Afghan families forced to live in Buddha caves

The legacy of the Taleban, al Qaeda and war is being revealed to Western journalists. PATRICK COCKBURN reports.

BAMIYAN - Mounds of boulders and rubble now mark the spot in Bamiyan where the Taleban blew up two giant statues of Buddha, Afghanistan's most famous archaeological treasures, which they condemned as un-Islamic.

The Buddhas were carved out of the brown sandstone cliff in this remote valley in central Afghanistan in the third and fifth centuries.

Standing 36.5m and 53m high respectively, they survived conquest by the Huns and Mongols until a Taleban edict led to their destruction last March.

A few small birds, their cries magnified by the echo, flutter in the empty stone niches that once housed the colossal statues.

A broken bicycle lies on the ground in front of the ruins of the largest Buddha. Somebody, presumably a Taleban adherent, has written on a rock a verse from the Koran saying that evil will be destroyed and good will triumph.

At first sight the caves where the statues stood in the 91m cliff looked empty. (They housed Buddhist monks before the local people converted to Islam a thousand years ago.)

But then we see women in bright dresses emerge from them and scramble down the rocks to a muddy stream to fill buckets with water.

An elderly man called Said Mohammed Hashemi tells me: "The Taleban destroyed my home and I am living in one of these holes in the rock with my family.

"I cook for the soldiers stationed here and they let me take some bread and firewood."

No part of Afghanistan suffered as badly from the Taleban as Bamiyan, a lush green valley below the snow-covered Koh-i Baba mountains. It is the centre of the Hazara community, a fifth of the country's population, distinguished physically from other Afghans by their appearance which shows their Mongolian heritage.

They are also Shiah Muslims, and it was this that provoked savage persecution by the Sunni Muslim Taleban, who regard the Hazara as heretics.

As a prelude to blowing up the statues, the Taleban destroyed Bamiyan town. Many of its inhabitants fled and are only now returning to find that, with their houses gone, they have no alternative but to live in the caves where 1500 years ago monks recited their prayers.

"We have nothing," says Haidar, one of five farmers who have found refuge in the caves.

"Two years ago the Taleban burned our houses. Foreign aid organisations helped us rebuild a few rooms.

"Then this year they burned them again. They took our sheep and our goats and put their own flocks to graze in our fields."

The Hazara, though living on the edge of starvation, still mourn the destruction of their Buddhas. Half a dozen anti-Taleban soldiers clamber round the remains of the smaller statue, shattered except for part of its right arm.

Ismail Sarwary, aged 41, a veteran Hazara soldier, says sadly: "These statues were part of our history. They were a symbol of the Hazara. This was one reason why the Taleban blew them up."

Abdul Karim Khalili, the Hazara leader, whose headquarters are in Bamiyan, says he hopes the statues can be rebuilt with foreign help.

It will not be easy. The Buddhas were not entirely carved out of stone. The folds of their robes were made from mortar that was pulverised by the blast. Also destroyed were the remnants of frescoes around the Buddhas and traces of gold leaf on their hands and faces.

We learn that there was a third smaller Buddha at a place called Kakrak in an isolated glen.

But here also, at the end of a long track, is the familiar empty niche.

"They heaped mines around it," says Mir Zajan, a farmer herding three donkeys. "They destroyed it completely."

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