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Religious and cultural
Nihilism: the Taliban iconoclasts devastate
Bamiyan
By Luc Watrin
(April 2001)
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Introduction
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"We’re just crushing rocks…", declared
the mollah Mohammad Omar at Kandahar
in March 2001. The “rocks” in question
are masterpieces of Buddhist
monumental statues
sculpted in niches carved out of a
sandstone cliff face located in the Hindou-Koush,
in the 5th century of our era,
well before the Hégire.
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Figure 1: General
view of the grand Buddha.
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Located on a major roadway for commerce
and pilgrimage, the one that led from China
to the Indies, the Bamiyan valley,
nested 2500 above sea level and to the north-west
of Kabul, shelters a rocky wall around
a kilometer long that Buddhist had found
ideal for building stone monestaries
and colossal statues representing images
of the Buddha (fig. 1 and 2).
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Figure 2: General
view of the petit Buddha, partially
covered by scaffolding.
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Bamiyan fascinated travelers, including
a Chinese pilgrim named Hiuan-Tsang,
who in 632 described the magnificence
of the Fan-Yen-Na (Bamiyan) Kingdom
“located in the Snowy Mountains” and
indicated that there were “more than
ten monasteries served by several thousand
monks who followed the sect of the Small
Vehicle” as well as three great statues
of standing Buddhas, the greatest of
whose face was covered with gold-leaf
(A. Godard, Y. Godard and J. Hackin,
Les Antiquités Bouddhiques de
Bâmiyân, vol. II, 1928,
p. 82). The oldest of the stone giants,
which stood around 400 meters distant
one from the other, is apparently the
one called “petit Buddha”, 35 meters
high. The second statue, nicknamed the
“great Buddha” was 53 meters high. An
interior stair linking several floors
of the caves was excavated in the cliff
and made it possible to access the top
of the heads of the Buddhas. In the
hollows of the niches appear the remains
of paintings on plaster depicting the
episodes in the life of the Buddha as
well as flying genies holding out offerings
(fig. 3 and 4).
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Figure 3 :View
of the valley taken from the head
of one of the great Buddhas.
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Figure 4 : Flying
genies bearing offerings, painted
on the ceiling of the great Buddha’s
niche.a.
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Figure 5 : View
of the great Buddha of Bamiyan
standing, wrapped in a fine drape
characteristic of Gandhara art. |
Between the two great Buddhas
represented standing, there also
exist three other niches, each
sheltering the remains of a sitting
little Buddha. Placed in a tri-lobed
niche, the great standing Buddha
of Bamiyan was one of the greatest
stone statues made by man in antiquity.
By its size, it is only comparable
to the giant sitting Buddha at
Leshan in the Chinese Sichuan,
stone monument, sculpted in the
8th century, 71 meters tall. The
great Buddha of Bamiyan, located
to the west of the first, is also
wrapped in a thin Gandhara-type
drape, and most likely represented
Locanatha, the master of the universe,
protector and benevolent. These
statues had resisted a raid by
Gengis-Khan, who had destroyed
the fortified royal city of Bamiyan
in the early 13th century after
a long siege. The Hazaras, the
third Afghan ethnicity after the
Pastuns and the Tadjiks, have
occupied the Bamiyan region during
all historic times.
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A people of Mongolian origin, they came
into the region during the Sassanide
period, in the 5th century of our era,
and according to some ethnologists could
be the direct descendants of the creators
of Bamiyan.
In addition to the two great Buddhas
dominating the valley before their
destruction, there exists a third
one, of 10 meters high, nestled in
the near-located valley of Kakrak.
No information is available about
its condition, but it seems to have
maybe also been destroyed (?), as
well as rock paintings in the caves.
These paintings reflected a subtile
mix of influences between the Greco-Buddhist
local style called Gandhara style,
the Sassanian style from Iran and
that of Gupta India.
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Chronology of a disaster
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13 September 1998. Bâmiyân Valley
is invested by the Taliban.
September, the 14th, artillery fire
on the "Little Buddha" of 35 meters
high and blasting of the head under
the order of Taliban commander Abdul
Wahib.
17 February 2001. The Bamiyan
valley falls once again under the control
of Taliban militias.
26 February 2001. The mollah
Mohammed Omar, self-proclaimed emir
of the talibans since 1996, issued a
fatwa stipulating that “all remaining
pre-islamic statues throughout the country
must be destroyed (…) because they represent
the gods of the infidels”.
27 February 2001. In New York,
Kofi Annan issues “an urgent call” to
the talibans to preserve the Bamiyan
monuments. The entire world denounces
the pronouncement. The Greek ambassador
in Pakistan is worried : “I’m sure that
if no one stops them, they will do it”.
28 February 2001. In Paris, the
director of UNECO sends a telegram to
the mollah Omar trying to convince him
to “go back on his decision” and contacts
the Islamic Conference Organization.
01 March 2001. Thailand, India,
and the New York Metropolitan Museum
of Art propose to accept the statues.
The president of NGO GREPAL, Luc
Watrin, sends to the leader of the
talibans and his ambassadors a trilingual
letter (French/English/Arabic) with
casuistic arguments against the destruction
of the statues.
