By Farhad Peikar Mar 9, 2011, 3:02 GMT
Bamiyan, Afghanistan - While the world was pleading with the Taliban not to obliterate Afghanistan's Buddha statues in March 2001, Didar Ali was working hard to bring the giants down.
The then-40-year-old was no iconoclast himself, but Taliban fighters had told him that they would spare his life only if he helped destroy the sculptures.
In February 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had ordered the statues in Bamiyan province, 230 kilometres north-west of Kabul, to be dynamited. Despite widespread international opposition, the Taliban maintained the images were idols and, therefore, not tolerable under Islam.
Starting March 2, the militants began shelling the 1,500-year-old statutes with artillery for several days, but with little result. The sixth-century Buddhists had done a great job, carving them in hard stone into the same cliff face with a distance of around 800 metres between them.
The Sunni militants, who has wrested control of the province from their Shiite rivals, forced a group of local men to drill and plant explosives inside the statues, 38 and 55 metres high, respectively.
While the international community was increasing its pressure on the Taliban to abandon their plan, the militants were arresting more male villagers from the near-deserted town to complete the job.
But it was not until much later that the militants learned that one of the men, Ali, was an expert in using explosives to quarry stones from the mountains, which local people would use for construction.
'They tied a rope around my waist and hung me from the top of the cliff to dig holes and bury explosives on the two shoulders of tallest statue,' Ali recounted. 'I refused to do it, but they threatened to push me from the top of the statue without a rope and kill all the other (arrested) men.'
'They also told me that if I tried to escape, they would kill my family and burn down my home,' said the father of five, who still lives in Sultano village, 20 kilometres west of Bamiyan city.
Suspended from the top of the cliff, Ali and two other men drilled holes into the statues and filled them with explosives and rocket shells. When they were detonated, the statues were flattened, leaving the niches where they had stood empty. Around 50,000 kilograms of explosives were used in the two-week operation, according to a Taliban-linked publication.
The world was shocked by the news, but Ali was glad to be able to return to his family. 'I know they were our cultural heritage. They also belonged to the entire world, but at that time I could only think about my life.'
The statues were not the only victims of the Taliban.
According to Omara Khan Masoudi, director of the National Museum in Kabul, the ultra-Islamist regime destroyed more than 2,000 ancient statues and other artifacts depicting human-like figures before Bamiyan's sculptures were brought down.
When they seized the Bamiyan area in 1998, two years after taking Kabul, the Taliban torched hundreds of homes and 'massacred at least 500 people, including women and children,' said Haji Qasim Kazimi, deputy provincial governor.
'I was only a schoolteacher, not a fighter, but the Taliban burned down my home after I fled my village,' said Ebrahim Akbari, who is currently the head of the information and culture department in Bamiyan.
Sitting in his mud-walled office near where the statues' feet would have been, Akbari, whose job it is to preserve the remaining debris, said the international community only began condemning the Taliban after they bombed the giant sculptures.
'There were more serious atrocities before and after that incident.'
In the 10 years that have passed, the statues have been preserved against further destruction and one or both of them might even be reconstructed, but Ali is far from forgetting his ordeal. Despite living only a 30-minute drive away, he only visits the snow-covered valley once or twice a year.
'Whenever I really have to go to the city, I don't want to look at the statues because they remind me of those days when I had to take part in their destruction,' the farmer said.
'Every minute I was living between life and death because if the rope had suddenly been cut or if we failed to bring the statues down, I would have been killed.'
Source,
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1624591.php/Quarryman-recalls-being-forced-to-destroy-Buddha-statues
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Karmapa likens Bamiyan Buddha destruction to Berlin Wall fall
Source: The Press Trust of India Limited
Mysore - Seeking a positive perception towards demolition of Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan during the erstwhile Taliban regime, a Tibetan spiritual leader Saturday likened the incident to the fall of Berlin Wall that was followed by the unification of east and west Germany.
