[The Taliban were not
the first Muslim visitors to savage the monuments; Islam forbids any form of
idols, and successive conquerors turned their artillery on the niches. By the
20th century the Buddhas were heavily damaged and both were missing their
wooden faces, said to have once had jeweled eyes with huge lanterns burning
behind them at night.]
By Rod Nordland
 |
The Bamian Buddhas
An inside look at the site of the destroyed Buddhas of Bamian in Afghanistan.
|
BAMIAN,
Afghanistan — They were the picture-postcard view of
a rural and mostly untouched Afghanistan: ancient, towering Buddhas that became
a symbol of the Taliban’s religious fanaticism and intolerance.
Now, about 13 years
after the Bamian Buddhas were blasted into rubble, the world faces a new
quandary: whether to leave the gaping gashes in the cliff where the giant
statues once stood, to rebuild the Buddhas from what pieces were left, or to
make copies of them. And, as so often happens these days between Afghanistan
and its mainly Western supporters, opinion is passionately split.
The major donor
countries that would have to finance any restoration say the site should be
left as it is, at least for now. The Afghan government wants at least one of
the statues rebuilt.
At the heart of the
conflict is a potent mix of political ideology, and an evolving theory of
restoration policy usually relegated to heady debates among archaeologists. The
Afghan government craves the symbolic victory over a still-threatening Taliban
that rebuilding would allow it to claim. Many of those funding the restoration
fear that rebuilding when so little of the original pieces remain would not be
reconstruction at all, and more reproduction than a true accounting of history.
The debate has roiled
Unesco and many of its donors, which years ago appointed an Expert Working
Group that has been meeting annually for a decade on the fate of the site, and
that so far has been able to agree only to preserve the niches where the
statues stood and stabilize them against further damage. For the moment, the
preservationists have the upper hand; the Bamian Buddhas and other ancient
parts of the area have been declared a Unesco World Heritage site, and any
modifications to the face of the Bamian cliff would, in practice, have to be
approved by the working group.
But their ruling has
not gone unchallenged. Last year, German conservators doing stabilization work
on the eastern niche quietly began building pillars to support the stone work
and protect visitors from potential collapse.
The pillars, however,
looked strikingly like giant feet — similar, in fact, to those that Indian
conservators built to replace the missing originals in the 1970s. Michael
Petzet, an archaeologist who is the president of the German branch of the
International Council on Monuments and Sites, which has done much of the
conservation work on contract for Unesco, makes no secret of his intent.
“These feet, it was
only the idea for the safety of the whole structure,” Professor Petzet said,
“and maybe in the future if the Afghan government wants to make a little bit
more, they can build upon this.”
When Unesco discovered
what was happening, it immediately asked the Afghan government to order the
work suspended, a decision seconded during heated debate in last December’s
meeting of the Expert Working Group.
“Our priority has been
to stabilize iconic elements of the World Heritage site that are unstable,”
said Brendan Cassar of Unesco. “To make a good restoration when you haven’t
addressed steps 1 to 9 is misplaced.”
The western niche
remains in danger of collapse, he said, with rocks and stones falling
regularly, partly a legacy of the high explosives the Taliban set to destroy
the monuments. Pledges from donors to fund even that basic work have fallen
short by at least $700,000, Mr. Cassar said.
“Unesco’s position is
that restoration is a case of putting the cart before the horse,” he said. “We
need to save all options for future generations.”
Professor Petzet argues
that rebuilding the Buddhas would be no different from past efforts to
reassemble parts of the Roman Forum — another project criticized by some
archaeologists — or repair damaged mosaics after the earthquake in Assisi,
Italy. “It’s something human to want to do,” he said. “In France, whole
cathedrals were reconstructed in Gothic style after they were blown up by
Protestants in the 1600s.”
He said, “I’ve talked
with many Afghans, and they do not want that their children and grandchildren
are forced by the Taliban to see only ruins.”
People who knew little
else about Afghanistan knew that there was something amazing in this high
mountain province, where the ancient Silk Road crossed the Hindu Kush, and
where a sprawling Buddhist monastic complex flourished in the sixth century.
The monks sculpted
cliffs hundreds of feet high, flattening their faces in order to build a
network of monastic and ceremonial chambers within, with more than 1,000 of
them in the area of the destroyed Buddhas. The larger standing Buddha was 174
feet high — the world’s tallest and taller than the Statue of Liberty. The
smaller one still towered at 115 feet.
Connecting the caves
and the niches where the Buddhas stood was a network of tunnels, staircases and
passageways hollowed out of solid rock, much of which remains intact.
The Taliban were not
the first Muslim visitors to savage the monuments; Islam forbids any form of
idols, and successive conquerors turned their artillery on the niches. By the
20th century the Buddhas were heavily damaged and both were missing their
wooden faces, said to have once had jeweled eyes with huge lanterns burning
behind them at night.
During the war against
Soviet occupation, mujahedeen commanders obliterated a sitting Buddha in the
cliff with heavy artillery and looted many of the caves. Domed ceilings in some
caves were desecrated; the fighters built scaffolding that allowed them to
leave their muddy footprints on the ceiling, a move highly offensive to
Buddhists.
The Taliban, however,
brought a more systematic destruction to the approximately 1,500-year-old
statues, planting high explosives throughout the niches in 2001, reducing the
remaining statues to rubble and leaving the niches and many passageways
unstable.
Professor Petzet
maintains that his conservators have managed to preserve, identify and catalog
as much as 30 percent of the surface of the smaller standing Buddha, enough, he
says, to restore it persuasively.
But Unesco says other
experts are not so sure of that figure, putting the amount of material
recovered at about 10 percent.
“The point is, a very
small percentage of the surface remains,” Mr. Cassar said. “Some pieces are the
size of a car and some a grain of sand.” In addition, the type of sandstone
from which the Buddhas were carved is highly unstable.
“It’s a disaster that
can never be put back together,” he said.
Abdul Ahad Abassi, head
of monuments for the Afghan culture ministry, said the government formally
requested that the smaller Buddha be rebuilt, and Unesco’s World Heritage
Committee is studying the issue.
“In 10 years, the
Expert Working Group has come to no final decision,” said Muhammad Asir
Mubaligh, the Bamian deputy governor. “I know they have achieved some small
things, but 10 years? The main problem is there hasn’t been a donor country to
say, ‘We will pay for it.’ ”
South Korea recently
announced a $5.4 million grant for the site, but it is earmarked to build a
museum dedicated to Bamian’s ancient culture and to train Afghan staff. Rival
Japanese and Italian proposals call for other museum and conservation projects
in Bamian. None of the proposals include money for rebuilding the Buddhas.
“I say rebuild one of
them to attract tourists, and one should remain like that to remind people what
the Taliban did,” said Abdullah Mahmoodi of the Bamian Tourism Association.
“The best way to protect our monuments is to make them valuable again.”