The Carpet Wars: From Kabul to Baghdad: A Ten-Year Journey Along Ancient Trade Routes

I really enjoy this book. The author presents the complex and intriguing culture contained in a specific context not many would use to describe the societal actions of Afghanis. He presents the different tribal realities in a woolen way; using the carpet trade. How has the trade impacted culture and how has the culture affected the trade? You can see the way the wars and conflict in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion has affected and molded the carpet trade in the area; it's a very telling look at what is really going on. You need to read the book with a different approach; take in the how the trade has been affected to truly understand the insight the author is trying to provide. The author uses great words to describe what he sees. He uses a very colorful and telling narrative that pulls you along with his story. I recommend this book to the casual reader interested in different cultures, anybody interested in a first hand look at the carpet trade, and any one in the military who would be interested in getting a new perspective at the culture we are currently protecting and the enemy we are currently fighting.

Hand-woven carpets are one of the few products that Central Asia has consistently exported to the rest of the world, and by which the rest of the world knows of central Asia. As such, a traversal of the routes and bazaars that comprise the carpet trade would take one through many of the important places in Central Asia. Likewise, dealing with those involved in the trade would give insight into the history, economics and culture of those living in this area. This then is the subject of this book. The author travels the bazaars and trade routes of Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Kashmir looking for carpets. While doing so, his interactions with the locals open up a whole world of history, culture, religion, food, and habits that are alien to those in the west. Whether it is how to barter over goods, or the proper way to greet an older woman, the stories told by Mr. Kremmer bring to life places that many of us will never visit, yet that comprises a large part of this world both spatially and historically. The author intersperses his accounts with character studies of the various individuals he meets, side stories to fill in local histories, and editorials that connect what he seens in these far-off places to what occurs in Washington D.C. and the stockmarkets of the West. Overall, a great travel book, a great history book, and a great story that is told. I highly recommend this book.

I finished this book about six weeks ago, and I can't stop thinking about it. So often travel literature-type books by westerners in these kinds of far-off places can be either too clever, cynical or condescending at one end of the scale, or, at the other end too reverent, with a reverence that seems to really be an I-hate-where-I-am-from complex. Both extremes can get tiring pretty quickly.The Carpet Wars was exactly in the middle, and it was fascinating. It was extremely informative about the history, politics, religion and, yes, even the carpets of the region from Pakistan to Iran. Carpets were merely the thread (so to speak) that held the several first-hand accounts of travels to the region.Kremmer is a master story teller, and very funny. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was more enjoyable, the story he was telling or the way he was telling it.His accounts of places with which he is very familiar are told in the rich tones of a deep affection. When he is in a new place, like Isfahan, the account is in the vivid colors of someone seeing something for the first time, creating some of the best travel essays I have ever read. Seven weeks ago, Isfahan was just an exotic name to me, now it's at the top of places I hope I can see before I die. Its hard to say what recommends this book more, the fact that it is throughly enjoyable, or deeply infomrative. I haven't read Mr. Kremmer's book about Laos, but it is probably pretty good. Books like The Carpet Wars don't stick with you so long by accident.

Anyone interested in the fine art of rug weaving, the cultures in which Oriental carpets originate, the geography of ancient trade routes including The Silk Road, the history, economics and politics of the Middle East, and present day travel through the strife-torn region will find immense treasure in Christopher Kremmer's The Carpet Wars. "The early Muslims inhabited lands where people were born on carpets, prayed on them, and covered their tombs with them. For centuries, carpets have been a currency and an export, among the first commodities of a globalized trading system" writes the author, who has spent ten years in Asia reporting for the Australian press. He uses Oriental rugs as his motif for writing about his travels in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Tajikistan, Kashmir, and the former Soviet satellite countries of Central Asia. {Here, this reviewer admits his interest enfolds some bias because of my own travels through the region as a Peace Corps worker in less turbulent times. Also, I have the good fortune of working in a store where a wide variety of the very finest examples of Oriental carpets are sold.} In this book we read that second only to oil, hand made carpets are the region's principal export and were so long before Marco Polo made his famous travels along the Silk Road. Carpets created by various quarreling factions from the Middle and Near East are the focus for retelling how the fighting clans have damaged the carpet trade, effectively wiping out the middle and upper class of society, and left appalling poverty and misery in its wake. Kremmer describes how that even in the midst of war and turmoil, a bazaar will spring up during breaks in the fighting and the carpet merchants will quickly resume business as if nothing had happened. A disappointment for me was that the author omits a description of the many varieties and techniques of rug making; he remains focused on his travels through the Islamic world, giving us the benefit of his first hand witness to the misery. Believing that only Allah can create anything perfect, the Muslim carpet makers often will deliberately craft a minor flaw in their handiwork that only a practiced eye might discern. Also, we learn that many rugs woven by people living under the duress of conflict will reflect their anxieties and turmoil through the symbols of war - airplanes, helicopters, tanks, and guns. But the rugs also will contain symbols of their makers' traumatic lives not altogether discernible or understood. Like the great paintings of the Renaissance, these works of art may never be fully comprehended. It is enough that fortunate owners of hand knotted and woven rugs might appreciate not only their beauty but also how they portray the soulful deeper meaning of the lives of their creators, leaving a legacy for generations to come. This book is an armchair journey of immense interest. Highly recommended.More about this reviewer on the www at: http://acgray.tripod.com

Christopher Kremmer's book takes you on a journey through the Central Asian countries most frequently in the news today, and provides an incomparable insight. The largest, and first, section, is an account of events in Afghanistan, which he has witnessed first-hand as a foreign correspondent.This book is no dry history, nor is it merely a travelogue, nor is it merely an extended piece of journalism.Kremmer comes to know and befriend people of different backgrounds within the region, and it is their stories, as well as the carpet trade and stories of emblematic carpets, through which the narrative is woven. We care about the future of the peoples of the region, because we care about what becomes of Kremmer's friends. What Christopher has managed to do is to make the internecine politics, the inhumanities, the brutalities, comprehensible, through his humanisation of peoples who might in lesser hands be reduced to the merely 'exotic' or even worse 'unknowable and inhuman'.Earlier this year I read 'Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan' by Jason Elliot. I thoroughly recommend both these books if you desire to reach some understanding of a region of such importance to us all.