KABUL, Dec 11 (NNN-ANA) – Afghanistan’s national museum, after experiencing ups and downs, has finally been reopened for visitors, from home and abroad, to introduce the country’s history and civilisations, Director of the museum, Mohammad Rahim Rahimi, said.
The war-weary Afghans witnessed a political transition, as the Taliban took over the capital, Kabul, on Aug 15, and announced the formation of a caretaker government on Sept 7.
Once a popular museum in the region, for preserving rich cultural heritage from different eras and ancient civilisations, the Afghan national museum was badly damaged, as many of its collections had been looted during the factional fighting in the 1990s.
“Luckily nothing has been stolen and nothing has been damaged during the political change and we have managed to preserve everything during these three months,” the official said.
“We kept the museum, since the collapse of the previous government. We kept it closed because of security reasons and safety of the collections. We provided better security, besides protection of the cultural heritage,” the director of the museum said, at his office, recently.
Although the door of the museum is open for visitors nowadays, the number of visitors is still limited, as many are unaware about the reopening of the museum, the director assumed.
“It just opened three or four days ago. We don’t have a lot of foreign visitors, but local people we have, are very happy to come here to visit,” Rahimi muttered, adding that, more visitors are expected to come later.
Objects representing civilisations from the Koshan empire to Greek and Buddhism eras, have been preserved in the museum. Nevertheless, Rahimi said that, only five percent of the collection is on display, for a few months, and there are plans to rotate that for exhibition.
Rahimi, however, did not furnish details about the museum’s monthly or annual income, or the number of foreign tourists expected to visit it in the future.
Over two dozen Afghans visited the museum on Dec 9, one of them, Mohammad Nabi, 39, described his visit as to pass time and getting knowledge about Afghanistan’s past civilisation.
In the meantime, Rahimi expressed gratitude to the proposal from the director of China’s Palace Museum, for the protection of cultural heritage in Afghanistan.
We are thinking about how to have more cultural cooperation and have support from our Chinese partners, on the protection of the cultural heritage, Rahimi said.– NNN-ANA
