Category Archives: The Weapons

Images of weapons depicted on Afghan war rugs and carpets.

NFS Dark Blue Field Reaper Drone War Rug

Also for sale is this beautifully woven drone rug from 2015, Warrug has seen many variations of this style over the years.
Reaper Drone War Rug Folded

It’s dynamic pattern and color schemes add complexity to this rug while maintaining a balance. Red white and blue coloration, coupled with the red, white, and blue border ads complexity to this rug.

Drone War Rug
It is Size 36 x 24 inches (92 X61 cm) using hand spun wool.

Blue Elephant Foot Bokara Drone War Rug

This rug is woven of excellent, hand-spun wool and features vegetable dye colors. The rug employs a classic Bokara or Elephants Foot design (like this antique non-war rug), but rather than traditional tribal emblems this rug uses a major and minor guls made from drones.

Bokara or Elephants Foot Design Rug

The size is Size 78 x 117 inches (198 X297 cm) and it can be purchased on warrug.com after clicking on Drone War Rugs.

UXO Rugs Woven in Afghanistan

The UXO, a.k.a. Unexploded Ordnance, rugs were all woven in Afghanistan between 2002 and August 2021 and given the sanctions / embargo, there will be no more for the foreseeable future
UXO Rug RedUXO Rug Blue

They are inspired by older UXO rugs like the UXO warning rug and the Weapon Inventory War Rug. The new UXO rugs came in two sizes (5×8 feet or 1.5M x 2.5M and 6’6″x12’6″ or 2x4M) and made out of the “Chobi” wool is high quality wool, minimally processed then spun by hand.

Life sized UXO The rugs feaature life sized UXO.

UXO Rugs, a.k.a Unexploded Ordnance

UXO stands for Unexploded Ordnance there are a number of examples on the site some older like the Unexploded Ordinance Warning Rug  and some which are still for sale and newer. Check out the Turkmen and Uzbek War Rug with Light Fields. Turkmen and Uzbek War Rug with Light Fields

Sometimes these rugs come with a message like the UXO warning rug which says “do not touch or play with, these are very dangerous” in both Farsi and Pashto, the “unexploded” element creating a lasting impression of suspense.

The Turkmen and Uzbek UXO rug is done in the “Chobi” or “Vegetal Dye Peshawar” style with Turkmen borders. It is exceptionally beautiful.

UXO Turkmen/Uzbek rug

Drone Rug in NY Times Opinion Piece

Opinion: The Secret Death Toll of America’s Drones

The Pentagon says American airstrikes in Somalia have killed no civilians since President Trump accelerated attacks against Shabab militants there two years ago.

Amnesty International investigated five of the more than 100 strikes carried out in Somalia since 2017 by drones and manned aircraft, and in just that small sampling found that at least 14 civilians were killed.

The Pentagon says airstrikes by the American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State killed at least 1,257 civilians in Iraq and Syria as of the end of January.

Airwars, a university-based monitoring group, estimates that those strikes killed at least 7,500 civilians in those countries.

Those disparities show how poorly the American public understands the human cost of an air war fought largely by remote-controlled drones. Drones have been the main weapon in the counterterrorism fight for more than a decade. They kill extremists without risking American lives, making combat seem antiseptic on the home front. But the number of civilians killed in these attacks is shrouded in secrecy.

Similar drone rug available here

Afghan War Rug Exhibition at Temple University

War rug art is fascinatingly educational friends! Temple University’s Samuel L. Paley Library, in room 309, is currently holding a Afghan war rug exhibition that contains 14 of my Afghan war rugs. These rugs tell stories and contain history which, ” helps contextualize a group of people that many Americans know very little about.” Theirs so much to be learned and talked about. Go check it out!

Video on vimeo (embed removed to stop unwelcome third party javascript from running on Warrug)

This show has curated by Alicia Cunningham-Bryant and student assistant curators, Ilana Napoli, and Rachel Morin.

Rugs shown are documented here

American Drones on War Rugs

Warrug.com recently received a shipment of rugs from Peshawar, Pakistan including some new designs woven in Pakistan. The weavers are Afghan Turkmen who have settled permenantly in Pakistan after being refugees. This summer they produced three rugs featuring Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s or drones).

The blue rug below, #1566, features three different drones: Global Surveyors, Reapers, and Predators.

The second rug, below, #1580, features armed Predator drones.

Below is the third rug of the set, and it is particularly interesting because the drones are colored red, white and blue. I didn’t notice this important color choice until photoshopping (rather GiMP’ing) the border photo when I noticed the interlocking red, white, and blue border.