KABUL, Feb 2: A rare collection of thousands of documents from 20 years of turbulent modern Afghan history will be permanently housed at Kabul University, leading authority Nancy Hatch Dupree said on Monday.

Dupree, a respected author on Afghanistan, said the collection of 45,000 papers, newspapers and other documents was a valuable resource that could help the war-shattered, fractured country forge a national identity.

US national Dupree, 81, and her late husband, eminent archaeologist Louis Dupree, started the collection in 1989 after moving to Peshawar as the Soviet occupation was drawing to an end and Afghan civil war loomed.

She began moving the papers into Afghanistan in 2003, after the 2001 fall of the Taliban regime, which imposed five years of harsh Islamic rule, and the collection has since been stored in the Kabul Library.

Now the documents -- which cover topics as diverse as health to agriculture, economics and politics -- have been allocated land at Kabul University and bids opened to construct a purpose-built facility, Dupree told reporters.

“So maybe in about a month we will start building and perhaps hopefully by the beginning of next year we will have a new building where we can initiate many new projects,” she said.—AFP