Knowing history to help avoid past mistakes: Ghani

KABUL Historical Studies Center, said mistakes of the past would repeat if the Afghans did not know their history.

A statement from the Presidential Palace received by Pajhwok Afghan News said that Abdul Ghafoor Liwal, a senior advisor to the president, thanked the president for his attention to the country’s history and historic monuments.

A number of historical documents of Afghanistan prepared with the help of Afghanistan Historical Studies Center (AHSC) in London were handed over to the newly established library belonging to the center.

Liwal provided information about the London based AHSC, headed by Dr. Waris Waziri, and said that around 2,000 Afghanistan historical documents were physically and around 30,000 other documents were digitally present in the center.

He said the center’s head had promised to also hand over other historical documents of Afghanistan to the library. These documents could be used in research, documentation and achieves, he added.

Liwal suggested the documents, mostly in English, French and Urdu languages, were in forms of books and documents related to borders, copies of historical agreements, photos and maps, should be translated into Afghanistan languages and then shared with the public and the Academy of Sciences.

Later, president Ghani saidthat if Afghans did not know their history, they would repeat their past mistakes. “Without knowing Afghanistan, we cannot know our resources, wealth and methods of utilizing them,” he said.

Ghani thanked AHSC for its cooperation and said the Afghan people should learn from the past so they benefit from good experiences and avoid bad ones in future. “There is a need that our new generation should be Afghanistan experts,” he said.

The president ordered the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) and Kabul University to create a joint translation center for translation of Afghanistan documents from foreign languages to local languages.

The president handed over two albums of photos of historical places and people of the country to the archives.

mds/ma