Willem Vogelsang

Who is Willem Vogelsang?

Willem Vogelsang specialises in the history and cultures of Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan. He has written numerous books and articles on the subject. In the 1970s he studied Indian and Iranian languages and cultures at the University of Leiden. He also studied at the University of Cambridge and the University of Gent, Belgium. During his studies, he spent time in Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, where he conducted archaeological fieldwork, notably in the Afghan province of Kandahar. During Christmas 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and Vogelsang, who by then had returned to The Netherlands, co-founded the Dutch Afghanistan Committee. He also established contacts with Dutch national newspapers and periodicals with the suggestion that he worked for them in Afghanistan. They agreed, and by the summer of 1982 Vogelsang managed to have himself smuggled into Afghanistan where he joined the Mujahedin and travelled across large parts of the country. During this period he regularly sent back radio interviews and written articles to The Netherlands.

Vogelsang obtained his PhD degree at the University of Groningen, in 1990. His thesis deals with the establishment and organisation of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, in the middle of the first millennium BC.