It's Not Either / Or

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00:01
George Gavrilis
This episode was recorded some weeks before the Taliban entered Kabul. A bit down the road, we will talk about the current situation of Afghanistan's museums and heritage sites. We know that many of you are wondering. For now, this episode provides essential context.

00:22
Laura Tedesco
Visiting the site made tangible for me in the moment my genuine love of archaeology, and I felt absorbed in a sense of wonder and exploration and possibility that was all converging in this one visit. I've been to Mes Aynak a number of times, maybe 10 times in total. But for this first visit, it was just so full of excitement for me.

00:50
George Gavrilis
This is Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. If you are new to this podcast, we recommend going back to start with Episode 1. For everyone else, welcome back. Let's jump in.

01:05
George Gavrilis
Because this archaeological site is kind of a hostage of its location, I wonder why so much of it has survived over the years. Why has it? — particularly in a country where war has gone on for more decades than it hasn't— How has Mes Aynak even survived?

01:19
Laura Tedesco
There are a number of reasons. It's pretty dry, so that helps with preservation. A dry climate helps preserve things. It's not a tropical environment where things are going to deteriorate more quickly. Also, several of the sites like this chapel I talked about where the Italian broke one of the Bodhisattvas— the figures in that chapel were headless. And not because anybody had taken off their heads. It's that so much agriculture had happened over the years that the top portion had been destroyed through the process of tilling and agricultural processes.

01:59
Laura Tedesco
So if the area had been covered with agricultural fields at one time, then that was probably land that was protected, and so wouldn't have been necessarily exposed to a lot of illegal excavations or looting. Although there's definitely been looting that has happened there. We don't know exactly how much has been lost. The take home point is, how much was still there? And what kinds of information and what could be learned from what remained at Mes Aynak.

02:39
George Gavrilis
If somebody wants to learn about Mes Aynak, of course, they could read, let's say, a National Geographic article, or maybe go to YouTube. But there's also this film called Saving Mes Aynak. And I was wondering what you thought about that film.

02:52
Laura Tedesco
I credit the attention that the film brings to the site and the importance of the site. For that, that's important, and it has had such a big international exposure. It's been broadcast internationally and screened all over. And it's gotten a lot of attention. 

03:10
Laura Tedesco
When I watched the film, I felt certain aspects of the story were of the threat to the site. There was this kind of creative license taken by the filmmaker, and that what I actually thought was the most fascinating parts of Mes Aynak were not included in the film.

03:32
George Gavrilis
What do you mean, what parts?

03:34
Laura Tedesco
There— there was…

03:36
George Gavrilis
Well, I'll tell you, when I watched the film, I knew that there was a lot grander stuff that they weren't showing, and I was wondering why that was the case.

03:44
Laura Tedesco
Some of the grander stuff hadn't been found yet at the time the filmmaker was there collecting his footage …

03:51
George Gavrilis
The film came out in 2014?

03:53
Laura Tedesco
I think he started his filming in 2011. I remember meeting the filmmaker for the first time in 2011. And then he made multiple trips. When he came out to do filming, he sent a letter to the US Embassy to request to have me speak on camera about the site and that would have been fine. But he already had a political slant that he intended to document in the film.

04:14
George Gavrilis
Which was?

04:16
Laura Tedesco
Relatively anti-Chinese.

04:18
George Gavrilis
Yeah, that comes out in the film pretty strongly.

04:20
Laura Tedesco
It does. It does. And that's fine. I'm not here to debate that topic. A decision was made by higher-ups at the Embassy, they're like, Look, he's not just talking about the archaeological site. He's got a bigger message that he's going to attach to what's at risk at Mes Aynak. We prefer you, Tedesco, that you don't talk to him on camera, and I was like, that's fine with me.

04:43
George Gavrilis
Was it a suggestion that you not talk to him? Or are they saying you do not talk to him?

