No one knows for certain why Afghan weavers began to create these rugs. Perhaps protracted war had so altered their landscape that military imagery seemed to offer an inevitable subject.
The country was littered with wrecked equipment, and weapons were commonplace because fighting between Afghans and occupiers was constant. Like war-rug weaving, it continues.
Max Allen, a Toronto collector who founded the Canadian textile museum (all the rugs in the Penn show were gifts from him) and is the show's guest curator, thinks that the earlier, more technically refined rugs were so inspired, and made for domestic use. Some might even have been commissioned from carpet ateliers.
He believes that the smaller, brighter rugs, which look like American folk art, reflect a response to market opportunities.
The rise of Internet commerce and the global economy made it possible for village weavers, and Afghan exiles in Pakistan and Iran, to get their rugs into international circulation. Today they are sold on eBay, for example.
As the market for war rugs has expanded, quality has inevitably declined, Allen said, especially with rugs made by exiles in Pakistan.
These rugs tend to be small, about the size of bath mats, which makes them appealing as souvenirs. They would be perfect tourist merchandise - if Afghanistan weren't too dangerous for casual travelers.
The earliest war rugs, which appeared shortly after the Soviet invasion, are the most traditional-looking in patterns, colors, and the sublimation of stylized war symbols, and the most sophisticated in craftsmanship. Only at arm's length does the military imagery become apparent.
