German scientists eye Afghan Buddha reconstruction

(AFP)

BERLIN — German scientists said Friday they believed it possible to reconstruct one of the world-famous Bamiyan Buddhas dynamited by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, prompting worldwide condemnation.

Scientists from the University of Munich, in southern Germany, have examined fragments of the statues -- the world's largest Buddhas -- and concluded that the smaller one could be pieced together.

The two sculptures, 53 metres (173 feet) and 35 metres tall, had stood sentinel for 1,500 years in Bamiyan province before they were blown up by Islamists who believed them to be idolatrous.

Erwin Emmerling, the leader of the team sifting through hundreds of fragments, "considers a reconstruction of the smaller Buddha to be fundamentally possible," the university said in a statement.

"As far as the larger Buddha is concerned, in view of its depth (thickness) of around 12 metres, Professor Emmerling is more sceptical," it said.

Nevertheless, the university cited "political and practical" obstacles to rebuilding the precious statues.

Either a small factory would have to be built in the Bamiyan valley or some 1,400 rocks weighing up to two tonnes each would have to be transported to Germany. Japanese funding could reportedly be used to rebuild the sculptures.

They were once painted a variety of colours, the scientists said, including dark blue, pink, orange, red and white.

"The Buddhas once had an intensely colourful appearance," Emmerling said.

Based on their investigation, the scientists also dated the smaller Buddha to between 544 and 595 AD. The bigger Buddha was built between 591 and 644, they said.

A conference in Paris to debate the future of the Buddhas is expected to take place next week, the statement said.

The niches where they once stood overlooking Bamiyan city, the eponymous capital of the province, are being restored as a UN World Heritage site.

بحران در مجلس نمایندگان، قدرت سیاسی و خواسته های قومی

توفیق نیافتن نمایندگان پارلمان درانتخاب رئیس این مجلس پس از برگذاری چهار
دوره انتخابات پر تنش و پرچالش، نه بخاطر قحطی رجال سیاسی است و نه الزاما نشانه آزادی های دمکراتیک در یک فرایند مدنی، بلکه نشانگر نوعی شکست و گسستی است که پس از ده سال تلاش و امید داخلی و تکاپو و حمایت خارجی از روند تربیت مدنی سیاستمداران افغانستان و بهسازی نظام سیاسی دراین کشور، صورت گرفته است.

پریشانی در نظام اندیشه سیاسی

کند ذهنی رهبران سیاسی افغانستان در درک شرایط پیچیده و نا توانی آنها در ایجاد تغییرات ذهنی و اخلاق سیاسی، موجب شده است که فرصتهای ده ساله پس از سقوط رژیم طالبان، برای ایجاد و تقویت نظم مدنی و تجربه دولتسازی، به تدریج به غفلت سپری گردد.

پس از قرارداد بن در سال ٢٠٠١ که نظارت و حمایت جامعه بین المللی از فرایند صلح و استقرار نظام سیاسی، تنگتر، مسلط تر و نزدیکتر بود، روند کلی اوضاع سیاسی و سیر تعامل رهبران و سیاستمداران افغانستان در حوزه قدرت و جامعه نیز، موجه تر و منضبط تر می نمود.

در تمام گزینش ها و گفتمان هایی که پیرامون دولت موقت، دولت انتقالی و یا دور نخست انتخابات ریاست جمهوری و پارلمانی انجام شد، توافق و تعامل بر سیره و منش خویشتندارانه شکیبایی و مسالمت جویی استوار بود اما بعد از سال ٢٠٠٥، که تلاش ناسنجیده و عاطفی برای فاصله گرفتن تدریجی رهبری کشور از حوزه ی نفوذ و تاثیرحامیان بیرونی تبارز یافت. نه تنها استقلال سیاسی و ارتقای ظرفیت سیاسی ـ مدیریتی تامین نشد بلکه هر روز به چالش تدریجی در روابط دوستانه با حامیان بین المللی دامن زده شد و از دیگرسو، نوعی فرسایش و نا خویشتنداری نیز در تعامل ارکان دولت و در میان بازیگران سیاست کلان کشور، مجال ظهور پیدا کرد.

