{"id":61814,"date":"2022-02-25T04:44:26","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T09:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=61814"},"modified":"2022-02-25T04:44:26","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T09:44:26","slug":"afghanistans-libraries-go-into-blackout-it-is-painful-to-see-the-distance-between-people-and-books-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/afghanistans-libraries-go-into-blackout-it-is-painful-to-see-the-distance-between-people-and-books-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan\u2019s libraries go into blackout: \u2018It is painful to see the distance between people and books grow\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lights are off, shelves are in disarray and dust has coated every single book,\u201d says Zabihullah Ehsas, my longtime friend and mentor, describing the current state of\u00a0Khushal Baba<\/a>\u00a0Ketabtun, a library we established together in 2012. Our efforts represented an attempt to address the shortage of Pashto books in Mazar-i-Sharif, the cultural and economic hub of northern Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Funded by the\u00a0Goethe-Institut<\/a>, and holding a collection of nearly 4,000 volumes in Pashto, one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, the library quickly turned into a stomping ground for the city\u2019s intellectuals, nurturing and hosting an array of literary programs \u2014 including literary critiques, poetry recitals and competitions, book reviews, guest speakers and anniversaries of renowned authors.<\/p>\n

Now \u201cit has been seven months that no one has peeked into the library,\u201d Ehsas tells me via WhatsApp. I can hear a lump in his throat. \u201cIt is painful to see the distance between people and books grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

True.<\/p>\n

The Taliban takeover last August hit Afghanistan\u2019s reading culture and book industry especially hard. Libraries such as Khushal Baba Ketabtun, with its highly fertile and engaging environment, went quiet.\u00a0The number of book stores is rapidly shrinking<\/a>, and publishers and printing houses are in a deep economic crisis, with some\u00a0already closed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"

A boy reads at the Rahila library, in Kabul, in March 2019.<\/p><\/div>\n

Squashed, neglected libraries<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Suppressing regimes and widespread chaos<\/a>\u00a0over a span of 40 years squashed the public libraries and reading culture in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0communists<\/a>\u00a0cracked down on religious books and the\u00a0mujahedeen<\/a>\u00a0burned communist books after toppling the last communist president, Mohammad Najibullah.<\/p>\n

In the mid-\u201890s,\u00a0the Taliban<\/a>\u00a0tried to further erase the cultural elements of the country.\u00a0The destruction of Buddha statues in Bamyan<\/a>\u00a0was the boldest example of this rampage.<\/p>\n

When the United States-backed republic formed in 2001, a government\u00a0engulfed by corruption<\/a>\u00a0and insurgency had little-to-no interest in rehabilitating\u00a0the country\u2019s libraries<\/a>. They were largely neglected and remained non-functioning.<\/p>\n

As a faculty member at\u00a0Balkh University<\/a>\u00a0in Mazar-i-Sharif, teaching Pashto linguistics and literature, I had observed the library on our campus for a decade before I fled the country in August.<\/p>\n

In a small, dimly lit, low-ceilinged hall, 32,000 books, at least according to official figures, were piled on wooden and metal shelves, creating narrow aisles. Nearly all of the books were outdated, the librarian told me. Untrained, he just kept a record of book borrowings.<\/p>\n

The library didn\u2019t have a comprehensive database; anyone looking for a book had to search the shelves for it. The library had a handful of visitors, exclusively students and professors, who picked the books they needed for their research. No reading took place there!<\/p>\n

Unable to meet the needs<\/a>\u00a0of a book-hungry post-war nation, especially when\u00a0the number of educated youths rapidly increased<\/a>, these libraries gave room to privately run public libraries.<\/p>\n

Private initiatives promote reading culture<\/strong><\/h4>\n

A panoply of initiatives were taken throughout the country to improve access to books and promote the culture of reading and literacy.<\/p>\n

One man<\/a>\u00a0in Kandahar, the heartland of the Taliban, opened\u00a0a small library in a village<\/a>\u00a0that would turn into a national campaign for book donations. Eventually this became a movement, called\u00a0PenPath Volunteers<\/a>, that advocated for education in the most underserved communities.<\/p>\n

A woman in neighbouring Helmand founded\u00a0a small library<\/a>\u00a0single-handedly, from her own personal savings, to provide a space for women to read. Another bright idea came from what became a Kabul-based non-profit organization,\u00a0Charmaghz<\/a>: young Afghans converted buses, rented from a state department, into mobile libraries. The initiative gave\u00a0an adventurous ride and reading experience for the most underprivileged kids in Kabul<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In eastern Afghanistan, a young Afghan\u00a0turned his bicycle into a library<\/a>, peddling books to Afghan villages. A well-known Afghan singer,\u00a0Javed Amirkhil<\/a>,\u00a0joined him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reading circles sprang up in Kabul, including a\u00a0book club for kids<\/a>, the\u00a0Book Cottage<\/a>\u00a0and Kola Poshta, where\u00a0topics such as hedonism, pleasure and sex were discussed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Numerous reading circles tried\u00a0to reunite Afghans with a tradition they had lost to the perpetual conflict<\/a>: reading.<\/p>\n

