Direct Talk

Cultural heritage is often lost
during periods of conflict across the world.

Centuries old buildings are left to decay.

Craftsmanship is abandoned.

But in Afghanistan,
crafts such as

carpet weaving, pottery,
calligraphy and woodcarving,

- centuries of craftsmanship
honed on the ancient Silk Road -

are being preserved
by a cultural heritage charity

called Turquoise Mountain.

The charity – founded in Afghanistan -

was created by King Charles of Britain -

alongside the then President of Afghanistan,
Hamid Karzai and Rory Stewart.

It started in 2006

and the aim is to support local communities

to generate incomes
through their traditional crafts

and connect them with international markets.

In recent years, Turquoise Mountain
have extended their work

to Myanmar and the Middle East.

And 95 percent of their staff
come from local communities.

Direct Talk met with Shoshana Stewart
who has worked for the charity for 17 years,

and who was appointed their President in 2021.

Protecting Cultural Heritage in Conflict Zones

We were created

with the idea really, of preserving
cultural heritage in Afghanistan,

because at that point,
30 years of conflict, essentially

stopped all these traditional crafts
from passing down, destroyed the old city.

But what we found is that

with these communities,
particularly artisan communities,

there was so much more
that needed to be done

to support them in health care, education,
and particularly in creating incomes.

Afghanistan is famous

for a number of things, carpets, of course,

and it was a huge part of the Silk Road.

But it is, you know,
a distant history for many people.

When Shoshana arrived in Kabul in 2006

to volunteer at Turquoise Mountain,

it was after a long period
of conflict in the country.

The ancient buildings of the old town

were neglected and abandoned,

rubbish was piled up high in the street,

and the craftsmen had fled,
as there was no work for them.

If you walk down the street,
you basically would see,

you know, one building
would be completely gone.

So you just have a house sized pile of earth

and another would have
only one wing left over

and you would see
the incredible intricate carved woodwork.

But that's now just exposed to the outside.

So it was totally derelict.

No central infrastructure,

not because it had been destroyed
and it's just never been built.

So we basically needed to
restore every building

and try to create basic services.

Woodwork was possibly the most
important thing when we started,

both because of
how special Afghan wood work is,

and they do two different
types styles of carving,

but also because it was so fundamental
to rebuilding these buildings. So

finding traditional carpenters
and carvers was hard.

And

we met a man named Abdul Hadi,
and he was

basically Afghanistan's
most famous master woodworker.

He made this incredible
lattice woodwork jointed,

and he used to work for the king.

He was a famous man.
People knew his name.

But he was in his mid-seventies
and he hadn't produced in 15 years.

He was selling fruit in the bazaar

because he had no students and
he had no markets and that's how it stopped.

So we brought Abdul Hadi out of retirement
and built a school of woodworking around him.

Over the first five years
of our work in Afghanistan,

we trained and employed
about 4000 traditional builders,

that's carpenters, masons, electricians,

and we restored 150 of
those courtyard buildings.

To support the communities,
and the families of artisans,

Turquoise Mountain set up a medical centre,

primary schools
as well as a training institute

to teach and pass on
traditional craft skills.

So we were restoring
these buildings, training artisans.

But we realized that
no one in this community was going to school.

No one was going to doctors.

And so we started
this basic literacy program.

We started referring to local hospitals,
it grew and grew,

and now we have a maternal child
health clinic that saw 25,000 patients last year

and we actually run three primary schools.

And what we found, especially as Afghanistan

had such a difficult time
over the last couple of years,

that actually those frontline services are
some of the most important things we do.

After the success of their work in Kabul,

in 2016 Turquoise Mountain extended
its program to rural areas of Afghanistan

where carpet making
used to be a thriving industry.

So Afghan carpets actually

have a reputation around the world,
particularly in the carpet industry.

And it's for a number of reasons.

One is that

sheep in Ghazni, the wool
that comes from those sheep,

because of the temperature,
is particularly lustrous.

They produce a lot of lanolin.

So you have very fine,
very long fibre, very shiny wool.

So it's special.

And anyone who makes rugs
around the world knows about this wool.

But perhaps even more importantly,

there are close to a million people who
work in the carpet industry in Afghanistan.

It's massive, and
nearly all of them are women.

And they know how to weave already.

So you have a huge group of people
who can earn income

for their families and who can preserve
these incredible traditions.

S0 we created about 8000 full time,
full years of employment last year

in carpet weaving alone for Afghan women.

And they are able to work and we are able
to export these carpets around the world.

In the last 17 years,

Turquoise Mountain has bought back over
$17,000,000 of income back to communities

by bringing their products
to international markets.

There has been a growing interest
in artisanship around the world.

So the good news is that one of the things
that's happened over the last ten years is:

people are buying increasingly
ethical and sustainable.

They want to buy something that
they know the name of the person who made it.

They want to know the story behind it.

And they will pay a premium for it.
It's a huge growing market.

It grew through the financial crisis,
grew through COVID.

The people who are making for that,
are these artisans,

but they are very far away and they do not
speak the same language and they do not

obey the same industry standards.

So we exist

to connect the world to these artisans
in any way that we need to.

Oftentimes if you're a business in New York,

you don't want to transfer
to an Afghan bank account, right?

So you transfer to us and
then we transfer to the artisan.

So all of that money goes to
the artisan directly for what they've made

with the exception of a small percentage,

which goes to cover our costs of
actually getting that product to market

and all goes back into the charity.

Shoshana Stewart grew up in New York.

She studied Astrophysics at Williams College
and has a MBA from London business school.