چهار دور انتخابات برای گزینش رئیس مجلس نمایندگان، نشان داد که هیچ یک از کاندیداهای دو دور اخیر نتوانسته اند آرای سیاف و قانونی را کسب کنند. چنین موضوعی این گمان را تقویت می کند که دو فرد یاد شده، با توجه به این که بیشترین شانس را در میان حامیان و هوادان خود دارند، ممکن است سناریویی در کار باشد که بازهم به بازگشت و کاندید شدن آنان منجر گردد.
در سالهای پسین، در همه مقاطع مهم و تحولات بزرگی مانند انتخابات ریاست جمهوری و انتخابات پارلمانی و یا پدیده های سیاسی ـ داخلی دیگر، بازیگران سیاسی تا سرحد ستیزه های خطرساز پیش رفته اند و روند ملی را دچار آسیبهای جدی نموده اند.

این نشانه هارا به روشنی می توان درانتخابات دور دوم ریاست جمهوری و نیز پارلمانی دید. تنش، تخلف و تقابل گستره و پر مخاطره ای که در فرایند این دو مرحله ی انتخاباتی و بصورت نا معقول تر در بحران بازگشایی شورای ملی پدید آمد، نوعی بازگشت به سنت های قومی سیاست ورزی و رجوع به اخلاق سیاسی دوره جنگهای داخلی را بازتولید کرد.

اکنون اما، نا امیدی، بی اعتباری و نا کامی ای که در جریان انتخاب رئیس پارلمان اتفاق افتاده، تجلی پریشانی عمیقی در تعامل ملی و عقیم ماندن اندیشه سیاسی و درک و تعهد ملی در میان رهبران، سیاستمداران وحتی روشنفکران افغانستان می باشد که از پند نیاموزی سیاسی، فقدان درک قواعد بازی و مساحت محدود عقلانیت و خرد خود بنیاد این نخبگان، نشأت می گیرد.

قدرت سیاسی وخواسته های قومی

به نظر می رسد بن بست پدید آمده در انتخاب ریس مجلس نمایندگان، پیش از آن که بصورت ساده، درصف بندی سه جبهه " دولت"، " اپوزیسیون" و"بی طرف ها" تعریف گردد، نیازمند دید عمیقتر و توضیح جامعه شناختی از موزایک قومی افغانستان می باشد.

تعمق در ترکیب قومی اعضای مجلس نمایندگان در دور جدید، الگوی واقع بینانه تری در تحلیل و بازشناسی بحران های سیاسی ـ ملی به دست می دهد که درک کنیم مشکل انتخاب رئیس شوری اساسا ریشه درمفروضه چگونگی پدیده توزیع قدرت دارد نه الزاما در جناح بندی های سیاسی و یا گروه بندی های فکری ـ ایدئولوژیک.

براساس یک بر رسی، از مجموع ۲۴۹ عضو مجلس نمایندگان، ۹۸ کرسی به پشتون ها، ۷۲ کرسی به تاجیک ها، ۵۲ کرسی به هزاره ها و ۱۹ کرسی دیگر به ازبکها اختصاص یافته و اقلیت های قومی دیگر در مجلس صاحب هشت کرسی شده اند.

این آمار صرف نظر از میزان شمارگان، بیانگر تکثر و تنوعی است که ساختار قومی افغانستان را آیینه داری می کند و همواره در تاریخ سیاسی ـ اجتماعی این کشور منشا گوناگونی فرهنگی، نا همگونی اجتماعی، شکافهای فعال ساختاری و نا شکیبایی های سیاسی بوده است.

پس از ورود و خروج نیروهای شوروی سابق از افغانستان، موازنه ی سنتی قدرت در افغانستان فروریخت و در آرایش تازه، گروههای دیگر قومی فرصت ظهور سیاسی و تبلور اجتماعی پیدا کردند. تاجیک ها، مهمترین گروه قومی بودند که با پیروزی مجاهدین، قدرت سیاسی را بدست آوردند و به مدت ٥ سال در کابل فرمان راندند.


یونس قانونی رئیس پیشین مجلس می گوید اگر یکی از کسانی که در دوره های چهارگانه قبلی نامزد ریاست مجلس بودند، دوباره نامزد شوند، او نیز کاندیدا خواهد بود
ظهور و تسلط طالبان بر افغانستان اما، به اعاده دوباره قدرت سیاسی به پشتون ها منجر شد. با ورود آمریکا و ائتلاف بین المللی به افغانستان، هرچند رژیم قبیله ای ـ مذهبی طالبان سقوط کرد اما برمبنای معاهده و مواقتنامه بن، سنت سیاسی توزیع قدرت تجدید شد و مشروعیت بین المللی پیدا کرد.