While many termed the Bamiyan episode as a tragedy I have a suggestion that perhaps we can look at this in a positive way.
What we saw in destruction of Bamiyan Buddha is some kind of depletion of matter... some soured substance coming down... disintegrating, said the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa (Ogyen Trinley Dorje), the second highest-ranking leader of Tibetan Buddhist.
Distinguishing between the approach towards spirituality in Islamic and Buddhism, he said spirituality revolved around ideology and there are not as many physical representation in Islam, unlike spiritual liberation practised in Buddhism.
Maybe we can look at that being more similar to falling of Berlin Wall, that had kept people apart, the Karmapa said at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference here.
Source,
http://mingkok.buddhistdoor.com/en/news/d/2839
Mysore - Seeking a positive perception towards demolition of Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan during the erstwhile Taliban regime, a Tibetan spiritual leader Saturday likened the incident to the fall of Berlin Wall that was followed by the unification of east and west Germany.
While many termed the Bamiyan episode as a tragedy I have a suggestion that perhaps we can look at this in a positive way.
What we saw in destruction of Bamiyan Buddha is some kind of depletion of matter... some soured substance coming down... disintegrating, said the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa (Ogyen Trinley Dorje), the second highest-ranking leader of Tibetan Buddhist.
Distinguishing between the approach towards spirituality in Islamic and Buddhism, he said spirituality revolved around ideology and there are not as many physical representation in Islam, unlike spiritual liberation practised in Buddhism.
Maybe we can look at that being more similar to falling of Berlin Wall, that had kept people apart, the Karmapa said at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference here.
Source,
http://mingkok.buddhistdoor.com/en/news/d/2839
Remains of Bamiyan Buddhas yield additional details about statues' origins: Washington Post
By Andrew Lawler
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Ten years ago, the Taliban destroyed the great Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, two giant statues that watched over the Bamiyan Valley for 1,500 years. Extensive studies of the rubble have revealed new details about the creation and appearance of these statues, including their original colors.
Early travelers, including Chinese monks, described the Buddhas as painted - one red and one white, according to an 11th-century visitor. But material evidence was lacking until a team led by Erwin Emmerling of the Technical University of Munich analyzed the remains. Smaller fragments are stored in warehouses in the valley and larger pieces remain at the bottom of the niches, covered by tarps.
"The Buddhas once had an intensely colorful appearance," Emmerling said in a recent statement. And he adds that they were painted over several times. The outer robes on one were pink and later orange on the outside, with a pale blue lining, whereas the other was white.
The researchers also found "an astonishing degree of artistic skill" in fashioning the massive statues, which were carved from the rock but had garments made out of clay as smooth as porcelain, Emmerling says.
"These have survived not only nearly 1,500 years of history but even the explosion in some parts," Emmerling said. But he warned that the porous sandstone, now exposed to the air, may crumble within a few years.
The researchers suggested that at least the smaller Buddha might be partly rebuilt with existing fragments injected with a synthetic material designed to halt weathering. Those fragments - more than 1,000 - would have to be sent to Germany for treatment, and Emmerling declined to say what such an effort would cost.
Bamiyan was an important monastic complex at a time when Buddhism began to spread from India and Pakistan into Central Asia and China. But dating the statues carved into the sandstone cliffs has proved problematic. Based on the style of the robes, art historians have long thought the monuments were made as early as the 3rd century A.D.
But the new analysis indicates that they were made a few hundred years after this. Drawing on organic material in the clay layers in the rubble of the destroyed Buddhas, Emmerling's team used mass spectrometry analysis to date the smaller Buddha to between A.D. 544 and A.D. 595 and the larger Buddha to between A.D. 591 and A.D. 644. These later dates may show that the complex remained vibrant longer than scholars once thought, even after the advent of Islam in Afghanistan starting in the 7th century A.D.