02 March 2001. The Arab League
(22 states) condemns these “savage acts”
and qualifies the attitude of Kabul
as “barbaric”. The former French ambassador
to Pakistan, mister Pierre Lafrance,
recommended by Jacques Chirac, is sent
to Afghanistan by UNESCO.
03 March 2001. The New York
Times quotes the existence of coranic
verses contradicting the taliban order:
" you have your own religion and
I have mine” and “I serve not that which
you venerate, and you serve not that
which I venerate”.
05 March 2001. UNESCO envoye
Pierre Lafrance leaves Kandahar for
Pakistan and displays his optimism about
a possible solution: « all the
doors are not closed”.
08 March 2001. The taliban
fire with tank howitzers and rocket-propelled
grenades on the Buddhas and destroy
the lower parts of the statues. They
complain about the difficulty in expediently
destroying these monuments.
09 March 2001. A strong text
(A/55/L.79) is proposed before the United
Nations Organization (UN) at New York.
It is presented by mister Dieter Kastrup
in the name of Germany and demands that
the talibans protect afghan antiquities.
This text is sponsored by 75 countries
including India, Japan, and Egypt. Little
support came from Pakistan, which sponsors
the taliban.
10 March 2001. The taliban
order Pakistani and Saudi explosives
engineers among them to destroy the
remains of the two statues with explosives.
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Figure 6 : Destruction
of the little Buddha by the taliban.
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Conclusion
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The taliban mercilessly terrorizing
local populations, victimized thousands since 1998. In
2001 they attacked the symbols of the
Afghan identity, revealing their status
as a foreign occupying force to the
region as well as their nihilist nature.
Indeed, the great Buddhas of
Bâmiyân represent a national pride
for all Afghans, and primarily for
the Hazaras and Pashtuns who
inhabits the heart of Afghanistan.
By the total destruction of these
ancient colossal statues with
explosives, the Taliban cannot
demonstrate more clearly their
quality of foreign occupying force
in the region and their profundly
obscurantist nature. The act of the taliban is a strike against
the spirit and the sincerity of all
the great religions, especially to Buddhism
which is a tolerant religion by excellence.
It is sign a power that holds no respect
for the idea of knowledge or of civilization.
The existence of such determined groups
and the wavery attitude of the international
community in “the affair of the Bâmiyân Buddhas” unfortunately herald more fatwas
of this type in other countries with
great legacies from Antiquity (when
will there be issued a fatwa against
the pharaonic statues? The sacking of
archaeological monuments also occults
pillaging in numerous caves in Bâmiyân
(methodic removal of stucco paintings),
and we can also ponder whether using
dynamite would both remove the Buddhas
from the cliff face (destroying them
in the eyes of the international community)
while conserving their physical integrity
by blocs (to sell them?). The sentence
of Mullah Omar "Would you prefer to
be called destroyers of statues or
sellers of statues ?" could then
take its full meaning.
It is regrettable
that great States did not adjust the means
of its actions to the clear threat,
that there was no mandate to protect
the Buddhas by brick walls as had been
proposed since 1998, date at which the
taliban had first announced to the international
community their ambition to destroy
the Bamiyan “idols” by dynamiting the
head of the little Buddha. Their emissaries,
for some of them, didn’t even reach to the taliban command and control centers before the statues were destroyed.
UNESCO, which has worked hard and
whose decisions had proved to be
very effective elsewhere (everybody
remember the memorable salvage of
the statues of Abu Simbel temples in
1960) will maybe provide the only
suitable solution to the cultural
crime achieved last month in
Bâmiyân: that of reconstructing the
two destroyed Buddhas? For the
moment, Taliban iconoclasts are based in the
valley and bent on destroying the
unique heritage of Afghanistan. Will they try in coming months
to sell the blocks of the Buddhas on
the international market where cash
is king? Vigilance is necessary, particularly
among the Pakistani customs services,
particularly the customs of Peshawar
below the Khyber Pass…
Calls were addressed to numerous taliban.
The GREPAL, like numerous scientific
and cultural organizations, attempted
to convince the Taliban mullahs that their theological
position was groundless. Without success.
Our letters arrived at Kandahar, Kabul,
and Islamabad before the fateful date
of 10 March 2001. With no response,
of course. Refusal or inability to debate
on specific theological points?
This disaster invites
to leave the occasional stunted speech
and convenience on the protection of
heritage, and to seriously consider the
creation of specific means of field
action that could accompany the official
protection measures as the inscription
of the cultural heritage of the Bâmiyân
Valley in the World Heritage List of
UNESCO. To date, 1st April 2001, this
important site of Afghanistan is not on
the list.
Let us hope that the third great Buddha
of Bamiyan, which Hiuan-Tsang in the
7th century described as “a statue of
a Buddha laying on the ground and entering
Nirvana that is more than 1000ft (350m)
long”, and which is currently buried
at the foot of some cliff in Bamiyan,
remains undiscovered so long as human
insanity remains rampant in the region.
May its earthen robe protect it!
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