Afghan War Threatens Giant Buddha Statues

BAMIAN, Central Afghanistan -- The colossal Buddhas of Bamian, carved from the cliffs that dominate this dusty plain in the heart of the Hindu Kush range, have watched impassively for 1,400 years as the fortunes of the ancient city waned from thriving Silk Road metropolis to remote backwater. But now, having survived the depredations of time, climate, neglect, shifts of faith and sacking by Ghengis Khan, they may soon meet their end at the hands of the radical Islamic Taliban militia commanders who have vowed to dynamite the ancient statues if they succeed in taking Bamian.


"We will destroy them because Islam has forbidden statues," Taliban commander Akhmadzai was quoted by Iranian radio as saying last month. "They are not Islamic and we will have to destroy them."


Akhmadzai commands 3,500 Taliban fighters who are pushing toward the strategic Shebar Pass, key to Bamian's southern approach and control of central Afghanistan. In the Taliban's purist view, depiction of living things contravenes sharia, or Islamic law.


The two Buddhas, 54 and 45 meters high, are considered among the earliest figurative representations of Buddha and the larger of the two is the largest standing Buddha in the world. They were carved between the end of the third and the middle of the fifth centuries AD, when Bamian was a thriving trade and spiritual center from which Buddhism spread to China. The statues have suffered at the hands of Islamic iconoclasts before, when ninth century Arab invaders destroyed their plaster faces, believing them to be sacrilegious.


Despite the damage by ancient and modern vandals, niches above the Buddhas heads are still lined with spectacular fifth century frescoes depicting the heavenly kingdom. The half mile of cliff between the statutes is riddled with tunnels and elaborately painted caves, inhabited in their heyday by a thousand monks. From the head of the large statue, the modern, mud-brick town appears dwarfed by the sprawling ruins of ancient caravansaries -- walled stopping places for caravans -- surrounding it. They, in turn, are dwarfed by the towering white mass of the Hindu Kush, which rises around the valley. The silence is only broken by distant gunfire.


The front line, 54 kilometers from Bamian on the other side of the Shebar Pass, is defended by Khazar troops, descendants of a Mongol people who raided as far as Hungary and southern Russia. Bamian province is controlled by Hezb-i-Wahdat, a Shiite Moslem political group that is part of General Abdul Rashid Dostum's anti-Taliban Military Council. Though the front line itself consists of barricaded houses and shallow trenches scraped out of the rocky hillsides, frontline commanders put their hopes in the natural defenses of the narrow gorges and passes that separate the Taliban from Bamian.


"I have fought in these mountains against the Russians, against [Afghan President Burhannudin] Rabani and now the Taliban," said General Ali Akbar, commander of the Shebar front. "If the Russians cannot defeat us, neither can the Taliban."


Countries with large Buddhist populations such as Sri Lanka and India have appealed to the world community to persuade the Taliban to save the sacred statues, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan issued a direct appeal to political and military commanders in Afghanistan to ensure that the Buddhas are preserved. The World Moslem Congress has also interceded at the request of Moslems throughout Asia who fear reprisals from their Buddhist neighbors, said congress spokesman Raja Zafarul Khan.


The Taliban's founder, the secretive Sheikh Mohammed Omar, was quoted by news agencies as denying that any threats had been made to the Buddhas, claiming that news reports were part of a plot to discredit the Taliban. However, another senior Taliban official, Mullah Hassan, governor of the south Afghan city of Kandahar, said that the fate of the statues still hung in the balance, Reuters reported.


"No decision has been taken so far," Hassan was quoted as telling a UN official. Hassan said the Ulema, a council of Islamic scholars, would have to decide.


The Taliban's acting minister of information and culture, Amir Khan Mutaqui, was quoted by Reuters as saying that commander Ahmadzai had no authority to destroy the Buddhas, and the statues fate would be decided by the Ulema.


The threat to the Bamian Buddhas is the latest in a series of disasters that have befallen Afghanistan's rich cultural heritage in the course of 18 years of war. Kabul's museum was ransacked when the puppet Soviet-installed government fell to victorious Mujaheddin groups in 1992, leaving less than 30 percent of its priceless collections locked in improvised vaults in the basement of a Kabul hotel. The ruins of Ai Khanum and Balkh, both major archaeological sites dating back to the time of Alexander the Great, have been severely damaged and in some places bulldozed by treasure hunters in search of gold, said a recent report by the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage.


The Taliban have introduced strict Islamic law throughout the area of Afghanistan they control -- including stoning to death for adultery and amputation for theft -- and their record on protecting archaeological sites and enforcing controls on the export of antiques has been generally better than that of other Afghan factions. However, until the fate of the Buddhas of Bamian has been decided, the Taliban's credentials as the guardians of the country's heritage remain open to question.