The world loses a part of its cultural history as the Bamiyan Buddhas are bombarded.

Bombarding the Buddhas

In February 2001, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia said that they had started destroying all statues in the country, including the world's tallest standing Buddha in the central province of Bamiyan. Taliban fighters attacked the two giant stone Buddhas, dating back almost 2,000 years, with rockets, tank shells and even automatic rifles.

The Taliban Information and Culture Minister Qudratullah Jamal said that the Bamiyan statues would be destroyed "by every means". The two massive Bamiyan Buddhas, carved into a sandstone cliff near the provincial capital in central Afghanistan, stand 50 meters and 34.5 meters tall and date back to around the second century.

Appeals for their preservation have come from the United States, France, Thailand, Japan, Sri Lanka, Iran and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Koichiro Matsuura, Chief of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said their destruction would be a "real cultural disaster that will cause irreparable harm to a heritage of exceptional universal value". He said, "This heritage is central to Afghanistan's memory and identity and is a landmark in the history of other civilizations. The loss of the Afghan statues, and of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in particular, would be a loss for humanity as a whole".

In the meantime, Taliban soldiers were also wrecking ancient statues in the Kabul museum and elsewhere in the provinces of Ghazni, Herat, Jalalabad and Kandahar.

An edict announced by the militia's supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar, calling for the destruction of all statues in line with "Islamic" laws, has caused reactions ranging from shock to outrageousness around the world.

Afghanistan is home to an array of pre-Islamic historic treasures from its days as a key stop on the ancient Silk Route and a strategic battleground for conquerors dating back to Alexander The Great.

Post Comment

Name : Email : Password : Comments :