Taliban regime,an Islamist militia group that ruled large parts of Afghanistan from September 1996 till late 2001. The regime was fanatical about eliminating everything they considered un-Islamic.
Under the Taliban regime, Sharia law was interpreted to forbid a wide variety of previously lawful activities in Afghanistan. One Taliban list of prohibitions included: pork, pig, pig oil, anything made from human hair, satellite dishes, cinematography, and equipment that produces the joy of music, pool tables, chess, masks, alcohol, tapes, computers, VCRs, television, anything that propagates sex and is full of music, wine, lobster, nail polish, firecrackers, statues, sewing catalogs, pictures, Christmas cards.[105] They also got rid of employment, education, and sports for all women, dancing, clapping during sports events, kite flying, and characterizations of living things, no matter if they were drawings, paintings, photographs, stuffed animals, or dolls. Men had to have a fist size beard at the bottom of their chin. Conversely, they had to wear their head hair short. Men had to wear a head covering.
Among the Afghanistan’s historical remains, Taliban’s biggest targets, literally and figuratively, were the two monumental Buddha statues carved out of the sandstone cliffs in central Afghanistan. One stood nearly 180 feet tall and the other about 120 feet high, and together they had watched over the dusty Bamiyan Valley since the sixth century, several centuries before Islam reached the region.
The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two 6th century monumental statues of standing buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, situated 230 km (143 miles) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2,500 meters (8,202 ft). Built in 507 CE, the larger in 554 CE, the statues represented the classic blended style of Gandhara art.
The statues which were the largest Buddha carvings in the world were destroyed by Taliban using massive explosions in 2001, despite international opposition.
After almost a decade, teams from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, along with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, are engaged in the painstaking process of putting the broken Buddhas back together.
According a German art historian, Bert Praxenthaler, up to half of the Buddha pieces can be recovered.
Bert Praxenthaler has been working at the site for the past eight years together with his crew and have shifted through 400 tons of rubble and have recovered many parts of the statues along with shrapnel, land mines and explosives that were used in their demolition.
But the question which has remained unanswer is that how would it be possible to rebuilt the Buddhas from the rubble?
Mr. Praxenthaler said, “The archaeological term is ‘anastylosis,’ but most people think it’s some kind of strange disease.”
“Anastylosis” is a familiar term for those in the archaeology world. The process includes combining the monument’s original pieces with modern material, which was used to restore the Parthenon of Athens in the past.
The workers are still busy removing scaffolding after months spent reinforcing the wall where the Buddha’s head once was.
The reconstruction project of Buddhas and Afghans views
Bamyan Province is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. It is in the centre of the country and is an extremely poor and remote land in one of the world’s most underdeveloped countries.
The Buddha statues once used to play an important role in the economy of Bamyan province by attracting major tourists from around the world, but Afghanistan has been at war virtually nonstop for more than three decades. The fighting drove away the tourists years before the Taliban blew up the statues.
It is expected to bring back the tourist and rebuild the historic site with the implementation of reconstruction project of Bamyan Buddhas.
The project is also supported by Habiba Sarabi, the popular provincial governor. Bamiyan is now considered one of the less dangerous places in Afghanistan.
In the meantime, human rights activists like Abdullah Hamadi says, the empty niches where the Buddhas stood are a reminder of the Taliban’s fanaticism, and should be left as they are.
Hamadi said, “the Buddha was destroyed, if you made it, rebuilt it, that is not the history. The history is the broken Buddha.”
Abdullah Hamadi belongs to Yakawlang district of Bamyan province. More than 300 members of a minority group, called the Hazaras were massacred by Taliban in 2001, just two months before the Taliban blew up the Buddha statues.
Bamyan province is considered as one of the safest regions in Afghanistan but Taliban can still strike as they did recently by kidnapping and beheading Jawad Zahak, the head of the Bamiyan provincial council, while he was driving his family toward Kabul, about 150 miles to the southeast.
On the other hand, a number of Bamyan residents say they would rather see the money for the restoration project go toward services like electricity and housing, which are in desperately short supply.
Caves used as shelters by homeless Bamyan residents
In the meanwhile, a number of Bamyan residents use the caves at the site of the Buddha statues as their only shelter they can find.
Homeless villagers like Marzia and her six children are living in one of the caves, while the family’s goats bleat nearby. Marzia, who like many Afghans uses only one name, said she has no use for the statues.
“We don’t have a house, so where else can we live?” she said.
On the other hand, a few enterprising villagers have found ways to make money off the story surrounding the Buddhas. One is Said Merza Husain, known around town as the man who was forced to help the Taliban blow up the statues.
Mr. Said Merza said, had no choice but to obey the Taliban a decade ago. If he had resisted, they would have killed him. One of his friends refused to take part, and the Taliban shot him.
The reconstruction team headed by Bert Praxenthaler have halted their work temporarily during the scorching Afghan summer.
According to Mr. Praxenthaler, piecing together Bamiyan’s Buddhas will take many more years. After a summer break, Praxenthaler’s team plans to resume their work in the fall.
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