Afghan Serials Collection (DA-ASC)

The Afghan Serials Collection: Partisan Publications from the Wahdat Library (DA-ASC) showcases unique press materials from a key era that shaped not only Afghanistan and the Middle East, but the entire world. Featuring content not assembled elsewhere, the collection is a chronicle of the rich and dynamic Afghan press and an essential resource for scholars and area experts.

This collection is a major contribution to the preservation of the history of the region and is comprised of the careful selection of more than 2,500 individual issues of 46 newspapers and journals published in Persian, Pushto, Arabic, Urdu, and English from the early 1970s to the late 1990s—a critical period for the history of Afghanistan. Documenting the breadth of Afghanistan’s political epochs, the Afghan Serials Collection: Partisan Publications from the Wahdat Library covers the use of the press by many groups that sought to shape Afghanistan’s social and intellectual landscape during this turbulent time. Various ideologies are represented in these publications, published by opposing factions from the Taliban to anti-Taliban groups, to anti- Soviet jihadi and mujaheddin groups to the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

The Wahdat Library, founded by Afghan scholar and journalist Ahmad Shah Wahdat and collected over a nearly 30-year period, is the most comprehensive private collection of rare newspapers and journals from Afghanistan.