An American historian who spent decades in Afghanistan working to preserve the heritage of the war-torn country died on Sunday.
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 90.
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 and with her husband, Louis Dupree, wrote the definitive book on Afghanistan, an encyclopaedic tome about the country they 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 own 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."
To remedy this, 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.
Dupree was born in 1927 in Kerala (then known as Travancore), where her American parents were working on rural development projects and spent most of her childhood there. She first arrived in Afghanistan as the wife of a diplomat. Some years later, she met archaeologist and anthropologist Louis Dupree, — also American and also married — when she asked him for help with her first guidebook on Afghanistan. Their love affair caused a scandal in Kabul but they married and stayed on in Afghanistan for more than a decade, with Nancy writing guidebooks and Louis uncovering prehistoric settlements, and the couple visiting historical sites all over the country together and documenting them all.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Louis was imprisoned under suspicion of spying for the CIA. Rather than return to the US, Nancy joined thousands of Afghan exiles in a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan, where her husband eventually joined her. During their time there, she realised how easily unique historical documents about Afghanistan could be lost forever and with her husband began collecting everything they could find pertaining to the country's history and culture — including the Soviet invasion, the Mujahideen and the Taliban.
It was just as well. In the looting that followed the Soviet invasion, many priceless books were sold for fuel or as food wrapping. Louis died in 1989, just a month after the Soviets left Afghanistan, but Nancy carried on collecting. By 1999, she had amassed 7,739 titles written in Pashto, Dari and several European languages.
She returned to Kabul in 2005, smuggling in her precious collection in 300 plastic fertiliser sacks. Two years later, it was installed in Kabul University, with funds from the Afghan finance ministry She also launched a mobile library scheme that brought thousands of books, including easy-to-read volumes in Pashto and Dari, to remote communities, often on the backs of donkeys.
She was dubbed her the "honorary grandmother of Afghanistan". The centre she founded said, "We stand in hommage to a woman of exemplary grace, dedication, humour and humanity" and news of her death prompted hundreds of messages from Afghans on social media.
Apart from visits to her home in Louis' native North Carolina, Dupree remained in Kabul., even though it was no longer the peaceful city of her youth.
"Kabul is grim now, all these concrete walls and barriers and razor wire. it is not my Kabul.," she said. But she had no intention of leaving. She is survived by her daughter.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Lamsa
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A MINECRAFT MOVIE
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Rating: 3/5
Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
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'THE WORST THING YOU CAN EAT'
Trans fat is typically found in fried and baked goods, but you may be consuming more than you think.
Powdered coffee creamer, microwave popcorn and virtually anything processed with a crust is likely to contain it, as this guide from Mayo Clinic outlines:
Baked goods - Most cakes, cookies, pie crusts and crackers contain shortening, which is usually made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Ready-made frosting is another source of trans fat.
Snacks - Potato, corn and tortilla chips often contain trans fat. And while popcorn can be a healthy snack, many types of packaged or microwave popcorn use trans fat to help cook or flavour the popcorn.
Fried food - Foods that require deep frying — french fries, doughnuts and fried chicken — can contain trans fat from the oil used in the cooking process.
Refrigerator dough - Products such as canned biscuits and cinnamon rolls often contain trans fat, as do frozen pizza crusts.
Creamer and margarine - Nondairy coffee creamer and stick margarines also may contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
The bio
Date of Birth: April 25, 1993
Place of Birth: Dubai, UAE
Marital Status: Single
School: Al Sufouh in Jumeirah, Dubai
University: Emirates Airline National Cadet Programme and Hamdan University
Job Title: Pilot, First Officer
Number of hours flying in a Boeing 777: 1,200
Number of flights: Approximately 300
Hobbies: Exercising
Nicest destination: Milan, New Zealand, Seattle for shopping
Least nice destination: Kabul, but someone has to do it. It’s not scary but at least you can tick the box that you’ve been
Favourite place to visit: Dubai, there’s no place like home
Health Valley
Founded in 2002 and set up as a foundation in 2006, Health Valley has been an innovation in healthcare for more than 10 years in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
It serves as a place where companies, businesses, universities, healthcare providers and government agencies can collaborate, offering a platform where they can connect and work together on healthcare innovation.
Its partners work on technological innovation, new forms of diagnostics and other methods to make a difference in healthcare.
Its agency consists of eight people, four innovation managers and office managers, two communication advisers and one director. It gives innovation support to businesses and other parties in its network like a broker, connecting people with the right organisation to help them further
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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DSC Eagles 23 Dubai Hurricanes 36
Eagles
Tries: Bright, O’Driscoll
Cons: Carey 2
Pens: Carey 3
Hurricanes
Tries: Knight 2, Lewis, Finck, Powell, Perry
Cons: Powell 3
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
