Email this article
|
|
Destructive Frenzy in Afghanistan
|
March 2, 2001
|
|
|
Rumors began to slip out of the ravaged Afghan capital of Kabul a few
months ago: pre-Islamic artifacts were being systematically destroyed by
the country's fundamentalist Taliban regime. On February 12, these rumors
were confirmed in a BBC report stating that Taliban representatives,
invoking the Islamic prohibition against the depiction of living things,
had destroyed over a dozen ancient statues in the National Museum in Kabul.
Two weeks later, on February 26, supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar
announced that all pre-Islamic statues in the Taliban-controlled areas of
Afghanistan were to be destroyed. Among the images the Taliban said it
would destroy are two colossal standing Buddha statues carved into a
mountainside at Bamiyan. (Click here for comments by Taliban officials reported in the press.)
Taliban Information and Culture Minister Mullah Qadradullah Jamal was
quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press news service as saying statues had been
destroyed at museums in Kabul, Ghazni, Herat, and at Farm Hadda near
Jalalabad. The extent of the destruction is difficult to determine but
there is no reason to be hopeful. The fate of the Bamiyan Buddhas is
unknown. One report says that they were to be blown up following Friday
prayers today. Reactions from around the world are uniformly outraged and
saddened (see below). To them we can only add our own condemnation of the
destruction of this priceless heritage. ARCHAEOLOGY's May/June issue will
follow up on these events.--The Editors
© 2001 by the Archaeological Institute of America
www.archaeology.org/online/news/india/afghanistan/ |
| 
