Destruction of Bamiyan Buddhas, Taliban's Narrative
Taliban Explains Buddha Demolition
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
Published: March 19, 2001
With outrage still fresh around the world over the destruction of two giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan, a Taliban envoy says the Islamic government made its decision in a rage after a foreign delegation offered money to preserve the ancient works while a million Afghans faced starvation.
"When your children are dying in front of you, then you don't care about a piece of art," Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, the envoy, said in an interview on Friday.
Mr. Rahmatullah is in the United States on a mission to improve ties and ease the Taliban's isolation. A main focus of his visit, he said, will be to find a way out of the impasse surrounding Osama bin Laden, the terrorist suspect whose presence in Afghanistan has prompted international sanctions.
Still, Mr. Rahmatullah expressed no remorse over the demolition of the two giant Buddhas, carved from a cliff in central Afghanistan 1,400 years ago and considered one of the world's artistic treasures.
An adviser to the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, Mr. Rahmatullah gave for the first time here the Taliban's version of events: how a council of religious scholars ordered the statues destroyed in a fit of indignation.
The destruction, according to his account, was prompted last month when a visiting delegation of mostly European envoys and a representative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization offered money to protect the giant standing Buddhas at Bamian, where the Taliban was engaged in fighting an opposition alliance.
Other reports, however, have said the religious leaders were debating the move for months, and ultimately decided that the statues were idolatrous and should be obliterated.
At the time the foreign delegation visited, United Nations relief officials were warning that a long drought and a harsh winter were confronting up to a million Afghans with starvation. Mr. Rahmatullah said that when the visitors offered money to repair and maintain the statues, the Taliban's mullahs were outraged.
"The scholars told them that instead of spending money on statues, why didn't they help our children who are dying of malnutrition? They rejected that, saying, `This money is only for statues.' "
"The scholars were so angry," he continued. "They said, `If you are destroying our future with economic sanctions, you can't care about our heritage.' And so they decided that these statues must be destroyed." The Taliban's Supreme Court confirmed the edict.
"If we had wanted to destroy those statues, we could have done it three years ago," Mr. Rahmatullah said. "So why didn't we? In our religion, if anything is harmless, we just leave it. If money is going to statues while children are dying of malnutrition next door, then that makes it harmful, and we destroy it."
"What do you expect from a country when you just ostracize them and isolate them and send in cruise missiles and their children are dying?" he said, referring to the sanctions and American attacks against Mr. bin Laden's base in Afghanistan after the bombing of two American embassies in Africa in 1998.
"You don't recognize their government," Mr. Rahmatullah added. "It is a kind of resentment that is growing in Afghanistan."
At the same time, he said the Taliban would not destroy statues actually being worshiped, and would not touch the Hindu temples still left in Afghanistan.
Mr. Rahmatullah is due to meet officials of the State Department and National Security Council on Monday in Washington, where he will also speak next week at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council of the United States and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
He would not disclose details of a possible new proposal for a way out of the standoff over Mr. bin Laden, the Taliban's fourth, saying he needed a signal from Washington first.
But there are reports in Pakistan that one option might be turning Mr. bin Laden over to a special tribunal, perhaps in The Hague, for trial by a panel of Islamic judges.
The Clinton administration had rejected an Afghan trial, international monitoring of Mr. bin Laden — whom Mr. Rahmatullah described as a nobody the Americans made into a hero — or exile in another Muslim country.
Mr. Rahmatullah's visit and the wide hearing he is getting have provoked criticism in Congress, particularly from supporters of India, which along with Russia has begun to give military help to the Taliban's opposition. He was given an American visa because he falls below the rank of the highest officials in the Taliban government, who are barred from traveling under an embargo.
Throughout a long interview on a range of subjects, Mr. Rahmatullah maintained the fiercely independent attitude of the Taliban, who have demonstrated repeatedly to the United Nations that they will cooperate with the world only on their own terms.
"They want to change our policies through economic sanctions," he said of the United States and other nations that pushed an embargo through the Security Council. "That does not work. For us, our ideology is first, then the economy. To try to change our ideology with economic sanctions is ridiculous."
Mr. Rahmatullah, who is 24 — Mullah Omar, at 40, is the oldest of the Taliban's leaders — grew up in a refugee camp near Quetta, Pakistan, and was educated in an Islamic religious school there. He learned to speak almost flawless English in a class for refugees.
On his first trip to the United States, he said he liked Americans more than he expected because he found them more open-minded than Europeans. He has been speaking at universities on the West Coast.
Mr. Rahmatullah said the Taliban were in fairly desperate need of agricultural help to supply farmers who once planted opium and to teach them to grow other crops. The United Nations narcotics control program has told the Taliban it has no money for seeds, and drug-control officials wonder if the new ban on poppy cultivation can be sustained.