04:48
Laura Tedesco
It felt like more of a choice. But to talk to him, I would have had to say, No, I really want to talk to him. I would have had to get a green light. I couldn't just be like, okay, yes or no, yeah I feel like doing it, and then not tell anyone.

04:59
George Gavrilis
Right before the credits roll, the film very prominently puts text on a black screen saying the U.S. Embassy declined to be interviewed for this film.

05:09
Laura Tedesco
Yeah, it seems so dramatic. I guess technically, that's a correct statement. They requested an interview, and we declined. Or the Embassy declined. That's just left to the viewer to interpret.

05:28
George Gavrilis
Okay, but now you've brought up something really interesting, the tension between saving cultural heritage and development and potential prosperity that may or may not come to Afghanistan, or at least this region through this extremely lucrative mining contract that was given to this Chinese company. So this isn't the U.S. view. This is your view, this is you talking. So I mean, what do you think? What is the balance that one can strike? Are there good things to the mining concession?

06:04
Laura Tedesco
You remember a few conversations ago, George, you asked me, how can we put an importance on saving heritage when we have footage of the Taliban executing women in stadiums, it's got to be one or the other? And I tried to present the discussion back, of, well, it doesn't have to be one or the other, you can care about both.

06:24
Laura Tedesco
I feel the same way about Mes Aynak, that it is not a zero sum game. It is not either, you preserve the site, and no one benefits from the revenue of the copper. Or, you destroy the site, strip mine the hell out of it, and the Afghan government gets its portion of the revenue from the copper. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

06:48
Laura Tedesco
There are other models in other countries where you can both extract the raw materials, and do it efficiently and more environmentally responsibly, and preserve the heritage. But there has to be the political will, both from the Afghans to do that, and the willingness on the part of the Chinese to also do that. 

07:14
Laura Tedesco
The way I think about it, it's genuinely not a zero sum game. There's no one in the world who could argue that the Afghan government does not need the revenue from its raw materials. It does. And copper is one of its surest bets. But you also don't have to eliminate an entire chapter of the nation's history to get that revenue.

07:45
George Gavrilis
I remember at least years ago, they were estimating that the value of the buried copper was something like $100 billion, which is astronomical and many times Afghanistan's annual gross domestic product, so probably hasn't changed. And the other thing that hasn't changed is the fact that the copper is still largely underground and unmined.

08:07
Laura Tedesco
Correct. I haven't been tracking the market cost of copper. But you know, one of the big challenges, and we haven't really touched on this is, how do you get the copper out of Afghanistan? There's no railroad. There's no port. You got to truck it out. And then the roads are kind of dicey. So how are you going to truck out? And through what route? What do you go up through Badakhshan across to that skinny little border with China and get the copper out that way?

08:41
Laura Tedesco
You truck it out through Iran, down to Pakistan and out through one of the ports in Pakistan? Although I did read something in the press that the Chinese were building a railroad up through Badakhshan and I was like, Yeah, I want to see that happen.

08:55
George Gavrilis
Ah, right. This is one of the most extremely mountainous places in the world. And phenomenally dangerous because of how mountainous it is and landslides and mudslides and avalanches and just utterly impenetrable mountains. So that'll be a feat if they can do it.

09:13
Laura Tedesco
Well, you're talking about geography, and I was thinking, how easy would it be for someone to blast out a portion of a railroad line? And then you've effectively handicapped that whole transport route.

09:27
George Gavrilis
Yeah. Very, very true.

09:34
Laura Tedesco
"November 22, 2010. Trip to Mes Aynak with U.S. Forces A (USFORA, U.S. Forces Afghanistan) and Major General McHale via helicopter. Amazing trip over Kabul to Logar. The intensity of landing and the dusty valley surrounded by military MRAPs and the Afghan ANP (Afghan National Police). Met by Philippe Marquis, and touring the site and discussing the U.S. way forward to help: how to save the archaeology before mining begins in three years. The complexities are coming into focus."

