Afghanistan begins destroying statues, including giant Buddhas

By Mohammed Gul, Associated Press, 3/1/2001 09:31

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Using everything from tanks to rocket launchers, Taliban troops fanned out across the country Thursday to destroy all statues, including two 5th-century statues of Buddha carved into a mountainside.

Despite international outrage, troops and other officials began demolishing images, which they say are contrary to Islam, in the capital of Kabul as well as in Jalalabad, Herat, Kandahar, Ghazni and Bamiyan, said Qadradullah Jamal, the Taliban's information minister.

''The destruction work will be done by any means available to them,'' he said. ''All the statues all over the country will be destroyed.''

Afghanistan's ancient Buddhas 175 feet and 120 feet tall are located in Bamiyan, about 90 miles west of Kabul. The larger Buddha is said to be the world's tallest statue in which Buddha is standing up rather than sitting.

In ordering the statutes destroyed, the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, said Monday that they were contrary to the tenets of Islam, which the Taliban say forbids images, such as paintings and pictures.

The main museum in Kabul also contains Buddhist statues and artwork, which Jamal said will be demolished.

There are an estimated 6,000 pieces of Buddhist art in the Kabul Museum, said Brigitte Neubacher, spokeswoman for the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage in neighboring Pakistan.

For the past three months her organization has been receiving reports and rumors that Taliban soldiers were destroying pre-Islamic artifacts.

''We raised our concerns with the Taliban authorities,'' she said.

The international community, from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Afghanistan's closest ally, Pakistan, pleaded for the preservation of the ancient works of art.

''We hope the Afghan government will show the spirit of tolerance enjoined upon by Islam as well as respect for international sentiment in this regard,'' Pakistan, one of only three countries to recognize the Taliban, said a statement Thursday.

The Russian and German governments joined in the criticism Thursday.

''These intentions cannot be judged otherwise than as an assault on the cultural and historical achievements of not only the Afghan people, but also of world civilization,'' the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil on Wednesday said the Islamic militia was unmoved by international concern.

The Taliban, who rule about 95 percent of Afghanistan, espouse a strict brand of Islamic law.

Omar, in his edict ordering their destruction, said that he wanted to ensure the statues were not worshipped in the future.

There are no Buddhists living in Afghanistan. Other than Muslims there are only Hindus and Sikhs and Muttawakil promised their temples would be protected. There also is one elderly Jewish rabbi, who stays in Kabul to protect a synagogue, which is a small house in the center of the city.

The Taliban have not prevented him from practicing his religion.

-- Anonymous, March 01, 2001

Answers

India asks Taliban to hand over Buddha statues

By Associated Press, 3/2/2001 05:06

NEW DELHI, India (AP) India asked Afghanistan's Taliban rulers on Friday to stop destroying its statues of Buddha and hand them over for preservation in India.

''If the Taliban do not wish to retain their inheritance, India would be happy to arrange for the transfer of all these artifacts to India, where they would be kept safely and preserved for all mankind,'' Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh said in parliament.

Afghanistan's Taliban leaders, who espouse a strict version of Islamic law, say statues are idolatrous and began destroying them on Thursday. All images, including statues and pictures, are contrary to Islam, said Taliban information minister Qadratullah Jamal.

Among the images the Taliban said it would destroy were two huge Buddha statues carved into the face of a mountain. One is 175 feet high and dates to the 5th century; the other is 120 feet tall and dates to the 3rd century.

''It is tragic that this act of vandalism, the most extreme among the many other acts of destruction of statues, artifacts and archaeological treasures of Afghanistan, is being pursued despite a global outcry against it,'' Singh said.

India, he said, has been cautioning the world against this regression into medieval barbarism.

The minister said the Taliban's ideological orientation was responsible for ''the Taliban territories emerging as the world's principal center of international terrorism, illicit drugs and violation of human rights, especially those of women.''

The Japanese government added its voice Friday to international protests over the destruction of statues.

''The Japanese government is deeply concerned,'' said Kazuhiko Koshikawa, spokesman for Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.

