A Kickstarter Campaign for an Ancient Site in Afghanistan

THE WASHINGTON POST
By Olga Khazan

AFGHANISTAN---The crowd-funding platform Kickstarter has become a popular avenue for enterprising individuals to raise money to create everything from funky furniture to indie films. Now, one documentarian is using it to try to save an ancient city in Afghanistan. Mes Aynak, a 2,600-year-old Buddhist site in Logar province, Afghanistan, is important for two reasons: It’s a 100-acre monastery complex filled with Buddhist temples, statues, relics and manuscripts, and it’s also home to one of the largest copper deposits in the world. If he meets his $30,000 goal, [Brent] Huffman plans to make a film detailing the imminent destruction of the ancient Buddhist city, arguing that the archaeologists have made little progress on salvaging the remaining artifacts. [link]