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GHORBAND VALLEY, April 17: The Taliban have warned that they will
demolish a massive and ancient statue of Buddha if they advance
into enemy territory in central Afghanistan. Dubbing the famous
cliff carving "unIslamic," a senior Taliban commander on Wednesday
issued a simple warning about the fate of the "Big Buddha": "We
will blow it up."
Frontline commander Abdul Wahid told journalists the spectacular
55 metre high image would be dynamited if they managed to break
through a rival faction's lines, 10 km from here. He said the
carving - set in a huge niche in a sheer cliff face - was
unIslamic as it represented an "infidel" religion. It also bears a
human image, which is forbidden by Islam. The commander also
denied the site - which has been the focus of major restoration
and archaeological work - was of any scientific or historical
value, and appeared determined to destroy it. "Our religion is a
heavenly religion and we have no need of these things here," Wahid
said.
The site - once a key post on the ancient Silk Road, a major
trading route - lies in the Hezb-i-Wahdat faction stronghold of
Bamian province, a mere 60 km west of current Taliban positions.
The huge white-stone statue was built in the third or fourth
centuries after Christ, possibly by King Kanishka head of the now
obscure Buddhist Kushan empire who came from nearby central Persia
and conquered large parts of south and central Asia, including
Afghanistan, archaeologists say.
Early Buddhist pilgrims flocked to the site to pay homage to the
statue for about four hundred years until the seventh century
when new invaders brought Islam to the area long after the Kushans
had faded away. The statue was, according to legend, originally
ornately decorated with gold and precious stones which were looted
after the statue fell into disrepair. Little appears to have been
written about the Buddha for many years, until it was partially
preserved by French archaeologists in the 1920s and 1930s. The
"Big Buddha" then became one of the symbols of Afghanistan when
the country opened up to international tourism in the 1960s and
70s, before civil war tore the country apart.
In addition to the large statue, the site also boasts a slightly
smaller carving 38 meters high, and is hailed by scholars as
Afghanistan's most impressive archaeological treasure. A maze of
caves and tunnels crammed with other Buddhist carvings and
paintings were also carved into the cliff face following the
initial third to forth century construction of the figures. An
unexploded rocket-propelled grenade is now embedded in the chest
of the large Buddha, reportedly fired by a pre-Taliban fighter
during the war against the Soviet. But successive Afghan regimes
seem to have been unconcerned about harbouring massive Buddhist
relics in the highly-conservative country.-AFP
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