Apollo Magazine, 29 September 2026
A detailed look into the continuing, but shrinking – due to funding shortfalls – activity to protect cultural heritage sites in Afghanistan, with the minaret of Jam and Herat’s musalla complex as focusses:
Across Afghanistan, a dwindling pool of engineers and conservation specialists like Basim are trying to maintain the country’s ancient monuments in a situation where skills and outside funding are scarce, and residents struggling to earn a living have little left for buildings that need constant care. Although the US withdrawal and Taliban takeover of 2021 have complicated matters, these problems stretch much further back.
(…) the country is also now suffering a more severe brain drain – many specialists left after 2021, while women have been barred from universities – that makes it difficult to carry out work even when the authorities allow it. ‘Permission is not [the same thing as] capacity,’ says [a] retired archaeologist. ‘The Emirate does not have engineers who know Timurid brick. It does not have conservators.’
(…) ‘When a grant ends, the work ends,’ he said. ‘Maintenance is the thing that saves a building, and it is the thing nobody funds, because you cannot put a plaque on it.’
Looting continues to threaten what remains:
Sayed Bashir, a final-year archaeology student, wants to record the remains that survive around Jam before more are lost. ‘What I want to do is survey work,’ he says. ‘Nobody is recording what is on the’’’ ground before it isn’t.’ He hopes to map the Ghurid settlement with a drone, but says getting permission was difficult. ‘The Ministry is friendly to us in principle. In practice you wait, and the man who signs does not know what a drone survey is.’
Revisions:
This article was last updated on 30 Sep 2026
