Buddha and the Taliban

The Buddhas of the Bamiyan are comprised of two large images of Buddha carved in sandstone cliffs by devout monks. These sublime artifacts are among the largest Buddhist sculptures in the world. The Bamiyan Valley is located in the center of Afghanistan (142 miles or 230 kilometers) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of (8000 feet or 2500 meters) in the Hindu Kush mountain region. For centuries the valley of Bamiyan lay at the heart of the fabled Silk Road and was a major source of commerce for caravans carrying goods between China and the Roman Empire. For 500 years from the second century to the ninth century, when Islam entered the area, the Bamiyan Valley was a major Buddhist center. In this era the valley was full of lively Buddhist monasteries, stupas and monks. In this rich and peaceful climate the art of the carved Buddhas emerged.

Many caves and smaller images of Buddha surround the larger statue (175 feet or 55 meters) and the second sculpture (115 feet or 38 meters). These caves were home to thousands of Buddhist monks and were also utilized by traveling merchants, monks, and pilgrims. In their day the statues and caves were plastered and painted with rich and exotic colors. The larger Buddha was painted red, the smaller Buddha was painted blue, while their faces and hands were painted gold. These icons must have been quite impressive for travelers traversing the harsh surrounding landscape. Upon entering the valley the beautiful Buddhas were a gesture of peaceful reassurance.

The Buddhas, so impressive yet so vulnerable, had survived the ravages of Genghis Khan, centuries of invasions and wars, and the natural wear of the elements over time. However the last decade has brought on the demise of the statues. In 1989 after the Soviet Union limped home failing to defeat the Mujahideen forces, Afghanistan degenerated into a fractionalized fiefdom where violence and anarchy reigned as the feudal warlords tried to annihilate one another. The United States has major culpability for these events. The U.S. Government supported the Mujahideen with technological weaponry and firepower but after the Soviets retreated the U.S. Government just walked away from the devastated and war-torn country leaving the population, culture and artifacts at the mercy of the murderous warlords.

The situation in Afghanistan become so chaotic that it was ripe for some sort of self-righteous, law and order regime, and they got one when a group who characterized themselves as “God’s Students” or Taliban got control of the country. The Taliban were racial and extremist Muslims whose goal was to establish a strict Islamic state in Afghanistan. While the Taliban brought law and order to the country they also embarked on the harshest violation of human rights in support of their fundamentalist Islamic agenda. The Taliban are considered the descendents of other barbarians who destroyed what their ideologies would not accept: Stalin's destruction of churches; Mao's Cultural Revolution; Pol Pot's razing of schools and cities; and Hitler's book burnings and desecration of synagogues.

The Taliban claimed that "The Buddhas violate the Islamic prohibition against sacred images and that they are false idols that must be destroyed ... The statues should be destroyed so that they are not worshipped now or in the future". Against international protests and appeals the supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar ordered the statues destroyed as part of a campaign to rid the land of all un-Islamic images. On March 8, 2001, the statues were destroyed by the use of mortars, dynamite, tanks, anti-aircraft weapons and rockets. Now they are nothing but piles of sandstone rubble and clay plaster.

The giant Buddhas were among Asia's greatest archaeological treasures. Koichiro Matsuura, the Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), http://www.unesco.org said that the demolition of the over 1500-year-old figures was "a crime against culture”. “It is abominable to witness the cold and calculated destruction of cultural properties which were the heritage of the Afghan people, and, indeed, of the whole humanity. This loss is irreversible."

Religious leaders from every faith, including the Muslims, and the United Nations had failed to convince the Talibans to leave such artifacts alone and everyone expressed horror at the Buddhas' destruction. But how did the United States Government weigh in on this issue? The fact is both the Clinton and Bush Administrations negotiated with the Taliban to get the repressive regime to widen its government as well as look favorably on U.S. companies' attempts to construct an oil pipeline from Eurasia through Afghanistan to Karachi, Pakistan. It was the politics of expediency versus the politics of righteousness.

The expedient move was to secure more oil for our gas-guzzling nation. The American oil giant Unocal had already signed a pipeline deal with Turkmenistan. Pakistan stood to profit greatly from the pipeline with projected revenue in the billions of U.S. dollars for pipeline transit fees. U.S. policy-makers saw in the Taliban an instrument for furthering U.S. aims for more and cheaper oil. The U.S. Government wasn’t about to risk its influence or even admonish the Taliban regime and Mullah Omar in an attempt to dissuade them from destroying the statues. This is where U.S. foreign policy always fails. Instead of protecting “U.S. interests” we need to start considering what’s best for the future generations who will inherit this planet from us. We need to ask, “What is the righteous thing to do?” The U.S. Government should have prevented the destruction of the Buddhas in the name of this planet’s cultural heritage. If the U.S. Government had utilized its considerable influence and force to preserve the Buddhas in March of 2001 then September 11, 2001 might have just been another sunny day in New York.