برمبنای این سنت، برای نخستین بار، نوعی سلسله مراتب درتعریف و توزیع قدرت سیاسی شکل گرفت. این سلسله مراتب در نماد رئیس جمهوری پشتون بعنوان قدرت نخست، معاون اول تاجیک به مثابه قدرت دوم و معاون دوم هزاره در ردیف قدرت سوم، تمثیل می گردد. مدعا و مصداق اجتماعی تبلور این سلسله مراتب در دو دوره انتخابات ریاست جمهوری نیز به نمایش در آمد. برمبنای این سنجش( نه چندان دقیق وغیر قابل اتکا) کاندید پشتون ها در رتبه نخست، کاندید تاجیک ها در رتبه دوم وکاندید هزاره ها در ردیف سوم قرار گرفته اند.

این که این نماد تا چه حد از حقایق عینی و واقعیتهای قومی افغانستان نمایندگی می کند، موضوع دیگری است اما آنچه که قابل طرح، درخور سنجش و شایسته اندیشه گری است این است که همه طرفها و اقوام عمده، با استدلال ها و مبتنی بر توقعات و مطالبات مخصوص به خود، از نحوه چیدمان قدرت سیاسی نقش و میزان نقش و حضور خود درساختار نظام دولتی ناراضی هستند.

تاجیک ها که رقیب اصلی پشتون ها درتعامل قدرت سیاسی هستند، پس از تجربه حکومت بر کابل، نوستالوژی بازگشت به این دوره را همیشه در آرزوی سیاسی خویش حفظ کرده اند. دراین میان، هزاره ها وازبک ها، مدعی رقابت در قدرت نیستند اما خواهان مشارکت درساختار قدرت و سهم درخور از نظام سیاسی و امتیازات ملی می باشند.

این دو قوم در فرایند تعامل قدرت میان پشتون ها و تاجیک ها، نقش مهم و متوازن کننده را دارند. گرایش سیاسی و ائتلاف استراتژیک این دو قوم با هرکدام از دو گروه مدعی قدرت سیاسی، می تواند تعیین کننده معادله چیدمان قدرت باشد.

در ماجرای انتخاب رئیس مجلس نمایندگان، پدیده توزیع قدرت قومی نقش تعیین کننده ای ایفا می کند. مقام ریاست مجلس نمایندگان، تنها موقعیتی بود که در دور گذشته از کنترل پشتون ها خارج بود. تقریبا تمامی گروه ها و جناح های سیاسی پشتون این بار به تصاحب ریاست پارلمان چشم دوخته اند. ظاهرا به نظر می رسد حامد کرزی نیز به دلیل نگاه قومی و هم بخاطر یک کاسه شدن ارکان دولتی، شدیدا در تلاش است که این مقام در اختیار گروه قومی وسیاسی خود وی قرار بگیرد.

نیروی متوازن کننده و ائتلاف های شکننده

پیش ازجریان رأی گیری برای انتخاب ریس مجلس نمایندگان، نمایندگان هزاره، گویا با یونس قانونی به توافقاتی رسیده بودند تا از وی حمایت کنند اما آنگونه که در چهار دوره رای گیری روشن شد، این توافقات چندان محکم و قطعی نبوده است. به نظر می رسد این حکایت، تابلویی است از وضعیت آشفته سیاسی و عمق ناپایداری ها و بی اعتمادی هایی که در جان و جهان سیاستمداران و رهبران قومی افغاستان تنیده است و بخوبی در جریان بن بست انتخاب رئیس مجلس نمایندگان تبلور یافته است.

هزاره ها و بخش زیادی از ازبک ها در سیاستمداری و فرایند چانه زنی امروزه کشور، از چند خلا و مشکل بزرگ رنج می برند:

نخست فقدان رهبری سیاسی متمرکز، موثر و مقتدر.

دوم، فقدان اهداف تعریف شده و روشن استراتژیک.

سوم، گرایش های جناحی ودرون گروهی متفاوت، وگاه متضاد.

چهارم، ظهور نسل جدیدی از سیاستگران و بازیگران که عمدتا از تجربه، توانایی و حمایت لازم در چانه زنی ها برخوردار نیستند و بیشتر فردی و مستقل عمل می کنند.

پنجم، تجربه ی ناکام از ائتلافهای سیاسی با سایر گروههای قومی وگرفتار شدن دربحران شک وبی اعتمادی.

این خصوصیات سیاسی بازیگران عرصه ی سیاست هزاره ها وازبک ها، در نتایج چانه زنی بر سر توافق با یونس قانونی و یا عبدالرب رسول سیاف نیز تبلور پیدا کرد.


