GIANT BUDDHA STATUES DESTROYED BY AFGHAN MUSLIM LEADERS
PARIS First of March (IPS) Despite strong international protests and
persistent appeals by several countries and personalities, including Afghan
intellectuals, historians and scholars ,the authorities of the Islamic Emirate
of Afghanistan started Thursday the systematic destruction of all statues
throughout the Asian country, including several ancient statues of Lord Buddha,
dating to pre-Islamic times.
"The work of destroying statues, including those in Bamiyan, Heart, Jalalabad, Qandahar and Qazni, have started by soldiers using all means, including guns, tanks and mortars", Taleban Information and Culture Minister Qodratolah Jamal assured journalists.
Molla Mohammad Omar, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Emirate decided Monday that all statues, including two massive, 58 and 38 metres tall each, representing world’s tallest standing Buddhas, carved into a cliff facing the central town of Bamiyan, were are blasphemous and insulting to Islam and must be destroyed.
"The implementation of Mullah Omar's order to destroy statues began this morning", said Mr. Jamal, adding that soldiers had already broken some 30 pieces at the Kabul museum.
"All we are breaking are stones", the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted Mollah Omar as saying. "My job is the implementation of Islamic order and in doing so, I don’t fear anything", the cleric said.
The head of one of the two Bamiyan Buddhas was blown off during the Taleban's capture of the city in 1998 and the other was badly damaged in Afghanistan’s 21 years-old internal wars.
Afghanistan was a Buddhist centre before the arrival of Islam in the ninth century and most statues date from nearly 2,000 years ago, untouched for more than a millennium, surviving even the onslaughts of Genghis Khan in the 13th century and Tamerlane in the 14th century, but some Afghan Muslim cleric believe that Buddhists worship the Buddha and that the statues are therefore idols..
The country's museums contain numerous Buddhas and other figures of priceless historical value, most of them believed to be vandalised or stolen, to be sold abroad.
There are also a number of Hindu shrines in Bakhtiar province.
"It is a great loss, a tragedy for the Afghan people and for the world," said Italy's ambassador to Pakistan, Angelo Gabriele de Ceglie.
Mr. de Ceglie was in Kabul representing an Italian-funded organisation dedicated to preserving what is left of Afghanistan's rich past.
Iran, the neighbouring nation also ruled by Muslim clerics was one of the fist countries to add its voice to world protests on Tuesday condemning the destruction of Buddhist statues by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and called on the United Nations to take serious action against this ruling "grouplet".
"Strangely, certain Taleban-led individuals, calling themselves "cleric"', have ordered destruction of ancient sites of the mankind society, citing blasphemy and idolising as reasons," a statement released by Iran's Cultural Heritage Organisation (CHO) said.
But the statement failed to say that like their Afghan colleagues, Iranian clerics, when they took over from the former Monarchy in 1979, had plans to destroy all vestiges of pre-Islam Iran, including the monuments of Persepolis, but were prevented by the people, attached to its ancient history and civilisation.
Iran supports the Northern Islamic Alliance of former President Borhaneddin Rabbani who fights the ruling Taleban that now controls some 90 percent of the country.
Mr. Wakil Ahmad Motawakel, the Foreign Minister of the Islamic State of Afghanistan reiterated Thursday that the decision of the regime’s Supreme Leader Mulla Mohammad Omar to destroy pre-Islamic statues in Afghanistan was "irreversible".
"You who have lived in Afghanistan and have experience, have you ever seen any decision of the Islamic Emirate reversed?" Mr. Mutawakel asked, pointing out: "We are not destroying them to face or to confront the world. We have our own internal issues and laws, Islamic duties to attend and according to which we are acting", he said.
United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan had appealed to the Molla Omar not to carry out its edict, saying the UN General Assembly "has repeatedly called on all Afghan parties to protect the cultural and historic relics and monuments of Afghanistan, which are part of the common heritage of mankind."
He told the Taleban leadership "to abide by their previous commitments to protect Afghanistan's cultural heritage in general, and the two great Buddhist sculptures in Bamiyan in particular", his spokesman said.
The Taleban, or movement of religious students, seized Kabul in 1996 and have imposed a puritanical mix of Pashtun tribal and Sharia law in a bid to create their idea of a true Muslim state.
Their regime is recognised only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and is not represented at the United Nations or the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
Molla Omar’s decree ordering the destruction of all statues in the country has shocked conservationists worldwide.
Besides the two giant statues of Bamiyan, the country is home to six bilingual Ashokan rock edicts, Buddhist viharas, stupas and remains of the Kushana period.
"For India, the region is of great significance as it till date houses some of the finest specimens of Indian civilisation and culture", said R. Sengupta, ex-director of conservation, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).
The Azadi Afghan Radio described as a "slap on the face of Afghans, their rich and diverse cultural heritage, their history and identity" the Islamic order, or fatwa, by the "demented" Taleban extremist leader Mullah Omar and his "uncivilised cohorts" calling for the destruction of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic heritage.
According to the Radio, the decision is part of a "grand design" by Mullah Omar's Pakistani and Arab narco-terrorist masters to gradually implement "cultural genocide" alongside the human genocide that has befallen Afghans over the past seven years.
The commentary accuses "all those countries, intelligence services, political and social groups, and individuals who promoted and helped create the Taleban Mafia, especially the Pakistan's "infamous ISI intelligence service" since 1994, of being equally guilty and responsible for this "dismal state of Afghan affairs", the "spelling of Afghan blood and the systematic destruction of their country".
"In our eyes they are accessories and accomplices to this grand human tragedy and crime against humanity. There is no doubt that the Taleban issued this decree to justify another crime, just when a European delegation was visiting Kabul to investigate the alleged destruction of priceless Buddhist artefacts by the Taleban at the Kabul Museum", the Azadi Radio said.
Informed Afghan sources told Iran Press Service that the decision of Mollah Omar to destroy all historic statues would justify further looting of Afghan priceless antiques from the country’s museums at a time many of them had already been stolen and sold outside to antique dealers.
"It is also that our southern neighbour that is trying to turn Afghanistan into its backyard do not support the existence at its borders of a country rich in cultural heritage and civilisation, as Afghanistan is", he told, referring to Pakistan.
Others argue that this is part of a calculated political move to force the world to recognise the Taleban regime.
But informed diplomatic sources at the United Nations immediately reacted, saying that it this is the aim, then Afghan Islamic leaders could be certain that their decision would backfire on them, making them more isolated and more hated by the international community. TALEBAN STATUES 1301