| The Buddhas of Bamiyan |
| Location |
| Buddhism |
| The Statues |
Destruction
Reasons Cronology |
| Reconstruction |
| Animations |
| Links |
Against international protests and appeals, the supreme Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar ordered their destruction as part of a campaign to rid the land of all un-Islamic graven images. The leader issued an edict declaring the statues (and therefore the ancient Buddhas) as insulting to Islam. This means that all idolatrous images of humans and animals and all those idols considered by them to be an insult to Islam had to be destroyed.
Taleban leader rejected also a proposal to build a concrete wall in front of the two Buddhas statues instead of their destruction.
The explosion of one of the Buddha statue (Courtesy of CNN)
By March 12, 2001, these giant Buddhas have been 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 (see images below).
The Taleban destroyed also other buddhist images in Afghanistan, such as ancient statues and relief carvings.
The Buddhist, the world community and UNESCO, failed to convince the Talebans to leave such artifacts and everybody expressed horror at the Buddhas' destruction. And many Mullahs in Islamic countries condemned Taleban's operations as wrong-headed and damaging to the image of Islam.
The destruction and the rests of the statues (Courtesy of CNN)
The ancient statues were between the tallest standing Buddhas in the world. They had survived the ravages of Genghis Khan, centuries of invasions and wars and the natural wear of the elements.
A view from the top of the great hole where the Great Buddha was carved (left).
The big stones, rests of the statues after the explosion, covered with UNESCO bags (right).
Taleban have been considered the descendent of all the other barbarians
who destroyed what their ideologies could not accept: the Vandals
and Huns stealing of the Roman Empire; Stalin's destruction of churches;
Mao's Cultural Revolution; Pol Pot's razing of schools and cities; Hitler's
book burnings and desecration of synagogues.
The Taleban 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 ...". But the reasons of the action are
politics and maybe also religious. The city of Bamiyan was a base of the Taleban's opposition - Northern Alliance's "rebel" forces.
The Taleban took control of Bamiyan in 1998 and, to humiliate the locals,
they tried to destroy their heritage. The first attempt vanished as the
local Taleban governor talked the military commander out of the atrocity.
Moreover Buddhism is an easy target for fundamentalist Muslims. Buddhists
are considered as 'idol-worshipers,' which had unfortunate associations
with the portrayal of the Prophet's Meccan enemies in the Quran. This
probably accounts for the harsh treatment that Muslims reserved for the
Buddhists they encountered in the course of their conquest. Least but not
last, the Taleban government for more than a year has been requesting international
humanitarian aid for a country ravaged by drought, earthquakes and war.
But no aid come as the Taleban (and their leaders) harbored international
terrorism...
Anyway, today everybody recognize that the massacre has little to do with religion.
The Buddha is not God or even one among many gods. During his lifetime of 80 years, Buddha
Sakyamuni only allowed his image to be recorded as a reflection in rippling water.
Images of the Buddha himself did not appear for at least 400 years after his death and even
then were created only to remind followers of their own innate "Buddha Nature."
The Director General of UNESCO called the demolition of the over 2,000-year-old figures
"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."
Now the old statues are nothing but piles of sandstone rubble and clay plaster.
The Chronology of the events (from UKMBA Archive)
| II century A.D. | Under the patronage of Emperor Kanishka starts the construction of the two statues in Bamiyan |
| IV-V century A.D. | End of the construction of the statues |
| 1996 | Taleban fundamentalist Islamic militia started to govern most of Aghanistan |
| February 2001 | - Talebans destroying last vestiges of Buddhist history. The order came from the Taleban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, who issued an edict declaring statues, including the ancient Buddhas, as insulting to Islam |
| - Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, appeals to the Taleban leadership to abide by their previous commitments to protect Afghanistan's cultural heritage in general | |
| - Asian officials and Buddhist groups expressed dismay Wednesday at the impending destruction of Buddha statues in Afghanistan | |
| March 2001 | - Defying an international outcry, Taleban soldiers on Thursday begin destroying all statues in Afghanistan |
| - Many statues throughout the country were being demolished with rockets, tanks and explosives | |
| - Statement by World Fellowship of Buddhists | |
| - The Malaysian Buddhist Association hopes to collect over 10,000 signatures nationwide in protest against the destruction of Buddha statues by the Taleban regime in Afghanistan | |
| - Aliran joins the chorus of concerned individuals and groups in calling on the Taleban regime to immediately halt its destruction of Buddha statues in Afghanistan | |
| March 8 2001 | Bamiyan Statues destroyed |