10:18
Laura Tedesco
Yeah, so there's a lot to unpack right there. 'Coz the story of Mes Aynak is staggeringly complex. Everything in Afghanistan is complex. But Mes Aynak is ten times more complex, because of the competing interests, what's at stake there.

10:39
Laura Tedesco
So, one cannot talk about Mes Aynak without talking about the French archaeologists, who were asked by the Afghans— who, in fact, discovered the site. It was in the '60s that they originally documented it, and published their documentation. They didn't excavate, but they discovered the site.

11:00
Laura Tedesco
And when the Chinese bought the rights to mine Mes Aynak, the year was 2007 that that contract was completed, it may have been 2008. There was this kind of feigned ignorance on the part of Afghan authorities and the Chinese like, Oh, we didn't know, there was an enormous archaeological site here, no one told us.

11:23
Laura Tedesco
And it was at that point that one of the Afghan culture ministers was, you know, standing up with his polio leg, on the topic of polio, and waving documentation showing that the site had been published and say, we have to protect this archaeological site and the Afghan government were inviting the French archaeologists to help us do it.

11:47
Laura Tedesco
When I was first getting my feet wet in Afghanistan, the French archaeological team, who was led by Philippe Marquis, was very generous to me in introducing me to people, hosting me for dinners, having conversations, educating me.

12:07
Laura Tedesco
Philippe Marquis is a French archaeologist. He was at that time in 2010, the period we're talking about, the director of the French archaeological delegation to Afghanistan. Its acronym is DAFA, and it is internationally known. So his position was quite high.

12:30
Laura Tedesco
And his deputy at the time was a gentleman named Nicola, who was also a lovely young archaeologist from Paris.

12:38
Laura Tedesco
The French archaeological delegation is an offshoot of the French government. So it is not an independent entity. You know, this goes back to when archaeologists had missions in foreign countries as a political tool that goes back to even World War I with the French in Syria and the British and Palestine.

12:58
Laura Tedesco
My eyes opened a little bit when I was like, Philippe, you know, the U.S. Embassy, we kind of have nothing but money. We'd like to help your archaeological efforts at Mes Aynak. He didn't say it outright, but he was basically like, we don't really need you.

13:17
George Gavrilis
What were you missing?

13:20
Laura Tedesco
I didn't understand there were other agendas at play. I'm going to choose to believe he genuinely enjoyed my company. We had plenty of meals together. My husband is French. Philippe is French. So there was somehow some shared element there. I don't really speak French well, but you know, whatever. I love French food. So I was happy to be a guest at their guest house for beautiful meals.

13:42
Laura Tedesco
But I wasn't readily able to see that I came from the context of the U.S. Embassy with all the baggage that that comes and all the checkbooks that that brings. I really, for a long time, thought I was an archaeologist having dinner with other archaeologists in Afghanistan, sharing our mutual passion for archaeology.

14:06
George Gavrilis
What baggage might have he seen you arriving with to the table, so to speak?

14:11
Laura Tedesco
I didn't understand that there was more going on in the relationship building. I didn't have the savvy at the time to see things multi-dimensionally that way.

14:24
Laura Tedesco
I don't know what Philippe thought of me and what his agenda was. But I do know, I really learned a lot from him. And he was quite generous to me in exposing me to things that I needed to know about.

14:47
George Gavrilis
But that's interesting, Laurie, because the site and the archaeologists and the impoverished Afghans that were on their hands and knees digging through the stuff to help were in constant need of money. They didn't have computers, their salaries were in arrears. So why not take U.S. money?

15:04
Laura Tedesco
All that you're saying is true. That's not my purview, computers and back paid salaries. I'm the culture gal, George. I'm like, how can we help you save these statues?

15:18
George Gavrilis
Well, by paying …

15:19
Laura Tedesco
No!

15:22
George Gavrilis
...the archaeologists and the people unearthing it, so that it…

15:26
Laura Tedesco
It makes sense to you and ...