عبدالرب رسول سیاف رقیب اصلی یونس قانونی برای ریاست مجلس تاکید دارد که برای حل بحران کنونی باید به کمیته نظارت از قانون اساسی مراجعه شود
چهار دور انتخابات برای گزینش رئیس مجلس نمایندگان، نشان داد که هیچ یک از کاندیداهای دو دور اخیر نتوانسته اند آرای سیاف و قانونی را کسب کنند. چنین موضوعی این گمان را تقویت می کند که دو فرد یاد شده، با توجه به این که بیشترین شانس را در میان حامیان و هوادان خود دارند، ممکن است سناریویی در کار باشد که بازهم به بازگشت و کاندید شدن آنان منجر گردد.

حال، پرسش اساسی این است که اگر چنین اتفاقی بیفتد، آیا نمایندگان هزاره و ازبک با توجه به تنشهای پدید آمده در روزهای اخیر، کدام گزینه را انتخاب خواهند کرد؟ و آیا مجلس نمایندگان بعنوان یک مرجع دمکراتیک و قانونگذار، هویت های قومی و رویکردهای قبیله ای را وارد فاز تازه ای در حوزه چانه زنی های سیاسی نخواهد کرد؟ و آیا این خطر که گرایش های قومی در مجلس نمایندگان به قوت خود باقی بماند و نتواند به مرور زمان تبدیل به یک گرایش ملی شود، بیشتر از پیش احساس نمی شود.

حمزه واعظی

نویسنده و پژوهشگر افغان در اسلو

Source,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/afghanistan/2011/02/110225_l09_af_parliament_problems.shtml

The failed state we’re in

Clare Lockhart 29th June 2008 — Issue 147

The international community has spent billions on reconstructing Afghanistan—yet the country has made dismayingly little progress. It's time for a radical new approach to state-building

We would like to tell you the story of $150m going up in smoke,” said the young villager. “We heard on the radio that there was going to be a reconstruction programme in our region to help us rebuild our houses after coming back from exile, and we were very pleased.”

This was the summer of 2002. The village was in a remote part of Bamiyan province, in Afghanistan’s central highlands, and several hours’ drive from the provincial capital—utterly cut off from the world. UN agencies and NGOs were rushing to provide “quick impact” projects to help Afghan citizens in the aftermath of war. $150m could have transformed the lives of the inhabitants of villages like this one.

But it was not to be, as the young man explained. “After many months, very little had happened. We may be illiterate, but we are not stupid. So we went to find out what was going on. And this is what we discovered: the money was received by an agency in Geneva, who took 20 per cent and subcontracted the job to another agency in Washington DC, who also took 20 per cent. Again it was subcontracted and another 20 per cent was taken; and this happened again when the money arrived in Kabul. By this time there was very little money left; but enough for someone to buy wood in western Iran and have it shipped by a shipping cartel owned by a provincial governor at five times the cost of regular transportation. Eventually some wooden beams reached our villages. But the beams were too large and heavy for the mud walls that we can build. So all we could do was chop them up and use them for firewood.”

Source,

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/06/thefailedstatewerein/

9th Expert Working Group Meeting for the Safeguarding of the Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley

UNESCO is organizing, in close collaboration with the Permanent Delegation of Afghanistan to UNESCO and the Government of Afghanistan, the 9th Expert Working Group Meeting for the Preservation of the Safeguarding of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley World Heritage Property, UNESCO Headquarters (Room VI).

The 45 participants of the Expert Working Group Meeting include national staff from the Afghan Government, international experts and implementing partners. The purpose of the Meeting is to monitor and evaluate the project activities that have been carried out and to update and co-ordinate future priority actions for the following year. The Afghan Government participates fully in the co-ordination of the previous Expert Working meetings with representatives from the Ministry of Information and Culture, the Ministry of Urban Development as well as the Governor of Bamiyan.

The two-day expert working meeting follows the 2 March 2011 International Forum: "Towards Cultural Rapprochement and Tolerance", to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the tragic destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamiyan in March 2001.

Source,
http://whc.unesco.org/fr/evenements/726

The hill of gold

(It seems that history of Central Asia is interlinked so deeply to each other that modern segregation of nations becomes increasingly obscure as we go deep past)........