Mr. Rahmatullah said the Taliban were making strides in health and education with very little foreign help. He said medical or nursing schools for men and women had now opened in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat and Mazaar-i-Sharif.
A curriculum for the first seven years of general schooling had been prepared, he said, combining religious and secular subjects in separate schools for boys and girls.
The Taliban has come under criticism for its treatment of women, who must be shrouded head to toe, cannot leave home unaccompanied by a male relative and have been removed from some jobs and schools where they might mix with men.
Mr. Rahmatullah and his wife, Jamila, another former refugee, have just had their first child, a daughter. They named her Soriya. "It means the Pleiades — you know, the stars," he said.
Did he want her to go to school?
"Of course," he said. "She will not be a good mother if she is not educated."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/world/19TALI.html
==============================================
In the beggining, Mullah Muhammad Omer was against the destruction of these statues and he decreed against their destruction, later on he ordered for their destruction not merely on a religious ground, but that was more of an outrage against the policies of the other countries.
The other countries didn't care for their living, but were willing to spent a fortune on those statues.
The Taliban were not the only ones who attempted to destroy those statues, amongst other people, Auregzeb had also attempted to destroy them.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bonus Material:
Secrets of the Bamiyan Buddhas
As it turns out, a genuine treasure was hidden behind the two Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in 2001: caves decorated with 1000-year-old paintings depicting various scenes from Buddhist mythology. They are believed to be the oldest oil paintings ever found. This amazing discovery was made by an international team of researchers (1) using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)(2) in Grenoble.
It all goes back to March 2001, when in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan, the Taliban destroyed two giant Buddha statues, probably dating from between the middle of the 6th and 7th centuries AD. The destruction of this heritage–a crime against culture–shocked the world. Yet behind the two stone giants, a hidden treasure of a different kind was uncovered: around 50 caves with walls decorated with religious frescoes that must have been made between the 5th and 9th centuries AD. Probably painted by monks or travelers passing through on the Silk road, they represent Buddhas, patterns and scenes related to Buddhist mythology. To the scientists' surprise, some of them are oil paintings–a technique believed to have been born between the 14th and the late 15th century in Flanders and Italy.[SUP]3
[/SUP]
National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo (NRICPT)
Paintings of Buddhas decorate many caves that were used as temples. The paintings are now the oldest oil paintings ever discovered, dating back to the middle of the 7th century.
“We analyzed tiny fragments–most of them less than a millimeter in size–taken from the paintings,” says Marine Cotte, a researcher at LC2RMF[SUP]4[/SUP] in Paris and at the ESRF in Grenoble, working with a team from the NRICPT[SUP]5[/SUP] in Tokyo. “Our goal was to identify the various ingredients used by the artists and to understand the painting methods of the time.”
The scientists therefore carried out cross sectional analyses using the micro-imaging systems of the Grenoble synchrotron. This beam is so fine that it can be used to investigate materials on ever smaller scales. “The samples of paint are made up of several stacked layers, each of which is much thinner than the diameter of a hair,” Cotte explains. “The major problem lies in analyzing them separately. This is why we used ESRF's synchrotron radiation. By combining several analytical methods, we identified not only the original ingredients, but also the alteration products.”
National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo (NRICPT)
Fragment of one of the Bamiyan paintings made up of several layers, similar to paintings from medieval Europe.
The investigation revealed that the paints in the Bamiyan caves are made up of very finely powdered inorganic material, which are the pigments that provide color. Since they couldn't stick to the walls on their own, they were mixed with liquids in a paste that could adhere: these were organic binders like oil, resin, or glue. Two types of routine analyses were used to identify the various ingredients: X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy. Using the first method, scientists discovered various pigments, and a large amount of white lead. The oldest of the manufactured pigments, white lead is a white powder that has been used since ancient times in paints and cosmetics.
The second method confirmed the identity of some of the pigments, and above all revealed the presence of organic matter. Several of the organic substances found, such as resins, plant gums, animal glues (proteins), and oil, were used as binders to make the paint stick to the walls. This method has been widely observed in wall paintings in Central Asia (such as the Sogdiana paintings). Further work carried out by an American team suggests this may be an oil manufactured from walnuts or poppy seeds.
These analyses will make it easier to characterize the alteration processes at work on the surface of the few paintings that remain on the walls, and may help us understand how to preserve them. For years, political conflicts and wars have taken precedence over archaeological research in Afghanistan, and these remain a major obstacle to the study and preservation of sites. “This work,” Cotte concludes, “has revealed one of the oldest known examples of the use of oil in paint. But there are certainly other older examples we have yet to discover.”
