Thursday March 1 3:21 PM ET
Taliban Begins Smashing All Afghan Statues
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - The radical ruling Taliban movement began
smashing all statues from Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s rich
cultural past on Thursday, defying international appeals to save
the ancient artifacts.
Taliban Information and Culture Minister Mullah Qudratullah
Jamal said centers where the campaign had been unleashed
included Bamiyan province -- site of two soaring statues of the
Buddha hewn from a solid cliff that are the most famous relics of Afghanistan's history.
``All statues will be destroyed,'' he told reporters in the capital Kabul. ``Whatever means of
destruction are needed to demolish the statues will be used.
``The work began early during the day. All of the statues are to be smashed. This also covers
the idols in Bamiyan,'' he said.
The Taliban rejected a last-minute U.N. appeal when its Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad
Muttawakil told an envoy on Thursday the movement would complete the destruction of the
statues it regards as un-Islamic.
``The abandoned relics are not our pride,'' the official Bakhtar news agency quoted
Muttawakil as telling U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan Francesc Vendrell, who arrived in
Kabul with an appeal from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites).
``Destroying them would not mean that the freedom of the minorities would cease,''
Muttawakil said.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news service later quoted Jamal as saying statues
had been destroyed at museums in Kabul, the southern city of Ghazni, the western city of
Herat and at Farm Hadda near the main eastern town of Jalalabad.
Russia, Germany, India and Pakistan condemned the destruction and appealed to the Taliban
to think again.
Buddhist countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka have also expressed alarm at the Taliban's
focus on eradicating reminders of the centuries before Islam when Afghanistan was a center
of Buddhist learning and pilgrimage.
Egyptian Muslim intellectual Fahmi Howeidy said the Taliban edict ran contrary to Islam.
``Islam respects other cultures even if they include rituals that are against Islamic law,''
Howeidy told Reuters in Cairo.
International alarm was first sparked on Monday, when Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad
Omar ordered the smashing of all statues, including the two famous Buddhas that soar 38
meters (125 feet) and 53 meters (174 feet) above Bamiyan.
The United Nations (news - web sites) cultural agency UNESCO (news - web sites)
denounced the Taliban for smashing the priceless statues and called on Muslim nations to try
to halt the destruction.
Koichiro Matsuura, director general of the Paris-based UNESCO, said he was shocked by the news and called a crisis meeting of representatives of the Organization of the Islamic Conference for later in the day.
``By perpetrating these acts of vandalism the Taliban are furthering the cause neither of Afghanistan nor Islam,'' Japan's Matsuura said in a statement.''
Muslim Pakistan, one of Taliban's very few foreign supporters, joined the international chorus on Thursday.
``Pakistan attaches great importance to and supports the preservation of the world's
historical, cultural and religious heritage,'' the foreign ministry said.
With the campaign already underway, Foreign Secretary Inamul Haque told reporters: ``We hope the Afghanistan government would give serious consideration to this international appeal, including that by UNESCO and others, and that they will not demolish the cultural heritage of Afghanistan.''
U.N. Appeal To Protect Relics
India said it would try to stop the destruction.
``The government of India will raise this issue at every international forum including the United Nations. We will make all attempts to stop the demolition of Lord Buddha's statue,'' parliamentary affairs minister Pramod Mahajan told parliament.
Russia denounced the Taliban step as vandalism.
``This intention (to destroy the statues) can only be classed as an assault on cultural and historical treasures, not only of the Afghan people but of world civilization,'' the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
``The Taliban's vandalism against material objects of the rich spiritual heritage of the ancient
Afghan world shows their clear enmity to common human values,'' it added.
Germany condemned the Taliban action.
``Germany is appalled by the willful destruction of cultural artifacts in Afghanistan. The
damage to culturally unique Buddha statues by the Taliban cannot be justified,'' the foreign
ministry said in a statement issued in Berlin.
The European Union (news - web sites) said it was shocked.
``The EU strongly urges the Taliban leadership not to implement this deeply tragic decision
which will deprive the people of Afghanistan of its rich cultural heritage,'' the EU said in a
statement issued by Sweden, which holds the rotating presidency of the 15-nation bloc.
A fundamentalist movement that regards all human likenesses of divinity to be un-Islamic, the
Taliban has steadily conquered most of Afghanistan in recent years, and now controls its
cities and highways.
The destruction of artifacts has inflicted new damage to the Taliban's already poor ties with
most countries.
Heavily criticized for its restrictions on women and for its public executions, the Taliban is
recognized by only three states: Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Afghanistan has suffered destruction at the hands of many conquerors in the past. Most
recently it suffered a Soviet invasion in 1979, an anti-communist insurgency backed by the
West in the 1980s and a civil war in the 1990s.