afghanistan. This URL will lead to the latest articles about Afghanistan in this journal.

webpage for homeland afghanistanHomeland Afghanistan

URL: http://afghanistan.asiasociety.org/

The Asia Society has collected primary and secondary sources for this digitized project about Afghanistan; there are photos and videos depicting the history of Afghanistan from the age of settlement to the present. The videos of four major eras are featured prominently on the home page; additional videos appear in links underneath. There are also several lesson plans for teachers based on the videos in this project. See an in-depth discussion of the site on page 50 of this issue.

The Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington

URL: http://www.embassyofafghanistan.org/

In addition to describing the embassy staff, its departments, and relations with the US, the site offers an overview of life in Afghanistan. There are articles on travel, culture, and the president. All of the articles can be accessed via the strip of links near the top of the page.

Kabul Travel Guide

URL: http://nyti.ms/MnjIzj

The travel guide pages of The New York Times are replete with advertisements and links to extraneous travel pages, making it difficult to navigate. The gems, therefore, are hidden in this jumble. Look for the following: three print articles about Kabul, an audio/photo show (“Portrait of Kabul”), and a photo slideshow (“Kabul’s Reawakening”).

Kabul Museum

a photo of afghanistan's national museum web pageURL: http://bit.ly/McaR11

URL: http://bit.ly/o1Y7vI

URL: http://bit.ly/Mt79OO

The first article describes the history of the Kabul Museum, including its lamentable destruction at the end of the twentieth century. The second article depicts the museum in recent years. The YouTube video shows some of the remaining pieces in the Kabul Museum after the destruction of almost all of its artifacts.

Afghanistan’s Religious Landscape: Politicizing the Sacred (video)

URL: http://vimeo.com/15642480

This one-hour video presents a briefing about religion in Afghanistan given at the Berkeley Center of Georgetown University. The full text in PDF formatting is here: bit.ly/zyuQG8.

The Daily Outlook

URL: http://outlookafghanistan.net/

This Internet newspaper, founded in 2006, has the largest circulation in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Group of Newspapers publishes it in English and the national languages.

Music in Afghanistan—A Sensitive Subject

URL: http://n.pr/umaS6d

This five-minute audio report by NPR discusses the latest events in the realm of Afghanistan music. Its focus is the new Afghan National Institute of Music, founded in 2010. ANIM’s mission is the promotion of music education in Afghanistan, offering classes, festivals, and concerts.

Music of Afghanistan

URL: http://bit.ly/r98LY5

In 1948, Folkways Records sought to record the “music of the world.” The Smithsonian acquired Folkways and its archives in 1987, and their collection of Afghan music is discussed here, along with accompanying videos. There are also lesson plans and other aids for teachers; the link “Tools for Teachers” is at the top of the page.

National Geographic Afghanistan Guide

URL: http://on.natgeo.com/cBgWh5

The National Geographic Society presents two major articles here, one about contemporary women in Afghanistan and another about opium. Click on the feature of your choice for videos, including one of an Afghan actress driving her car, music blaring, through the streets of Kabul.

The September 11th Sourcebooks

URL: http://bit.ly/2ww5Nv

The National Security Archive at George Washington University has com- piled a collection of primary documents pertaining to events preceding and following September 11. There are four volumes; the second and fourth volumes focus on Afghanistan.

photo of a statue carved into a wallAfghanistan: The Harrison Forman Collection

URL: http://bit.ly/MDHUNz

The Harrison Forman collection of photos at the University of Wisconsin has almost 100,000 images. There are 733 slides of Afghanistan taken in the late 1960s, and 195 are online. This web page allows for selecting by historical sites, geographic features, and other keywords. To view the en- tire collection of 195 images, click on the link at the top of the page.

About-Afghanistan

URL: http://www.about-afghanistan.com/index.html

The author of these pages is an American woman living in Kabul with her family who depicts life away from ongoing war. She writes about the culture, the food, and the people in a nonacademic style. Nevertheless, one gets a good sense of what daily life is like in Afghanistan.

Williams Afghan Media Project

URL: http://bit.ly/GSkOCB

The Williams Afghan Media Project is a collection of photos dating from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. This site has 200 pages of photos with more than 4,000 images.

The National Bureau of Asian Research

URL: http://nbr.org

The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) was founded in 1989 with the assistance of the late Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington. Using the search term “Afghanistan” in the search box in the upper right of the home page will return several hundred articles and special reports that can be sorted by date or relevance. (See the sorting link near the top of the page.)