Wartime Political Memory in Afghanistan’s Visual Culture

Communities in northern Afghanistan, predominantly Persian-speaking and identifying as ethnically Tajik, remember past wars in everyday practice, material culture, and memorialization processes. Their conception of history connects them to a collective memory that intersects with wars and conflicts in present-day Afghanistan. It also informs how they have contested past governments and the present political climate at the local, national, and international levels. Their collective memory acts as a counterweight to dominant understandings of the past and a critique of a long history of exclusionary politics. Since the fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in 2021, they have brought their collective memory with them in exile. This article attempts to understand the current crisis in Afghanistan by centering visual culture as a guide to the social and political history and memory that inform the sentiments of these communities and one of the anti-Taliban opposition groups, the National Resistance Front.