Author:
Publication: The New York Times
Date: March 3, 2001
The United Nations led an 11th
hour drive to save two towering statues of Buddha today as the Afghan government
assembled explosives at the sites to obliterate them, diplomats feared.
Even the Unesco chief acknowledged
that the rescue effort might be hopelessly late. The official, Koichiro
Matsuura, said the threat was a mindless aggression to a part of the conscience,
history and identity of humankind." But he ruefully concluded, "We are
witnesses once again to our won inefficacy."
Pakistan and other Muslim nation
joined the campaign to persuade the religious leaders of Afghanistan, the
Taliban, to change their mind. Nonetheless, government troops assembled
the explosives to demolish the ancient statues, along with all other statues
throughout the country, considering them idolatrous, diplomats said.
Some may have already been destroyed.
The director of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, Philippe de Montebello, told the United Nations
secretary general Kofi Annan, that the museum was willing to pay for a
team to remove portable statues from Afghanistan, said Manoel de Almeida
e Silva, a United Nations spokesman. Mr. Annan's envoy to Afghanistan pressed
the Taliban to accept the offer, but so far there was no response, he said.
Pakistan, the Taliban's closest
ally, pleaded with them to spare the statues and rescind the destruction
order. "Respect for other religions and for their beliefs is enjoined upon
Muslims," Foreign Minster Abdul Sattar said in a statement.
The two Buddhas, 175 and 120 feet
tall, are believed to date to the seventh century. They are hewn out of
the side of a mountain in Bamiyan, about 100 miles west of Kabul, and it
would require heavy explosives to destroy them. The bigger statue is thought
to be the world's tallest standing Buddha.
It was not known how many of the
thousands of other, smaller Buddhist statues in Afghanistan have been destroyed
since Thursday.
"The Buddhas in Bamiyan were not
touched today, but preparations are being made," Abdul Salam Zaeef, the
Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, said.
The Unesco envoy, Pierre La-france,
a former French ambassador to Pakistan, headed to Islamabad in hopes of
negotiating with the Taliban.
"Words fail me to describe adequately
my feelings of consternation and powerlessness as I see the reports of
the irreversible damage that is being done to Afghanistan's exceptional
cultural heritage," said Mr. Matsuura, director general of the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
The Taliban, who rule about 95 percent
of Afghanistan, espouse a strict brand of Islam that forces women to wear
the all-encompassing burqa and bars them from working outside the home,
and which demands that men wear beards and pray in the mosque.
The Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah
Muhammad Omar, issued an edict Monday ordering the destruction of all statues,
declaring. "These idols have been gods of the infidels."
The Society for the Preservation
of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage issued a plea Friday for a change of
heart, saying it could create international goodwill for the Taliban.
"If they reverse their decision,
it could be seen as a positive sign for future discussions with the Taliban
authorities," said the society's chairman, Dimitri Loundras, Greece's ambassador
to Pakistan.
He said the decision to destroy
Afghanistan's pre-Islamic heritage many have been a response to the isolation
felt by the Taliban since United Nations sanctions were imposed on the
nation in January for failing to surrender Saudi Militant Osama Bin Laden.
Afghanistan is facing its worst
drought in 30 years and a civil war. Hundreds of thousands of refugees
have fled to United Nations camp at the nation's borders, where many have
died of cold and starvation.
Robert Kluyver, a member of the
Italian-financed preservation society, said the smaller Buddha at Bamiyan
had been badly damaged by rocket fire a few years ago. Mr. Kluyver said
the larger Buddha was intact when he last visited between March and November
2000, although its head was stained black because tires had been placed
around it and burnt.
Nations other than Pakistan also
complained. "Unfortunately, the Taliban's destruction of the statues has
cast doubt on the comprehensive views offered by Islamic ideology in the
world," Iran's Foreign Ministry said, blaming "the rigid-minded Taliban."
In Egypt, the chief Muslim cleric,
Grand Mufti Nasr Farid Wasel, said keeping the statues is not forbidden
by Islam. Ancient statues are "just a recording of history and don't have
any negative impact on Muslims' beliefs," he told the London-based Arabic
daily Al Hayat.
Mr. De Montebello, of the Metropolitan
Museum in New York, said his offer to move those statues that could be
removed was made on behalf of his museum, but he hoped other museums would
join in.
But the size of the Bamiyan statues,
he said, posed a problem. "It's a huge task," he said, adding it would
take an international effort like the Unesco-led project that moved pharaonic
temples in the 1960's when Egypt completed the Aswan Dam.