Publishers nurturing the readership<\/strong><\/h4>\n

In 2001, when\u00a0the international community intervened in Afghanistan and toppled the first Taliban regime<\/a>, many of the exiled publishers and printing houses, especially those in Peshawar, returned.<\/p>\n

By 2013,\u00a0the printing industry was already self-sufficient<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the republic was building and rehabilitating schools and universities,\u00a0millions of textbooks<\/a>\u00a0were needed in a short period of time, providing an opportunity for dozens to invest in the book market; two of my friends and colleagues joined the race.<\/p>\n

In 2018, a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0story on this booming publishing market suggested\u00a0the only things Afghanistan does not import are opium and books<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Afghanistan has\u00a0no operating<\/a>\u00a0national ISBN agency \u2014\u00a0the global registration authority for books<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 so it\u2019s impossible to know how many books have been published in the country in recent decades. Publishers told me Afghanistan had become a member of the agency sometime around 2008, but by and large books continued to be published without ISBN numbers.<\/p>\n

Radio Azadi, Radio Free Europe\u2019s Afghanistan\u00a0Pashto-language broadcast<\/a>, reported that\u00a0hundreds of titles were published on an annual basis<\/a>. But it came with a price. Not only did\u00a0piracy become a real issue<\/a>, but the books published, whether by private publishers or state institutions \u2014 universities or academies of sciences \u2014 largely fell short on substance.<\/p>\n

The authors, who usually self-sponsored their books\u2019 publications, did not follow the rules of research. All that the editors at the publishing houses seemed to do was to proofread \u2014 sometimes badly.<\/p>\n

\"\"

A bookshop owner repairs a book in Herat, Afghanistan, in November 2021. (AP Photo\/Petros Giannakouris)<\/p><\/div>\n

When the demand for textbooks subsided, the publishers faced financial challenges. It was then that they figured a new way out \u2014 something from which the reading public could benefit.<\/p>\n

Many publishers deployed networks of translators in the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere to convert trending books to local languages, including political, self-help and literary masterpieces.\u00a0Aazem Publications<\/a>\u00a0and the publisher\u00a0Aksos<\/a>\u00a0led the way.<\/p>\n

A Pashto translation<\/a>\u00a0of Ivanka Trump\u2019s\u00a0Women Who Work<\/em>, for instance, hit the market and was widely sold.<\/p>\n

Although good translation was still a struggle, the shift nurtured the reading culture and introduced a new generation to world literature to some degree.<\/p>\n

\u2018Running at a loss\u2019<\/h2>\n

And just as progress was being made, a tragic twist of history intervened: The\u00a0Aug. 15, 2021, collapse of the government<\/a>\u00a0and the return of the Taliban turned everything upside down, bringing the country \u2014 and its reading culture and book market \u2014 to a halt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m running at a loss,\u201d says Najibullah Momand, the owner and co-founder of\u00a0Momand Publications<\/a>, one of the leading publishers in eastern Afghanistan, who has not published one book since mid-August. \u201cEven textbooks cannot be afforded.\u201d<\/p>\n

The entire book market has come to a standstill.<\/p>\n

The Taliban have not announced their policy regarding books, but the memories of\u00a0what happened to libraries and reading culture in the mid-\u201890s<\/a>, when they first came to power, still serve.<\/p>\n

Though\u00a0Charmaghz has resumed its operations<\/a>, and our library in Mazar-i-Sharif is still open, the recovery of the reading culture and book industry seems a distant dream.<\/p>\n

Sitting in the once-buzzing library by himself, Ehsas tells me that books are like lights. With no one coming to the library and opening the books, \u201cthe lights are off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Afghanistan is in a blackout.
\n
\nAuthor Bio:<\/strong> Zamir Saar is Dalla Lana Fellow in Global Journalism at the University of Toronto<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe lights are off, shelves are in disarray and dust has coated every single book,\u201d says Zabihullah Ehsas, my longtime friend and mentor, describing the current state of\u00a0Khushal Baba\u00a0Ketabtun, a library we established together in 2012. Our efforts represented an attempt to address the shortage of Pashto books in Mazar-i-Sharif, the cultural and economic hub […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[11954],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-61814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-libraries"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAfghanistan\u2019s libraries go into blackout: \u2018It is painful to see the distance between people and books grow\u2019 - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/afghanistans-libraries-go-into-blackout-it-is-painful-to-see-the-distance-between-people-and-books-grow\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Afghanistan\u2019s libraries go into blackout: \u2018It is painful to see the distance between people and books grow\u2019 - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cThe lights are off, shelves are in disarray and dust has coated every single book,\u201d says Zabihullah Ehsas, my longtime friend and mentor, describing the current state of\u00a0Khushal Baba\u00a0Ketabtun, a library we established together in 2012. 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