Afghan carpets featured in museum

Carpets depicting the turbulent recent history of Afghanistan have gone on display at a museum in the US.

Entitled "The Spirit of Afghanistan: Carpets of War and Hope," the exhibition is being shown at the University of Connecticut's William Benton Museum, the Hartford Courant reports.

The themes of the carpets are not the usual pictures of camels and other life, but of grenades and helicopter gunships, the paper reports.

Curator of the exhibition Ann Norton noted that the tradition of weaving pictures of life into a carpet is a long-standing custom in the country and images of war have been seen in the products since the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979.

While Afghanistan keeps on producing carpets, neighbouring Pakistan recently announced plans to help its own industry grow.

Last month, consultant to the Punjab chief minister on economic affairs Saad Ahsanudin used an exhibition to pledge state support for the development of extra training and facilities in the country's main carpet-making Punjab region.

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