Prior to arriving
in Afghanistan to volunteer,

Shoshana worked as a teacher
in low-income urban communities

in New York, Boston and Honduras.

How I got to Afghanistan as an astrophysicist
and a teacher makes absolutely no sense.

It's total serendipity.
I was going on an adventure.

And I was actually volunteering
for this organization,

which had only been set up
six months earlier.

This is not a life that I expected at all,

and I have found myself
loving other cultures.

I've always had it in my mind

that you do a job that you like
and you like what it does,

and I don't think I expected that

traditional craft in Afghanistan
was my passion in life.

We did an exhibition at the
Smithsonian Museum in Washington

and it was essentially a walkthrough
of the old city of Kabul,

but to do it with an Afghan, in that case

was a different experience.

And I was walking with this Afghan man
and he just started crying.

And,

because Afghanistan,
in his new home in America,

to him and anyone who asked him about it,
was about war.

And he was seeing the Afghanistan and
remembering the Afghanistan that he loved,

which was fundamentally
about beauty, about landscape.

And so that's just one example.

But

I do think that the moments
that matter to me almost the most

or the opinions that
matter to me the most are

often when people from that country,

but who are in the
diaspora community living outside.

If I can do something that they're proud of,

it almost matters to us most.

In 2016, Turquoise Mountain
decided to work in Myanmar

- a country which also
has had conflict in its history -

but which has important heritage and a unique
craftmanship admired around the world.

Between 2016 and 2020,

the charity restored the old tourist office
in Yangon, which was at threat of demolition.

It is a magnificent neo classical building

dating back to the
beginning of the last century.

Turquoise Mountain is also generating
an income for the weavers of Myanmar.

Weaving takes place across Myanmar
and it is hundreds of thousands of people.

So it is a huge part of the cultural heritage,
but also the economy in Myanmar.

So the weavers in Myanmar
are from all over the country,

you know, weaving traditions
all over the country.

And they are, in all cases,

the major breadwinner in their family

or they are one of two people
in their family supporting a huge number.

And so it is both a case of preserving
the traditions of their community,

but also providing for them.

Those weaving traditions are totally unique.

They weave in patterns,
which is relatively rare.

You have a lot of hand-woven textiles,
but you often print onto the textiles.

So the weaving in of the actual patterns
is relatively rare and so distinctive.

From headquarters in Jordan,
the charity is today helping Syrian artisans

who fled their country
after the civil war started in 2010.

Syria has also seen ancient traditions
threatened by an exodus of artisans.

At first we were looking at
the incredible traditions from Syria

in the wake of that conflict,
in the midst of that conflict.

But of course there are
incredible traditions from across the Levant.

So we now work with Syrians,
Jordanians, Palestinians from Jordan,

and increasingly expanding.

If we want to pass this craft on
to the next generation,

the first thing we must do
is make them love it.

They need to know it
from a young age.

As well as helping Palestinian and
other refugees across the Middle East,

Turquoise Mountain also runs programmes

to help the children of refugee families
learn about their heritage.

I think it must be unimaginable, really,

for those of us
who have not been forced from our homes,

to think what it would be like not only
to lose the connection to heritage ourselves,

but to watch our kids
have no natural connection to it

or their being educated
in a different context.

And so

we decided to design these classes,

which are fundamentally about
the teachers from that community,

running ten sessions,

which are about
different elements of that heritage.

And sometimes it's Syrian heritage
with Syrian communities,

but sometimes it's broader
Levantine heritage with mixed communities.

But the reason that we did it,
it's about bringing some joy back to things

and making the grandparents
and the parents, the authorities.

It's about the kids coming home and asking

what their traditional Damascene house
looked like and what are the motifs

and what are the colours and
what are the food, what are the dances.

To try to bring a sense of home
and a sense of joy to things.

Shoshana has encountered many challenges
running programmes in conflict zones,

particularly when there is regime change.

In August 2021,
the Taliban took control of Afghanistan.,

as US forces withdrew
after 20 years in the country.

And in Myanmar in early 2021,

the government was overthrown
in a military coup.

As a result,

many countries have withdrawn support
for places in which the charity works.

I think my biggest challenge at the moment,
the thing I worry about is people disengaging

from difficult places,
from the places I work.

Because

we have a difficult relationship with some of
these countries and it can be too hard

to engage in, because we feel depressed
and hopeless about the situation.

And so we disengage.

But actually there's so much more
that can be done than we worry about.

A huge issue over the last few years
is actually large donor governments

disengaging from some of these countries

that are incredibly poor
and incredibly fragile

and they're just giving much less money.

And that's partially to do with
governments being more protectionist.

I actually think
the public is very interested

in connecting with people
in a difficult place.

I think actually it's the political
that makes it more difficult.

Today the work of Turquoise Mountain
can be seen across the world.

Some of their students
have decorated international hotels,

and Syrian jewellers in Jordan
have received commissions for fashion shows.

And earlier this year
King Charles attended an exhibition

of Turquoise Mountain's work at a museum -
Leighton House in London.

Ahead lies many challenges in the
current climate of political uncertainty,

but Shoshana remains determined

that Turquoise Mountain will continue
to help as many people as they can,

generate incomes, while also preserving
cultural heritage for future generations.

Cultural heritage starts from an asset.

It starts from something that's
fundamentally beautiful about that place

and something that the world values.

And I think that

actually that matters more
in more difficult places

because it's a fundamentally
respectful relationship.

It's about what comes naturally
from a community.

And then you can work on all the things

that the community is struggling
with alongside it.

But you have something
fundamentally positive at the heart.

Beauty connects us all.