The hill of goldIn 1978 a hoard of treasures was discovered at Tillya Tepe, Afghnistan. Having survived thirty years of shelling, looting and Taliban raids it's the highlight of a new British Museum exhibition


Peter Thonemann , The Guardian,

Saturday 19 February 2011, Article history

Treasures from Tillya Tepe ... a pair of gold clasps depicting warriors. Photograph: National Museum of Afghanistan © Thierry Ollivier/Museé Guimet

Are you keen to help finance the activities of warlords and insurgents across Afghanistan and Pakistan? As I write, eBay is inviting bids on no fewer than 128 ancient Bactrian and Indo-Greek silver and bronze coins, from sellers in Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand and the United States. Probably every one of them is the product of looting over the past 20 years. With luck, you might even pick up one of the tens of thousands of items plundered from the collections of the old National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul between 1992 and 2001. For those with deep pockets, I can particularly recommend the eBay seller "The Precious Art from Past", who is currently offering 289 looted AfPak objects for sale, including an extraordinary ancient Gandharan sculpture of a seated Heracles in near-perfect condition, yours for £18,950 plus postage and packing.

Such are the hazards of living at a "crossroads of civilizations". It must be said that this kind of briskly utilitarian attitude towards Afghanistan's pre-Islamic heritage is nothing new. In 1999, the leader of the Taliban government, Mullah Omar, issued a decree forbidding any damage to the monumental Buddhas of Bamiyan, on the grounds that the Taliban considered the Bamiyan statues "as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors". Aside from their potential economic value, no obvious benefits derived from the existence of the Bamiyan Buddhas: as Omar rightly noted "In Afghanistan there are no Buddhists to worship the statues."

Why should a Pashtun Muslim feel any sense of responsibility for the culture of Gandharan Buddhists? Dozens of times over the past 3,000 years, the plains and valleys around the foothills of the Hindu Kush have changed hands between Iranians, Greeks, Chinese, Scythians, Turks and Indians. An oft-photographed plaque outside the National Museum in Kabul reads: "A Nation Stays Alive When Its Culture Stays Alive". No one should be taken in by the bland phrasing – this is as provocative as it gets. Which culture? Whose nation? In March 2001, Omar gave one answer, by revoking his decision of two years earlier and ordering the dynamiting of the Bamiyan buddhas. Simultaneously, most of the few remaining pre-Islamic objects in the Kabul museum were also smashed or sold off. It would be quite wrong to see the events of March 2001 as merely an act of barbarous vandalism (though they certainly were that too). They also represented a particular claim about which bits of Afghanistan's history were worth preserving: for the Taliban, the only "national culture" that mattered was the one that began in AD622.

For an alternative account of Afghanistan's bloody history – one, as it were, with the Buddhists left in – we can look to a spectacular exhibition which opens at the British Museum next month. Neil MacGregor, director of the museum, hopes to show that "We are at a historically anomalous moment when the country is seen as remote and isolated . . . Afghanistan's relationships are long and deep." At the heart of the exhibition is the miracle of Tillya Tepe, the "hill of gold", a huge earthen barrow 80 miles west of Mazar-i Sharif, between the Hindu Kush mountains and the streams of the Amu Darya. Some time in the mid-first century AD, this mound was chosen by a nomadic prince as his burial kurghan. The prince himself was interred at the peak of the hill, and a horse was sacrificed and buried alongside him. In a ring around the prince's tomb were the graves of five women, probably his five wives, all of them clad in gorgeous textiles and jewellery of extraordinary splendour.

Archaeologists recovered more than 20,000 objects from these six tombs, the richest of them coming from the graves of the two women buried closest to the Tillya Tepe prince. One of these two favoured princesses was buried with a silver Chinese mirror lying on her breast; beside her were an Indian ivory comb, a gold seal with the image and name of the goddess Athena in Greek, two distinctly European cherubs riding on the backs of dolphins, and, most remarkably of all, a gold coin of the Roman emperor Tiberius, minted at Lyon in Gaul between AD14 and 37.

Who were these women? What language did they speak? The jewellery from Tillya Tepe is like nothing known from any other part of the world: Chinese, Indian, Bactrian, Siberian and Greek styles are jumbled and fused together into a glorious but baffling kaleidoscope. Many of the gold objects are studded with brilliant coloured stones, above all with turquoise. Particularly common are turquoise stones in the shape of hearts. These probably depict the ivy plant, sacred to the Scythian nomads of central Asia: in 329BC, during his expedition into the central Asian steppe, Alexander the Great saw nomadic burial mounds and trees wreathed with ivy. There are other reasons to think that the nomads of Tillya Tepe might have been Scythians – the main sources of turquoise in inner Asia lie in the hills around Mashhad, around 300 miles west of Tillya Tepe in the heart of Scythian territory in north-eastern Iran.

