Blotting Out History
Islamic Afghan rulers destroy Buddhist treasures
In their zeal to create the world's strictest Islamic orthodoxy, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have isolated women, ordered men to wear beards, restricted photography, outlawed alcohol, forbidden recorded music, staged public executions, and stoned thieves to death. Last week, in an act of breathtaking religious zealotry and cultural vandalism, the Taliban began destroying all the nation's statues--and possibly many paintings and photographs--calling them idolatrous symbols that defile Islam. The blitz on the nation's historical treasures drew widespread international criticism including censure from the mainstream Muslim world.
The antiquities marked for eradication date to the eighth century and earlier and are the priceless legacy of Chinese and Indian Buddhist pilgrims and scholars who settled in the ruggedly mountainous region before the rise of Islam. The paroxysm of pious destruction--the extent at week's end had not been independently verified by journalists--was ordered by the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. "We do not understand why everybody is so worried," he said. "All we are breaking are stones."
Government officials said statues and other art works were demolished in several cities including the capital, Kabul, whose museum is a particularly rich repository of thousands of artifacts. Military units fanned out across the country to destroy larger targets, including two towering Buddhas carved into a sandstone cliff more than 1,500 years ago at Bamian, some 90 miles west of Kabul. The statues, one believed to be the world's tallest Buddha, reaching 175 feet, the other standing some 120 feet, are Afghanistan's most famous antiquities. Soon after the nationwide offensive began against the "gods of the infidels," gunners fired mortars and cannon at the monuments.
Sadness and horror. The world response was swift and anguished. Preservation appeals were issued by government officials. Leading art museums offered to buy the antiquities or asked to be allowed to preserve them. Said Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the United Nations cultural organization UNESCO: "This iconoclastic determination shocks me."
Others noted that while the response to this cultural desecration was sadness and horror, the world has largely ignored the plight of millions of Afghans suffering the ravages of civil war, drought, famine, and U.N. sanctions aimed at isolating the Taliban regime. Did this trigger the mullahs' act of defiance? Western nations, said leading Pakistani cleric Fazle-ur Rehman, "don't have any respect for the people. Maybe that is why they [the Taliban] have taken this action."
This story appears in the March 12, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.