Buddhas may rise from ruins

By JOHN OTIS
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle

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BAMIYAN, Afghanistan -- Forced at gunpoint by Taliban soldiers, Said Qyam wrapped a cord around his waist, rappelled down the side of a sandstone cliff and inserted explosives into the head of the world's tallest statue of the Buddha.

"Each neighborhood had to supply workers," Qyam says of his involuntary role last March when the Taliban regime demolished three second-century Buddha colossi and sparked an international outcry.

"We couldn't say anything. We couldn't protest," says Qyam, a resident of the northern city of Bamiyan. "It was very sad. They destroyed part of our history."

Recent history, however, has meant a dramatic reversal of fortune for the people of Bamiyan and their cultural heritage.

Afghanistan's post-Taliban government announced last week that it would try to resurrect the Buddhas, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Yet it's unclear whether experts can undo the Taliban's handiwork. The radical Islamic regime destroyed the Buddhas, and antique dealers spirited most of the ruins out of the country. All that remains are the rough outlines of the figures and piles of rubble.

Paul Bucherer-Dietschi, a Swiss architect, spent two days in Bamiyan covering parts of the ruins with plastic tarps to protect them from snow and ice. He tried to sound optimistic.

"Contrary to what most people believe, lots of remains still exist," says Bucherer-Dietschi, who is director of the Afghanistan Institute and Museum in Bubendorf, Switzerland. "Almost every tourist came to Bamiyan. And that's the main reason for rebuilding -- not for an idealistic dream but for hard-core economic reasons."

The gigantic statues lured throngs of foreign travelers to the country before war broke out in the late 1970s and raged, off and on, until November, when an alliance of opposition fighters and U.S. forces toppled the Taliban.

An important rest stop for camel caravans on the Silk Road connecting the Roman Empire with Central Asia and India, Bamiyan was once the westernmost outpost of Buddhism.

The Mauryan emperor Ashoka introduced the religion to Bamiyan around 300 B.C. Work on the three Buddhas, which measured 175, 125 and 26 feet in height, probably started around 200 A.D. and required several centuries to complete, Bucherer-Dietschi says.

Builders carved the statues into the sandstone cliffs of the Hindu Kush mountains on the north side of Bamiyan and modeled the faces, hands and other features with a plaster of gypsum mud and straw. At one point, the figures were painted blue and red with gold faces.

"They must have been quite impressive for monks traveling through the harsh surrounding landscape, who finally reached the beautiful valley with the peaceful Buddhas making the gesture of reassurance," says a recent report by the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage, a foundation in Pakistan.

The figures included the classical features of Buddha images found in the Indian subcontinent but were draped in Greek robes. As a result, experts considered them among the most important products of the fusion of Asian and European art.

Although nearly all Afghans are Muslims, the figures were a source of pride. In a way, Bucherer-Dietschi says, their colossal size reflected the strength of Islam, which conquered the Bamiyan valley in the 11th century.

"They were very important to us, both historically and economically," says Ali Tawasoli, a local resident who tells of years past when thousands of long-haired backpackers made the pilgrimage to Bamiyan to meditate in front of the statues.

Buddha means "enlightened one," and the religion stresses pacifism and introspection. Yet the figures were constantly under siege by warlords ranging from Genghis Khan to Mongol emperors.

"The idea behind the destruction was to take away the soul of the hated image by obliterating, or at least deforming, the head and hands," according to the report by the Pakistani-based cultural heritage society.

But because of their mass and the fact that they were anchored into the cliffs rather than free-standing, the Buddhas survived.

Then came the Taliban.

A holier-than-thou Islamic movement that took power in 1996, the Taliban considered images and art depicting humans or animals sacrilegious. Under Taliban rule, a series of idols were wrecked.

For the Taliban's leaders, destroying the Buddhas was also a way to persecute the Hazaras, an ethnic minority that dominates Bamiyan and long resisted Taliban rule. Eventually, the Taliban burned and looted the city and forced thousands to flee. Many Hazara families sought refuge in a network of caves next to the Buddhas.

Then, the Taliban targeted the figures themselves.

Bucherer-Dietschi says documents confiscated by U.S. troops in the Afghan city of Jalalabad show that the decision was made by Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida's leader and a Muslim extremist who is the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. "Osama bin Laden ordered it. That is clear," Bucherer-Dietschi says.

The task took about two weeks.

The Taliban placed rocket launchers and tanks in a wheat field opposite the statues and opened fire. That didn't work, so they detonated aircraft bombs at the base of the statues. Finally, with the help of explosives experts from Chechnya, they drilled holes six feet into the statues and packed them with TNT.

"The earth shook," says Tawasoli, who felt the blasts miles away from Bamiyan.

Pakistani antique dealers drove off with five truckloads of ruins and with some of the fresco paintings that lined the walls of the monks' prayer quarters next to the statues. Later, a charity group linked to bin Laden published a commemorative wall calendar with photos of the Buddhas collapsing in a cloud of dust.

"The Taliban have committed a crime against culture," said Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, shortly after the demolition. "This loss is irreversible."

Today, visitors can climb to the top of the sites through stairs cut into the cliffs. But all that remains are tomb-shaped indentations where the figures once stood, their inner cores, and faint outlines of the Buddhas.

Last week, Sayed M. Raheen, Afghanistan's new minister of culture, announced that the nation will hold an international seminar to decide whether and how the statues can be rebuilt. Sponsors of the project include the UNESCO and New 7 Wonders, a global heritage Internet society that has organized a fund-raising drive.

A series of high-resolution photographs taken in 1970 may allow technicians to restore the figures to within an inch of their original sizes.

But some of the remains weigh as much as 10 tons, thus moving them into precise positions could prove impossible. And until the seminar tackles the issue, it remains unclear whether reconstruction is a realistic goal.

Asked whether the Buddhas will ever be restored to their original glory, Bucherer-Dietschi says: "It's very difficult. I hope so."

Ironically, one of the tenets of Buddhism is the full acceptance of impermanence.

Siddhartha Gautama, born as the son of a king in northern India in about 560 B.C., founded Buddhism and became known as the Buddha. He is said to have proclaimed near the end of his life: "Everything that has been created is subject to decay and death. Everything is transitory."

One of the largest Buddhist network web site in the world.

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