It is hard to overstate the importance of the finds from Tillya Tepe. Nomads are the quintessential "people without history"; the nomadic encampment normally leaves no traces for the archaeologist to recover. These burials are, effectively, our only evidence for the long nomadic interlude in Afghan history between the fall of the Greek kingdom of Bactria in around 145BC and the rise of the Kushan state in the late first century AD. And crucially, whoever these nomads may have been, they were self-evidently as cosmopolitan as they come. Here, at the intersection of three ancient Asiatic trade routes, the princesses buried at Tillya Tepe were about as isolated from the wider world as Carla Bruni.

As their jewellery clearly shows, the Tillya Tepe nomads sat at the centre of a web of cultural connections and influences stretching across thousands of miles, from the Mediterranean to the Ganges. To the south, across the high passes of the Hindu Kush, the Kabul river valley leads down towards the Khyber pass and India. North of the Oxus river, a tangle of trading routes (the "Silk Road"), stretching from Han China through Xinjiang and central Asia, had grown up over the course of the last two centuries BC. It was in northern Afghanistan, in the region of Tillya Tepe, that the Chinese silk road met the long-established caravan routes stretching west across the Iranian plateau into Mesopotamia and, ultimately, across the eastern borders of the Roman empire. Fragments of Chinese silk have been found across the Roman empire, from Palmyra in the Syrian desert to Holborough in Kent. Whichever route this silk took on its way to Europe, whether overland via Iran or by ship from India to the Roman ports on the Red Sea, it could not avoid passing through the nomadic pastures of northern Afghanistan. The gold coin of Tiberius in the princess's grave at Tillya Tepe, 3,000 miles from its mint in southern France, is just one tiny trace of this vast network linking Beijing to the shores of the Atlantic.

The nomad graves were first uncovered by a Soviet-Afghan team in the autumn of 1978. Afghanistan in the late 70s was far from the ideal place and time for a vast hoard of gold of this kind to emerge. Late in 1979, once the finds had been analysed and photographed, they were handed over to the National Museum in Kabul for safe-keeping. By the end of the year, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan. In 1988, as it became clear that the Soviets were preparing to withdraw, the communist president of Afghanistan, Muhammed Najibullah, had the finds from Tillya Tepe and other sites (including Ai Khanoum and Bagram, also on display in the British Museum exhibition) crated up and sealed in the vaults of the Afghan Central Bank. This proved to be a far-sighted move. As the country slid into anarchy in the early 90s, the Kabul museum was repeatedly shelled and looted; it was during these years that the museum's tens of thousands of artefacts began to be dispersed across the world.


When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Najibullah was promptly lynched and the bank vaults searched, without success. The few museum staff who knew the location of the Tillya Tepe finds kept it to themselves, and the crates were left undisturbed throughout the period of Taliban rule. Their fate officially remained unknown until 2003, when safes beneath the presidential palace were opened by the Afghan minister of culture. Sadly, the security situation in Kabul was still so fragile that it was impossible to contemplate displaying the Tillya Tepe gold in the Kabul museum itself. Since 2006, the artefacts have been touring Europe and the United States. Few Afghans have ever had the chance to see them in their home country.

Still, the Kabul museum is at least open to visitors again. In 2009, a small exhibition, Rescued Treasures, went on display at the museum, including the pick of more than 2,000 looted Afghan artefacts impounded at Heathrow airport in 2004. The British ambassador to Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, described the purpose of the exhibition as "giving the Afghan people back that sense of cultural heritage that was so nearly taken from them". It is depressing to learn how few of these "rescued" objects actually came from the original, pre-1992 Kabul collection: most were the product of a fresh wave of looting of Afghanistan's ancient sites in the 90s and early 2000s.

Given Afghanistan's recent history, I think we ought to be a little wary about the ambassador's notion of a single Afghan "sense of cultural heritage", on the brink of being lost, but now "given back" to "the Afghan people". The Kabul museum is situated far to the south of the city centre in the Dar al-Aman district, a European-style suburb laid out by the westernising Shah Amanullah Khan in the 1920s. On the opposite side of the road from the museum lie the bombed-out ruins of Amanullah's Dar al-Aman palace, complete with Parisian arcades, neo-classical pediments and formal gardens. The juxtaposition of the two buildings is no coincidence. As in modern Iran, Afghanistan's pre-Islamic "heritage" is a sharply politicised and divisive issue. Iran's ruling Shia clerics view their pre-Islamic past with intense suspicion: the site of Persepolis, in particular, is stamped with the secular and westernising aspirations of the Shah's regime in the 1960s and 70s. Happily for Persepolis, the archaeology of ancient Persia is also central to Iranian national pride, since it proves how much older and more civilised they are than the Sunni Arabs. Afghan archaeology, while also closely associated with the secular wing of the country's urban elite, has no such useful nationalist overtones to protect it.

