Students at the Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture practice their gem cutting skills using lapis lazuli (a semi-precious stone found in Afghanistan), Murad Khane, Kabul on the 9th February 2011. There is a huge demand for places at the Institute. Pupils are offered a variety of courses which last for three years. ____Laura Lean for the Globe and MailLAURA LEAN/The Globe and Mail
Abdulhadi is a small reed of a man in a voluminous blue suit coat, a bit hard of hearing and a bit bent with age. But at the newly restored Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture, he is considered a towering master of the craft of wood-working.
In a classroom redolent with the fragrance of fresh wood shavings, he runs a gnarled hand over the decorative chair back designed by one of his students. He watches approvingly as two others, intent young women, chisel flowers in classic Afghan style on a thick disc of wood.
The skills he teaches are those he learned as a boy at his father's knee, before the secrets of the country's traditional craftsmen were lost or forgotten in the tumult of Afghanistan's wars and mass migration.
The aim of the institute, which was established by the British-based Turquoise Mountain Foundation, is to revive the old wood-working, gemstone, calligraphy and ceramics crafts once familiar to generations of Afghan artisans. As of this month, it will pass from foreign management to Afghan control.
It is a modest milestone but one that mirrors an overall trend toward having Afghans take more direct charge of running and securing their country. It is also an example of the obstacles of transition in a wrecked country being rebuilt with foreign aid. As is the case with the NATO-financed Afghan security forces and development projects, the institute will not be able to pay its own bills for the foreseeable future.
"If the management is really passionate about the school, it will remain here for a long time," said Abdulhadi, who guesses that he is about 80 years old and, like many Afghans, has only one name. "But we are going to need outside support."
Five years ago, the compound that houses the institute was a collection of collapsing mud and straw buildings filled with three-meter-high piles of trash. Called Murad Khane, after its original 19th-century owner, it has been restored as a tidy island of calm in Kabul's crowded ramshackle Old City.
Relying on donations from outside Afghanistan, including a $7-million grant from Canada, Turquoise Mountain spent $25-million to renovate the pocket-sized neighbourhood and uncover Murad Khane's simple courtyard, tiled alcoves and timbered rooms.
In the institute's low-ceiling classrooms, students learn wood-working, paint Persian-style miniatures, operate hand-turned gemstone cutting machines and shape coils of wet clay into pots. The three-year cycle also aims to make them computer-literate and business savvy, with classes in art history, design, computers, marketing, languages and business management.
Its operating costs are about $1-million a year, to be paid by grants from the United States. Foreign aid is likely to be the institute's sole financial lifeline for many years, according to Abdul Waheed Khalili, the director of the institute.
"If we can increase the reputation of the institute inside and outside the country, and show the success of the students, then maybe some years in the future we could charge a small fee," he said. "But that is many years in the future."
The institute has shown it can produce marketable graduates, he said.
Of the 69 students in the first class to finish the three-year program two years ago, 11 went on to college to continue their studies. Three are unemployed, eight are working in other fields and the rest have found jobs in the crafts they studied.
Of the 14 students who graduated last year, said Mr. Khalili, only two are not working. Six started their own businesses or found jobs. Six others banded together to create their own crafts company that is housed in the institute's ceramics department.
What the institute needs, he added, is a sustainable business model. But in a country as poor and insecure as Afghanistan, none has yet to present itself.
He has spoken with major Afghan furniture manufacturer who spends more than $40,000 a year to import carved wood from Pakistani factories. "I asked him to think about spending the same amount to provide wood to the school," recalled Mr. Khalili. "Then our students could do the work and maybe get taken on [as interns]in the company."
The market for Afghan-made crafts is growing, he said, but slowly. He recently discovered that a wealthy Kabul man had spent tens of thousands of dollars to create a traditional décor for his home.
But the man declined Mr. Khalili's suggestion to open it to selected visitors as a showcase and advertisement for local artisanship, saying he feared becoming a target for thieves.
The project's Afghan managers also fear for the maintenance of neighbourhood around Murad Khane that Turquoise Mountain upgraded and provided with a primary school and clinic.
The area is being furnished with sewage pipes, it is connected for the first time to the city water and electricity network, and adjacent apartments were renovated.
"That apartment over there had two rooms and 12 people were living in it," said Hedayatullah Ahmadzai, the chief engineer for the urban renewal project, pointing to a non-descript mud-walled building across from the institute. "We made a new room."
Men and boys from the neighbourhood were hired to do most of the labour, in hopes that the skills they picked up would pay off in jobs and higher incomes for their families.
Since work began in 2006, they hauled away 25,000 cubic meters of garbage, a compacted mess of dirt and refuse that reached three meters high in places. Standing water had melted the earthwork buildings and one collapsed as reconstruction started. They have been rebuilt with a stronger combination of mud and straw.
But the area around the institute remains one of the poorest in a poor city. Most residents make a meagre living as peddlers, earning the equivalent of about $2 a day. They do not own the property they live in. Few have the means to pay for utilities. And they have never banded together, as in other parts of the city, to pay someone to collect their garbage, Mr. Ahmadzai said.
"Maybe if we could find the original community and owners, they would take care of things," he added. "But these people are displaced people from other parts of the country or the city. They don't think about the buildings. They are just passing their time here and making a living."