A team of experts from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization met recently in Paris to hear the results. Brendan Cassar, a UNESCO representative in Kabul, said that the focus at Bamiyan is on stabilizing the niches and on preparing a modest open-air museum at the site rather than reconstructing the statues.
This report was produced by Science NOW, a daily online news service of the journal Science, which can be read at sciencemag.org.
Source,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/05/AR2011030503558.html
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Ten years ago, the Taliban destroyed the great Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, two giant statues that watched over the Bamiyan Valley for 1,500 years. Extensive studies of the rubble have revealed new details about the creation and appearance of these statues, including their original colors.
Early travelers, including Chinese monks, described the Buddhas as painted - one red and one white, according to an 11th-century visitor. But material evidence was lacking until a team led by Erwin Emmerling of the Technical University of Munich analyzed the remains. Smaller fragments are stored in warehouses in the valley and larger pieces remain at the bottom of the niches, covered by tarps.
"The Buddhas once had an intensely colorful appearance," Emmerling said in a recent statement. And he adds that they were painted over several times. The outer robes on one were pink and later orange on the outside, with a pale blue lining, whereas the other was white.
The researchers also found "an astonishing degree of artistic skill" in fashioning the massive statues, which were carved from the rock but had garments made out of clay as smooth as porcelain, Emmerling says.
"These have survived not only nearly 1,500 years of history but even the explosion in some parts," Emmerling said. But he warned that the porous sandstone, now exposed to the air, may crumble within a few years.
The researchers suggested that at least the smaller Buddha might be partly rebuilt with existing fragments injected with a synthetic material designed to halt weathering. Those fragments - more than 1,000 - would have to be sent to Germany for treatment, and Emmerling declined to say what such an effort would cost.
Bamiyan was an important monastic complex at a time when Buddhism began to spread from India and Pakistan into Central Asia and China. But dating the statues carved into the sandstone cliffs has proved problematic. Based on the style of the robes, art historians have long thought the monuments were made as early as the 3rd century A.D.
But the new analysis indicates that they were made a few hundred years after this. Drawing on organic material in the clay layers in the rubble of the destroyed Buddhas, Emmerling's team used mass spectrometry analysis to date the smaller Buddha to between A.D. 544 and A.D. 595 and the larger Buddha to between A.D. 591 and A.D. 644. These later dates may show that the complex remained vibrant longer than scholars once thought, even after the advent of Islam in Afghanistan starting in the 7th century A.D.
A team of experts from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization met recently in Paris to hear the results. Brendan Cassar, a UNESCO representative in Kabul, said that the focus at Bamiyan is on stabilizing the niches and on preparing a modest open-air museum at the site rather than reconstructing the statues.
This report was produced by Science NOW, a daily online news service of the journal Science, which can be read at sciencemag.org.
Source,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/05/AR2011030503558.html
Friday, March 4, 2011
From Hope to Home: Leaving Afghanistan
Mohammad Razai is a student at the University of Cambridge. Here, he explains why his family left Afghanistan and what it meant to him to settle in the UK:
When I was six years old, the enveloping darkness of the courtyard; the familiar sonorous sound of Muazzin from the pulpit of the mosque, calling the faithful to prayers, would signal the end of the day.
I would then go into the dimly lantern-lit room of our house and watch my grand mother prostrated on her mat, praying. She would teach me verses from the Quran, and then she would tell me the story of the three fishes: the wise, the half-wise, and the third, stupid.
When fishermen come to the edge of the lake with their nets – the wise fish recognizes the danger and makes a difficult journey to the ocean, the half-wise – realising he has lost his wise guide – escapes by feigning death, however, the foolish fish is jumping about unaware of the net closing around him.
The fable, carved in my memory, meant little to me then beyond my fascination with the fate of three hapless creatures. Today, this fascinating parable of Jalal al-Din Rumi in Mathnavi can be revisited. The foolish fish is bounded and limited by the world of his immediate surroundings. For him home is that lake, come what may; he lacks vision and foresight, Rumi says.