It is possible to over-analyse the dynamiting of the Bamiyan buddhas and the repeated vandalism of the Kabul museum. Whatever else he had in mind, Mullah Omar's actions in early 2001 had a lot to do with sticking two fingers up to the west. But there is a reason why that provocation was so effective. The Taliban were consciously and deliberately turning their back on Afghanistan's long history of engagement with China, the subcontinent and the west. The destruction of the buddhas was the crudest possible way of rejecting what they saw as a threateningly "secular" and cosmopolitan version of Afghanistan's history. Today, in a political context of de-Talibanisation, we are returning to the notion of a historically open, culturally pluralist Afghanistan – an Afghanistan which acted as a "crossroads of the ancient world" (to quote the title of the British museum exhibition). Which side will win this particular argument remains to be seen. For anyone within striking distance of London in the next four months, this really is Afghanistan as you have never seen it before.

Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World is at the British Museum, London WC1, from 3 March to 3 July 2011. www.britishmuseum.org

Source,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/feb/19/afghanistan-crossroads-exhibition-british-museum

Labor's call: fear extremists, not migrants Kirsty Needham

February 17, 2011


THE federal government has re-embraced multiculturalism in a key speech by the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, tackling voter fear of Islamic extremism and outlining a new anti-racism strategy.

Labor's new multicultural policy was released amid accusations that the Coalition was ''stealing sound bites from One Nation'', and with the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, conceding attacks on asylum-seeker funerals had gone ''too far''.

Mr Bowen told the Sydney Institute last night it had become fashionable to blame multiculturalism for terrorism, but the Australian experience was different.

Advertisement: Story continues below ''It is right for Australians to be concerned about extremism - whether Islamic or otherwise … [but] to cast all Islamic migrants or all members of any religious group as somehow unworthy of their place in our national community … tars the many with the extremist views of the very few and does an injustice to all.''

He said it was counter-intuitive to assume that most migrants wanted to change Australia. ''Allegations of migrants wanting to come to Australia to convert the populace and turn it into a replica of their homelands ignore the truth.''

Hazaras, who make up a large percentage of asylum-seeker boat arrivals, had fled religious extremism in Afghanistan, and ''just like previous groups of migrants'' were attracted by Australia's values, he said.

Mr Bowen outlined a new policy which he said promoted social cohesion and valued diversity.

The government will appoint a 10-person multicultural council which will have a wider scope than the existing advisory body, establish a national anti-racism strategy, and reinstate the word ''multicultural'' in Kate Lundy's title of parliamentary secretary for immigration.

A youth sports program will also promote people from ethnically diverse backgrounds mixing together.

Labor's new multicultural push comes after the opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, said on Australia Day that he was ''reluctant to use the term'', and multiculturalism should not be reduced to an ''unrestricted licence to replicate your old culture in a new land''.

The Howard government dropped official use of the term, and the last federal multiculturalism statement was issued in 2003.

But during last year's election, Labor also shied away from a multiculturalism policy, sensitive to voter perceptions in western Sydney of special treatment for migrants, and had dropped the term from Senator Lundy's title.

Mr Bowen said last night: ''I'm not afraid to use the word multiculturalism.''

He said multiculturalism had worked and was a marker of a liberal society. Australia differed from Europe in that it was not a guest worker society, and migrants were expected to become citizens. But Australia could not accept the benefits of a diverse population and then shun the culture of migrants it had invited, or suspect they would not integrate, he said.

''If people do not feel part of society, this can lead to alienation and, ultimately, social disunity.''

Almost half (44 per cent) of Australians were born overseas or had a parent born overseas.

Mr Bowen said the government would counter extremism, and singled out sharia as inconsistent with multiculturalism. Where there is any clash between migrant cultures and the rule of law or freedom ''traditional Australian values win out'', he said.

The Australian Multicultural Advisory Council, set up by the Rudd government in 2008, recommended last year that an independent body be established to advise on a multicultural strategy.

The former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Fraser was credited with institutionalising multiculturalism as policy, but Mr Bowen said it was uncertain it would remain ''above the fray of the daily political football match''.

