Destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas

In March 2001, the Taliban regime carried out the systematic demolition of the two colossal Buddhas carved into the sandstone cliffs of the Bamiyan Valley, monuments that had stood for nearly two thousand years as a testament to Afghanistan's Buddhist past and its place on the ancient Silk Road. The destruction was an act of cultural annihilation that reverberated around the world, drawing condemnation from governments, historians, and archaeologists from the United States to China, who pleaded with the Taliban to spare the statues. But the regime, having already banned music, television, kite flying, and girls' education, saw the Buddhas as objects of idolatry and sin, and proceeded with their demolition, chanting "Allah-u-akbar" with each blast and cheering each time the statues lost an arm or a leg in a crumbling cloud of dust.

The Buddhas and Their Significance

The two Buddhas, one 55 meters tall and the other 38 meters, were carved directly into a sun-bleached rock cliff in the Bamiyan Valley, which had once been a thriving Buddhist center until it fell under Islamic Arab rule in the ninth century. The sandstone cliffs were home to Buddhist monks who carved caves to use as living quarters and sanctuaries for weary traveling pilgrims, painting beautiful frescoes along the walls and roofs of their caves. At one point, as many as five thousand monks lived as hermits in these caves. The statues had peered down at caravans crossing the valley on the Silk Road for nearly two millennia, and for Laila, who had visited them in 1987 with her father Hakim and her friend Tariq, they represented a moment of profound connection to her country's heritage. Standing atop the larger Buddha's head, she had gazed down on the Bamiyan Valley, carpeted by lush farming fields, bordered by poplars and crisscrossed by streams, with the snowcapped Hindu Kush beyond. Hakim had brought her there to see and feel her country's rich past, to experience the silence and peace of the place, and to understand that some things cannot be learned from books.

The Act of Destruction

When Laila learned of the statues' demise, she was numb to it. It hardly seemed to matter. How could she care about statues when her own life was crumbling dust? The Taliban had planted TNT in the crevices of the giant Buddhas and blown them apart, calling them objects of idolatry and sin. There was an outcry around the world, from the U.S. to China. Governments, historians, and archaeologists from all over the globe had written letters, pleaded with the Taliban not to demolish the two greatest historical artifacts in Afghanistan. But the Taliban had gone ahead and detonated their explosives inside the two-thousand-year-old Buddhas. They had chanted "Allah-u-akbar" with each blast, cheered each time the statues lost an arm or a leg in a crumbling cloud of dust.

Consequences and Aftermath

The destruction of the Buddhas was part of a broader Taliban campaign against pre-Islamic culture. Men wielding pickaxes had already swarmed the dilapidated Kabul Museum and smashed pre-Islamic statues to rubble—those that hadn't already been looted by the Mujahideen. The university was shut down, paintings were ripped from walls and shredded with blades, and books—except the Koran—were burned in heaps. The poems of Khalili, Pajwak, Ansari, Haji Dehqan, Ashraqi, Beytaab, Hafez, Jami, Nizami, Rumi, Khayyam, Beydel, and more went up in smoke. For Laila, the Buddhas' destruction was one more loss in a cascade of losses that included her parents, her friend Tariq (as she then believed), and her own freedom. When she later passed through Mashad, Iran, on her way back to Herat, she saw the shrine to Imam Reza, the eighth Shi'a imam, with its glistening tiles, minarets, and magnificent golden dome, all immaculately and lovingly preserved. She thought of the Buddhas in her own country. They were grains of dust now, blowing about the Bamiyan Valley in the wind.