''If they are ruined, it would be an immeasurable loss,'' he said. ''The Japanese government hopes that Taliban will review such a decision and take appropriate measures.''

-- Anonymous, March 02, 2001

ET

They were faceless but even more powerful: I was awestruck By Julian West, New Delhi Correspondent

ON a brilliant winter's day three years ago, I flew into Afghanistan's Bamiyan Valley in a cargo plane. From high above the snowy Hindu Kush, I could see the colossal statues of Buddha, which the radical Taliban movement is now destroying, dominating the area. It was only as we landed, though, that their awesome size became truly apparent.

Many years before, I had visited Bamiyan in winter as a student. The lovely valley was sealed by snow and ice and totally silent. On its northern edge rose a sandstone cliff, pockmarked with caves. There, set under a cerulean sky and dwarfing the village beneath them, towered the world's two largest standing Buddha statues, 180ft and 125ft high. A slightly smaller, seated image was carved into the cliff, further along.

The Buddhas have stood at the spot for something like 1,700 years. They were carved during the Buddhist dynasty of the Kushan king, Kanishka, which flourished on the old Silk Route between China and the Mediterranean. In their heyday, they were known as one of the wonders of the world: robed in brilliant red and blue cloaks, their faces and hands glittering with gilt, their heads adorned with jewelled ornaments. Pilgrims came from afar to see them and visit the yellow-robed monks who lived in the exquisitely frescoed monastic complex carved in the cliff.

They have survived the ebbs and flows of empires and conquest, protected by their mountain fastness. Islam converted most of Afghanistan not long after they were carved, but the statues suffered little. Zealots hacked off their faces, but, if anything, such acts of religious vandalism rendered the faceless images even more powerful and god-like. I, like every visitor to Bamiyan, was awestruck.

By the time I first arrived at Bamiyan, the original decorations had long gone, victim of centuries of biting winters, baking summers and human neglect. Many of the frescos were faded or broken. The lovely draperies remained, though, as a unique example of Gandhara style, the fusion of Greek and Asian art which flourished in Afghanistan and north-west India in the second to fifth centuries after Christ.

A steep narrow staircase, which more recently had partly crumbled, climbed up through the rock and into a chamber leading out on to the larger Buddha's head, itself the size of a small room. From there, I gazed out over the wheat fields and orchards of the valley and the tiny figures of herdsmen on donkeys riding by the river far below. Afghanistan's many troubles seemed to melt away. It was a scene of paradisiacal serenity.

More recently, I found that many of the Buddhas' draperies had been damaged by the intervening years. The caves ringing the larger Buddha's feet were being used as ammunition dumps. Still, the images retained their immense power and beauty. Last week, though, it seemed that the death knell had been sounded for them.

Taliban soldiers are said to have begun firing at the Buddhas with rockets and tanks. On Friday a Taliban team, armed with enough dynamite to blow up most of the cliff face in which the statues stand, had begun crossing the snowbound passes north of the capital. The fundamentalist Taliban, which controls most of Afghanistan, has ruled that all statues must be destroyed because they are un-Islamic. While countries across the world have expressed horror, to many Afghans the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas symbolises their impotence and the loss of everything they hold dear: their music, art, history - their culture and their joy.

Last week, an Afghan who works for an aid agency said: "In 20 years of war I haven't cried. But when I heard this news, I cried." In Rome, Afghanistan's exiled king, Zahir Shah, who personally supervised many of the country's first archaeological digs and who has spent the past week striving to save the Buddhas and other threatened antiquities, said he was "shocked and saddened". "You can rebuild a town, you can rebuild roads, but you can never rebuild these statues," he said.

As the Taliban embarked on one of the world's most terrible acts of vandalism yesterday, a special representative of Unesco arrived in Pakistan in a last-minute attempt to stop the mass destruction. I remember how on my last visit to the Buddhas, my companions and I posed for photographs. In the picture, we reach as far as the larger Buddha's ankle. It is, in many ways, a humbling image.

-- Anonymous, March 04, 2001