US ‘grandmother of Afghanistan’ dies at 89

KABUL: An American historian who spent decades in Afghanistan working to preserve the heritage of the war-torn country has died.

An Afghan government statement said Nancy Hatch Dupree, who first came to Afghanistan in 1962 and spent much of her life collecting and documenting historical artefacts, passed away at a Kabul hospital at the age of 89.

She amassed a vast collection of books, maps, photographs and even rare recordings of folk music, all now housed at a centre she founded at Kabul University. She also wrote five guidebooks.

Dupree came to Afghanistan as the wife of a diplomat, but later fell in love with Louis Dupree, an archaeologist and anthropologist.

They married and lived for decades in Afghanistan, visiting historical sites across the country, retracing the footsteps of ancient explorers and documenting it all.

Together they wrote the definitive book on Afghanistan, an ency- clopedic look at the country they had adopted as their own.

Dupree lamented the fact that young people in Afghanistan, many of whom had grown up as refugees in neighbouring countries, knew little if anything about their history.

“So many young Afghans know more about the histories of the countries where they lived as refugees than their own country’s history,” she said.

“It makes me sad because their own history is so rich.” She founded the Afghan Center at Kabul University in 2006, where she worked to create an extensive library that could be accessed electronically from universities in Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazar-e-Sharif.

“With deep sadness, we mark the loss of the honorary ‘grandmother of Afghanistan’ and stand in homage to a woman of exemplary grace, dedication, humour and humanity,” the centre said in a statement.