Source
Taliban Explains Buddha Demolition
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
Published: March 19, 2001
With outrage still fresh around the world over the destruction of two giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan, a Taliban envoy says the Islamic government made its decision in a rage after a foreign delegation offered money to preserve the ancient works while a million Afghans faced starvation.
"When your children are dying in front of you, then you don't care about a piece of art," Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi, the envoy, said in an interview on Friday.
Mr. Rahmatullah is in the United States on a mission to improve ties and ease the Taliban's isolation. A main focus of his visit, he said, will be to find a way out of the impasse surrounding Osama bin Laden, the terrorist suspect whose presence in Afghanistan has prompted international sanctions.
Still, Mr. Rahmatullah expressed no remorse over the demolition of the two giant Buddhas, carved from a cliff in central Afghanistan 1,400 years ago and considered one of the world's artistic treasures.
An adviser to the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, Mr. Rahmatullah gave for the first time here the Taliban's version of events: how a council of religious scholars ordered the statues destroyed in a fit of indignation.
The destruction, according to his account, was prompted last month when a visiting delegation of mostly European envoys and a representative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization offered money to protect the giant standing Buddhas at Bamian, where the Taliban was engaged in fighting an opposition alliance.
Other reports, however, have said the religious leaders were debating the move for months, and ultimately decided that the statues were idolatrous and should be obliterated.
At the time the foreign delegation visited, United Nations relief officials were warning that a long drought and a harsh winter were confronting up to a million Afghans with starvation. Mr. Rahmatullah said that when the visitors offered money to repair and maintain the statues, the Taliban's mullahs were outraged.
"The scholars told them that instead of spending money on statues, why didn't they help our children who are dying of malnutrition? They rejected that, saying, `This money is only for statues.' "
"The scholars were so angry," he continued. "They said, `If you are destroying our future with economic sanctions, you can't care about our heritage.' And so they decided that these statues must be destroyed." The Taliban's Supreme Court confirmed the edict.
"If we had wanted to destroy those statues, we could have done it three years ago," Mr. Rahmatullah said. "So why didn't we? In our religion, if anything is harmless, we just leave it. If money is going to statues while children are dying of malnutrition next door, then that makes it harmful, and we destroy it."
"What do you expect from a country when you just ostracize them and isolate them and send in cruise missiles and their children are dying?" he said, referring to the sanctions and American attacks against Mr. bin Laden's base in Afghanistan after the bombing of two American embassies in Africa in 1998.
"You don't recognize their government," Mr. Rahmatullah added. "It is a kind of resentment that is growing in Afghanistan."
At the same time, he said the Taliban would not destroy statues actually being worshiped, and would not touch the Hindu temples still left in Afghanistan.
Mr. Rahmatullah is due to meet officials of the State Department and National Security Council on Monday in Washington, where he will also speak next week at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council of the United States and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
He would not disclose details of a possible new proposal for a way out of the standoff over Mr. bin Laden, the Taliban's fourth, saying he needed a signal from Washington first.
But there are reports in Pakistan that one option might be turning Mr. bin Laden over to a special tribunal, perhaps in The Hague, for trial by a panel of Islamic judges.
The Clinton administration had rejected an Afghan trial, international monitoring of Mr. bin Laden — whom Mr. Rahmatullah described as a nobody the Americans made into a hero — or exile in another Muslim country.
Mr. Rahmatullah's visit and the wide hearing he is getting have provoked criticism in Congress, particularly from supporters of India, which along with Russia has begun to give military help to the Taliban's opposition. He was given an American visa because he falls below the rank of the highest officials in the Taliban government, who are barred from traveling under an embargo.
Throughout a long interview on a range of subjects, Mr. Rahmatullah maintained the fiercely independent attitude of the Taliban, who have demonstrated repeatedly to the United Nations that they will cooperate with the world only on their own terms.
"They want to change our policies through economic sanctions," he said of the United States and other nations that pushed an embargo through the Security Council. "That does not work. For us, our ideology is first, then the economy. To try to change our ideology with economic sanctions is ridiculous."
Mr. Rahmatullah, who is 24 — Mullah Omar, at 40, is the oldest of the Taliban's leaders — grew up in a refugee camp near Quetta, Pakistan, and was educated in an Islamic religious school there. He learned to speak almost flawless English in a class for refugees.
On his first trip to the United States, he said he liked Americans more than he expected because he found them more open-minded than Europeans. He has been speaking at universities on the West Coast.
Mr. Rahmatullah said the Taliban were in fairly desperate need of agricultural help to supply farmers who once planted opium and to teach them to grow other crops. The United Nations narcotics control program has told the Taliban it has no money for seeds, and drug-control officials wonder if the new ban on poppy cultivation can be sustained.