The half-wise, though capable of saving himself, is a follower whom requires guidance and cannot solve the riddle himself. It’s the wise fish that comes to the conclusion that his true home is not the lake that he has lived, but the vast ocean where he could actualise the potential he has, wherever that may be.
Rumi himself fled the marauding Mongols in 1219 and settled in the Anatolian city of Konya, modern day Turkey, where he lived most of his life and wrote his poetical works. Rumi derides those who define home on political and geographical terms. Home is where you can live.Where you are accepted. When your race, ethnicity and identity is not a crime.
I was born in a cold winter morning of 1986, though the exact date is unknown, to an ethnically Hazara family in the west of Kabul. My great grandfather had travelled on foot at the age of 13 from rugged mountainous central Afghanistan, where his forefathers were sent to exile by amirs and kings, to the city of Kabul where he started life selling sweet drinks and working as a vendor.
The family had gone to extraordinary lengths to forge a new identity to avoid racism and discrimination. They had internalised the inferiority ascribed to them by society – my grandfather’s advise was ‘as Hazaras we should know our place’.
The winter morning I was born everyone rejoiced that I wasn’t born a flat-nosed, however later I was disappointed that people called me a Hazara. The official history does not mention the collective suffering and persecution of the Hazara community, the pogroms and systematic ethnocide of a once thriving people.
“They called him flat-nosed because of Ali and Hassan’s characteristic Hazara Mongoloid features. For years, that was all I knew about the Hazaras… mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys. I had heard some of the kids in the neighborhood yell those names to Hassan.”
Khaled Hosseini’s the Kite Runner is a searing indictment of a rotten society. Hassan, his protagonist is an exemplar Hazara:
“Then one day, I was in Baba’s study, looking through his stuff, when I found one of my mother’s old history books…I blew the dust off it… In it, I read that my people, the Pashtuns, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtuns in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had “quelled them with unspeakable violence.” The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras, driven them from their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi’a. The book said a lot of things I didn’t know, things my teachers hadn’t mentioned. Things Baba hadn’t mentioned either.”
In winter of 1986 thirteen members of my family including my parents and grandfather were imprisoned, 8 months later my father and grandfather were executed. They were victims of a great purge instigated by the Marxist regime six years after the Soviet invasion in December 1979.
With the fall of the Marxist regime in Kabul a bloody civil war ensued. The family home was destroyed and we were made refugees. In autumn of my tenth year Kabul was taken over. Darkness descended on the city and all hope seemed gone. Being a Hazara, a Shi’a Muslim was no longer just a disadvantage, a hazard but a crime in itself.
We were sent to seek asylum. It was a journey to the unknown, I had no choice nor any idea where I would end up – it was the ultimate manifestation of my desperation- everytime an asylum seeker is made to disguise himself, gets strip-searched, locked-up and sent to a faraway camp he forfeits a piece of his dignity. Every time the Daily Mailqueries ‘why do we let in so many spongers?’ or the Mail on Sunday declares ‘ asylumseekers are a threat to our future’ he questions the wisdom of the choice made for him. But of course Britain has been a home for the persecuted, for those seeking sanctuary for centuries and this is what makes Britain great.
Source,
http://theglobalherald.com/from-hope-to-home-leaving-afghanistan/12660/
When I was six years old, the enveloping darkness of the courtyard; the familiar sonorous sound of Muazzin from the pulpit of the mosque, calling the faithful to prayers, would signal the end of the day.
I would then go into the dimly lantern-lit room of our house and watch my grand mother prostrated on her mat, praying. She would teach me verses from the Quran, and then she would tell me the story of the three fishes: the wise, the half-wise, and the third, stupid.
When fishermen come to the edge of the lake with their nets – the wise fish recognizes the danger and makes a difficult journey to the ocean, the half-wise – realising he has lost his wise guide – escapes by feigning death, however, the foolish fish is jumping about unaware of the net closing around him.