15:29
George Gavrilis
so it gets preserved...

15:30
Laura Tedesco
Yeah, it does ...

15:31
George Gavrilis
...move the budget column, tinker with a spreadsheet, make it happen.

15:34
Laura Tedesco
Right, tinker, Right, right. I was so naive. 10 years on, I might be like, yeah, we'll figure out a way to buy computers, but 10 years, 11 years ago, I was like, just tell me about the statues. What can we do?

15:51
Laura Tedesco
And at that point, the U.S. military was getting involved. And I think General Petraeus was still the commander, or who succeeded him, John Allen, who was that four-star General, who actually said he always wanted to be an archaeologist.

16:07
George Gavrilis
General John Allen.

16:09
Laura Tedesco
Someone had asked him if he had had an alternate career path. Like you have two destinations, John Allen.

16:15
George Gavrilis
Aha, Okay. 

16:17
Laura Tedesco
Four-Star General, or, what's your plan B?

16:20
George Gavrilis
Indiana Jones!

16:22
Laura Tedesco
His was archaeologist.

16:24
George Gavrilis
Ha ha. Okay.

16:27
Laura Tedesco
Yeah. What's your plan B?

16:30
George Gavrilis
What was your plan B?

16:30
Laura Tedesco
Oh.

16:32
George Gavrilis
What would you have been if not an archaeologist, a cultural heritage specialist? What would you be doing?

16:34
Laura Tedesco
I don't know. When I was in my 20s living in New York City and trudging through graduate school and wondering like, what the fuck man, why am I doing this and I don't have any money. What's my destiny? In my mind, I had two different paths. I had a plan A and a plan B, although one was not ranked more than the other. I was like, It could end up like this, or it could end up like this.

16:55
Laura Tedesco
One version looked like I was this jet set internationally traveling, fabulous wardrobe, had a great apartment in New York City that I hardly spent any time in because I was on the road all the time. The only thing in my refrigerator was a bottle of champagne and coffee creamer. I didn't need anything else because I was hardly there. I had a lover in every city that I would travel to. What my work was, was never very clear. But somehow that didn't matter. I had an amazing wardrobe. And this exciting jetset life.

17:31
George Gavrilis
Love it. Instead you wound up in a shipping container in Afghanistan.

17:34
Laura Tedesco
The other version, where if that didn't work out, I was like, you know how I'm gonna end up? In a shitty walk up apartment in New York with way too many cats. I'm going to be someone who works in the stacks of the library at the Metropolitan Museum. You never really see them, and they're shelving books, and they make barely enough money to get by in their rent controlled crummy walk up apartment in New York …

18:02
George Gavrilis
And to feed their 12 cats...

18:04
Laura Tedesco
and to feed their 12 cats.

18:05
George Gavrilis
Yeah, yeah. In any event, so back to Allen.

18:10
Laura Tedesco
I had always hoped to meet him. I never met him. But I had envisioned that if I could meet him, I would offer him an archaeological trowel as a gift. The one tool you have to have if you're an archaeologist, and I had even looked it up, you know, okay, I got to get them this kind of trowel, it should be really a four and a half inch. Don't get them the six inch one. Anyway.

18:33
Laura Tedesco
So but my point being the U.S. military was interested to help support Mes Aynak in some way. And that's because the commander of NATO forces was interested. He commanded a sub general, a two-star general to figure out what needed to be done. I ended up making several visits to Mes Aynak with U.S. military contingents. And, it was kind of my first experience working directly with the military and watching how they operate.

19:05
Laura Tedesco
And when they decide to build a airplane hangar size warehouse, in a mountainous, dry, unsecure area of Mes Aynak, they make that shit happen. And they do it. Coordinated and organized and done. It was very impressive to me. And that warehouse is still there, and it's still holding artifacts.

19:37
George Gavrilis
So why do you still hate the title of the podcast?

19:40
Laura Tedesco
How would you feel if I were like, George, you're borders guy? You work on borders. Aren't you more than that? Or?