Mr. Rahmatullah said the Taliban were making strides in health and education with very little foreign help. He said medical or nursing schools for men and women had now opened in Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Herat and Mazaar-i-Sharif.
A curriculum for the first seven years of general schooling had been prepared, he said, combining religious and secular subjects in separate schools for boys and girls.
The Taliban has come under criticism for its treatment of women, who must be shrouded head to toe, cannot leave home unaccompanied by a male relative and have been removed from some jobs and schools where they might mix with men.
Mr. Rahmatullah and his wife, Jamila, another former refugee, have just had their first child, a daughter. They named her Soriya. "It means the Pleiades — you know, the stars," he said.
Did he want her to go to school?
"Of course," he said. "She will not be a good mother if she is not educated."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/19/world/19TALI.html
==============================================
In the beggining, Mullah Muhammad Omer was against the destruction of these statues and he decreed against their destruction, later on he ordered for their destruction not merely on a religious ground, but that was more of an outrage against the policies of the other countries.
The other countries didn't care for their living, but were willing to spent a fortune on those statues.
The Taliban were not the only ones who attempted to destroy those statues, amongst other people, Auregzeb had also attempted to destroy them.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bonus Material:
Secrets of the Bamiyan Buddhas
As it turns out, a genuine treasure was hidden behind the two Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in 2001: caves decorated with 1000-year-old paintings depicting various scenes from Buddhist mythology. They are believed to be the oldest oil paintings ever found. This amazing discovery was made by an international team of researchers (1) using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF)(2) in Grenoble.
It all goes back to March 2001, when in Bamiyan, central Afghanistan, the Taliban destroyed two giant Buddha statues, probably dating from between the middle of the 6th and 7th centuries AD. The destruction of this heritage–a crime against culture–shocked the world. Yet behind the two stone giants, a hidden treasure of a different kind was uncovered: around 50 caves with walls decorated with religious frescoes that must have been made between the 5th and 9th centuries AD. Probably painted by monks or travelers passing through on the Silk road, they represent Buddhas, patterns and scenes related to Buddhist mythology. To the scientists' surprise, some of them are oil paintings–a technique believed to have been born between the 14th and the late 15th century in Flanders and Italy.[SUP]3
[/SUP]
National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo (NRICPT)
Paintings of Buddhas decorate many caves that were used as temples. The paintings are now the oldest oil paintings ever discovered, dating back to the middle of the 7th century.
“We analyzed tiny fragments–most of them less than a millimeter in size–taken from the paintings,” says Marine Cotte, a researcher at LC2RMF[SUP]4[/SUP] in Paris and at the ESRF in Grenoble, working with a team from the NRICPT[SUP]5[/SUP] in Tokyo. “Our goal was to identify the various ingredients used by the artists and to understand the painting methods of the time.”
The scientists therefore carried out cross sectional analyses using the micro-imaging systems of the Grenoble synchrotron. This beam is so fine that it can be used to investigate materials on ever smaller scales. “The samples of paint are made up of several stacked layers, each of which is much thinner than the diameter of a hair,” Cotte explains. “The major problem lies in analyzing them separately. This is why we used ESRF's synchrotron radiation. By combining several analytical methods, we identified not only the original ingredients, but also the alteration products.”
National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo (NRICPT)
Fragment of one of the Bamiyan paintings made up of several layers, similar to paintings from medieval Europe.
The investigation revealed that the paints in the Bamiyan caves are made up of very finely powdered inorganic material, which are the pigments that provide color. Since they couldn't stick to the walls on their own, they were mixed with liquids in a paste that could adhere: these were organic binders like oil, resin, or glue. Two types of routine analyses were used to identify the various ingredients: X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy. Using the first method, scientists discovered various pigments, and a large amount of white lead. The oldest of the manufactured pigments, white lead is a white powder that has been used since ancient times in paints and cosmetics.
The second method confirmed the identity of some of the pigments, and above all revealed the presence of organic matter. Several of the organic substances found, such as resins, plant gums, animal glues (proteins), and oil, were used as binders to make the paint stick to the walls. This method has been widely observed in wall paintings in Central Asia (such as the Sogdiana paintings). Further work carried out by an American team suggests this may be an oil manufactured from walnuts or poppy seeds.
These analyses will make it easier to characterize the alteration processes at work on the surface of the few paintings that remain on the walls, and may help us understand how to preserve them. For years, political conflicts and wars have taken precedence over archaeological research in Afghanistan, and these remain a major obstacle to the study and preservation of sites. “This work,” Cotte concludes, “has revealed one of the oldest known examples of the use of oil in paint. But there are certainly other older examples we have yet to discover.”
Source