The fable, carved in my memory, meant little to me then beyond my fascination with the fate of three hapless creatures. Today, this fascinating parable of Jalal al-Din Rumi in Mathnavi can be revisited. The foolish fish is bounded and limited by the world of his immediate surroundings. For him home is that lake, come what may; he lacks vision and foresight, Rumi says.
The half-wise, though capable of saving himself, is a follower whom requires guidance and cannot solve the riddle himself. It’s the wise fish that comes to the conclusion that his true home is not the lake that he has lived, but the vast ocean where he could actualise the potential he has, wherever that may be.
Rumi himself fled the marauding Mongols in 1219 and settled in the Anatolian city of Konya, modern day Turkey, where he lived most of his life and wrote his poetical works. Rumi derides those who define home on political and geographical terms. Home is where you can live.Where you are accepted. When your race, ethnicity and identity is not a crime.
I was born in a cold winter morning of 1986, though the exact date is unknown, to an ethnically Hazara family in the west of Kabul. My great grandfather had travelled on foot at the age of 13 from rugged mountainous central Afghanistan, where his forefathers were sent to exile by amirs and kings, to the city of Kabul where he started life selling sweet drinks and working as a vendor.
The family had gone to extraordinary lengths to forge a new identity to avoid racism and discrimination. They had internalised the inferiority ascribed to them by society – my grandfather’s advise was ‘as Hazaras we should know our place’.
The winter morning I was born everyone rejoiced that I wasn’t born a flat-nosed, however later I was disappointed that people called me a Hazara. The official history does not mention the collective suffering and persecution of the Hazara community, the pogroms and systematic ethnocide of a once thriving people.
“They called him flat-nosed because of Ali and Hassan’s characteristic Hazara Mongoloid features. For years, that was all I knew about the Hazaras… mice-eating, flat-nosed, load-carrying donkeys. I had heard some of the kids in the neighborhood yell those names to Hassan.”
Khaled Hosseini’s the Kite Runner is a searing indictment of a rotten society. Hassan, his protagonist is an exemplar Hazara:
“Then one day, I was in Baba’s study, looking through his stuff, when I found one of my mother’s old history books…I blew the dust off it… In it, I read that my people, the Pashtuns, had persecuted and oppressed the Hazaras. It said the Hazaras had tried to rise against the Pashtuns in the nineteenth century, but the Pashtuns had “quelled them with unspeakable violence.” The book said that my people had killed the Hazaras, driven them from their lands, burned their homes, and sold their women. The book said part of the reason Pashtuns had oppressed the Hazaras was that Pashtuns were Sunni Muslims, while Hazaras were Shi’a. The book said a lot of things I didn’t know, things my teachers hadn’t mentioned. Things Baba hadn’t mentioned either.”
In winter of 1986 thirteen members of my family including my parents and grandfather were imprisoned, 8 months later my father and grandfather were executed. They were victims of a great purge instigated by the Marxist regime six years after the Soviet invasion in December 1979.
With the fall of the Marxist regime in Kabul a bloody civil war ensued. The family home was destroyed and we were made refugees. In autumn of my tenth year Kabul was taken over. Darkness descended on the city and all hope seemed gone. Being a Hazara, a Shi’a Muslim was no longer just a disadvantage, a hazard but a crime in itself.
We were sent to seek asylum. It was a journey to the unknown, I had no choice nor any idea where I would end up – it was the ultimate manifestation of my desperation- everytime an asylum seeker is made to disguise himself, gets strip-searched, locked-up and sent to a faraway camp he forfeits a piece of his dignity. Every time the Daily Mailqueries ‘why do we let in so many spongers?’ or the Mail on Sunday declares ‘ asylumseekers are a threat to our future’ he questions the wisdom of the choice made for him. But of course Britain has been a home for the persecuted, for those seeking sanctuary for centuries and this is what makes Britain great.
Source,
http://theglobalherald.com/from-hope-to-home-leaving-afghanistan/12660/
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