19:48
George Gavrilis
I'm so more than that.

19:50
Laura Tedesco
Like George, the historian. Well, aren't you more than that? It's like...

19:53
George Gavrilis
I'm so more than that.

19:55
Laura Tedesco
It's like getting pigeon holed.

19:56
George Gavrilis
Yeah. Um, I'm so more than a pigeon hole.

20:00
Laura Tedesco
Yes. See, I'm more than a cat lady who works in the stacks of the library. 

20:04
George Gavrilis
You are. I get you, I get you. But you know, titles are always inaccurate. I don't think I've ever seen a truly accurate title. They're just supposed to grab your attention, draw you in, you know, but it's cool. We hear you. We hear you.

20:20
Laura Tedesco
Thank you.

20:21
George Gavrilis
Yeah. And we did make the concession by removing the article. So "The Monuments Woman" will now just be "Monuments Woman".

20:28
Laura Tedesco
That's better.

20:30
George Gavrilis
Yeah. And do you want to talk about the reason why you were uncomfortable with "the"?

20:35
Laura Tedesco
Well, it makes it sound like there is a singular monuments woman, the monuments woman. The Washington Monument, there's one. The Statue of Liberty, it just seems inaccurate. There's many monuments women and men. I don't want to be singled out. My face is on the podcast logo. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

21:02
George Gavrilis
Okay, that's cool. I mean, these are your stories, you're allowed to be grumpy about how you are portrayed. So that's two grumpy things.

21:10
Laura Tedesco
Yeah.

21:15
George Gavrilis
I have to tell you, when I look at the site, and the artifacts and everything, and the surroundings, Pompeii, I think was was not the right analogy, but for me, I think Mycenae in terms of how forlorn it is, how it sneaks up on you, how it's so moving to be up there on the bluff looking around at this mountainous semi-arid landscape. And just the amazing stuff you find, when from a distance, it just looks like a pile of rocks. Pretty wild.

21:45
Laura Tedesco
You think Mycenae, coz you're Greek!

21:49
George Gavrilis
Hmm.

21:50
Laura Tedesco
You can conjure that very readily in your mind, but I think most people, of the eight to nine individuals who are going to listen to this podcast, maybe only half of them are gonna know Mycenae ...

22:03
George Gavrilis
But what if 12 of them have been there. Even though only 10 are listening.

22:07
Laura Tedesco
Well, awesome. Awesome if they have but you say Pompeii, and immediately people can quickly conjure an image of Pompeii, so I think that was a fair thing to reference.

22:20
George Gavrilis
Yeah, Mycenae, guys, is so fucking awesome. If you only go to Greece for a weekend to see Mycenae, spend the money. It will bring you to tears.

22:31
Laura Tedesco
Is it better than sex?

22:34
George Gavrilis
It is better than sex.

22:35
Laura Tedesco
[laughing uncontrollably]

22:37
Laura Tedesco
Oh God, George.

22:38
George Gavrilis
Yeah.

22:40
Laura Tedesco
[roaring in laughter]

22:47
George Gavrilis
You've been listening to Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. To stay in touch, also follow us on Instagram, at the_monuments_woman. Join us next week when we dive deeper.

23:02
George Gavrilis
This show is produced by Christian D. Bruun and May Eleven Projects. It is recorded by Audivita Studios, and edited by Shaun Hettinger and Greg Williams. The theme song is This Love by Ariana Delawari, featuring Salar Nader.

Ep 8: It's Not Either / Or — Mes Aynak, Part 2 of 3 

Topics Covered in this Episode 

The survival of Mes Aynak: dry climate

The documentary Saving Mes Aynak

Tension between saving cultural heritage and development

The value of buried copper

The French archaeologists, Philippe Marquis

The politics of Mes Aynak

General John Allen, and working with the military

Laura's Plan B

The podcast title

Mes Aynak versus Mycenae

Recorded on June 11, 2021