Afghanistan Archives - Ajam Media Collective

Between Sikh, Afghan, and Brit: The Politics of Pashtun Identity in 19th Century Peshawar

What can the story of a Pashtun family that fought on behalf of the Sikhs, the Afghans, and the British teach us about the flexibility of identity? The story of Afridi Khan reveals how Pashtun identity in the 19th century was a tapestry of overlapping, even conflicting elements.

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Pixelated: How Shaheer Zazai Digitalized Afghan Carpets

Posted on January 30, 2019March 12, 2019
byAjam Media Collective
5 minute read

How Nowruz is Celebrated Around the World

Posted on March 21, 2018March 19, 2019
byAlex Shams
11 minute read

Two Nations Find a Poet: Fitting Ferdowsi into Iran and Afghanistan’s Literary Canons

Posted on February 11, 2018March 21, 2018
byAjam Media Collective
12 minute read

Long Form

How a Rapper Won Over Afghanistan’s Hearts

Posted on November 20, 2017January 31, 2018
byAjam Media Collective
5 minute read

Blog

The Weaponization of Nostalgia: How Afghan Miniskirts Became the Latest Salvo in the War on Terror

Posted on September 6, 2017January 3, 2019
byAlex Shams
8 minute read

Long Form

Fighting Other People’s Wars: Afghan Soldiers on the Syrian Battlefield

The presence of Afghan refugees in Iran as mercenary troops for Assad’s counterinsurgency complicates present understandings of the foreign fighter, often affiliated with the catch-all figure of the jihadi. (Photo Credit: Mujtaba Jalali)

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Long Form

Divided by a Common Tongue: Exclusionary Politics of Persian-Language Pedagogy

Posted on October 5, 2015January 16, 2017
12 comments
byAjam Media Collective

The Iranian national canon, whatever it means to different people, is primarily studied as a continuation of the “Persian literary canon” while Afghan and Tajik literatures are treated as a divergence, and consequently lose the Persian qualifier. Persian literary production outside of Iran is essentially treated as an exotic object in an uncharted terrain.

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Long Form

Between Uncertainty and Paradox: Afghan Refugees in Turkey

Posted on August 10, 2015January 20, 2017
One comment
byKamyar Jarahzadeh

Afghan refugees in Turkey are in legal limbo in which their status is unclear. They have the right to reside in the country, but lack the right to work or the kind of state assistance needed to avoid working. To be a refugee in Turkey then requires navigating life between a state-acknowledged realm of illegality, and the uncertainty of how global trends can affect the fate of a refugee population.

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Ajam Archive

Ajam Digital Archive: Recentering Personal and Communal Histories

Posted on August 4, 2015January 16, 2017
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byAjam Media Collective

The items collected for the Ajam Digital Archive will allow us to document and record history from below—how it was actually lived, experienced, and understood. It is precisely these histories that were ignored in favor of tales that focused exclusively on wars and revolutions, rarely giving us a sense of how life was lived amidst it all.

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