Fifteen hundred pieces of this country's history are sitting in crates in the Afghanistan National Museum. Half of the relics date to the time before Islam arrived in Afghanistan in 642 AD. The rest cover the Muslim period up to and including the 20th century. But they did not come directly from archeological sites in Afghanistan.

They came instead from Heathrow Airport in London, where they were confiscated over a period of six years.

British authorities returned the objects to Kabul in a massive shipment that arrived on February 17.