Yesterday the government put the cost of flying 21 Christmas Island detainees to Sydney this week for the funerals of relatives who died in the December boat tragedy at $300,000.

Source,
http://www.smh.com.au/national/labors-call-fear-extremists-not-migrants-20110216-1awmn.html

Balkanisation of Afghanistan cuts against the grain

Shaukat Qadir

Last Updated: Feb 17, 2011


On the verge of exit from Afghanistan, the US and its allies might be tempted to leave a Balkanised version of that country in their wake. The idea, championed by Robert Blackwill, a former US ambassador to India, is seen as something of an end game, where the country is divided along ethnic lines.

A divided Afghanistan, the thinking goes, would prevent a full-scale return of the Taliban by reducing its presence to the Pashtun-dominated south and, in the process, contain the threat. The presumedly peaceful north could embark on nation-building while military operations and counter-terrorism could continue in the south. It sounds simple. But is the analysis missing something?

The logic of a divided Afghanistan is based on three premises. First, there was no such country as Afghanistan until Russia and Britain decided to create it in 1893 as a buffer between the Russian and British empires. Second, Taliban support is confined to the Pashtun-dominated south. And last, a division along ethnic lines would be acceptable to all parties.

All three premises are appealing to consider - and all three are dead wrong.

The first premise is manifestly false. In 1747, Ahmed Shah Durrani began to carve out an empire covering almost all of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Even though the Durrani empire had disintegrated by the late 19th century, the extension into the Indian sub-continent and Iran laid a regional framework tied to Afghanistan.

In fact, that political entity was only imperfectly divided by the British-imposed Durand Line in 1893, which drew an arbitrary division between Afghanistan and British India, along the border of present-day Pakistan. The political cohesion of the area was pulled apart by the Great Game rivalry between Britain and Russia, but Afghanistan has disputed the Durand Line since its creation.



The second premise of Balkanisation is also dangerously misleading. While the Taliban are entirely Pashtun, and the leader of the Quetta Shura, Mullah Mohammed Omar, hails from Kandahar in the south, neither Pashtuns nor Taliban support is confined there. Qunduz is a Pashtun-dominated region in the extreme north. The provinces of Logar, Nangarhar and Paktia immediately south and east of Kabul are Pashtun dominated. And west and north of Kabul, Jalalabad and the region bordering Pakistan is also Pashtun.

The bulk of the Hazara ethnic group lives in central Afghanistan, though they are a minority in every province. While Hazaras are almost exclusively Shiites and have often been discriminated against by Pashtun groups, predominantly Pashtun areas have historically hosted peoples of many religions including Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs and Parsis. The arrival of the Taliban, of course, changed this acceptance of this religious diversity.

Finally, the belief that Afghanistan would happily accept a state carved along ethnic divisions is also wrong. Despite the country's ethnic and religious diversity, there has always been a national character among Afghan people, who pride themselves on being Afghan first. Afghan Tajiks may dominate the region bordering Tajikistan, and Uzbeks near Uzbekistan, but they are all Afghans.



This sense of national identity has been bolstered by another factor that the Americans have perhaps overlooked. Afghans have a vested interest in a united country that can better exploit its mineral wealth and keeps intact the economic corridor that runs through Central Asia. While outsiders might not value the economic unity of the country, it should be the foundation of the country's future development. If divided, some of the constituent parts would quickly become economically inviable.

It remains to be seen what form Afghanistan will take after the United States and its allies make their exit. But that exit is on the horizon. As I have argued in previous articles, last month's visit of the US vice president Joe Biden and his return two days ago may signal a changing US strategy in the region. Mr Biden is the greatest proponent in Washington of a diminished US troop presence on the subcontinent, and his visits will be dealing with an exit strategy.

But regardless, events may outpace the Americans. The so-called Rabbani initiative, named for the Tajik veteran of the Afghan-Soviet war Burhanuddin Rabbani, proposes rapprochement with the Taliban in a framework that only includes Afghans. Obviously, that excludes America's hand from shaping the post-invasion order. Mr Rabbani made that proposal to the Pashtun jirga in Nangarhar
Just as the Americans are being pushed towards the exit, their plans for Afghanistan are becoming further irrelevant. Those who try to impose an outsider's solution on Afghanistan will be making the same mistakes of many wars past.


Brig Shaukat Qadir is a former Pakistani infantry officer

Source,
http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/balkanisation-of-afghanistan-cuts-against-the-grain?pageCount=2