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Cultural relics being demolished
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AIMING to eliminate idolatry from Afghanistan, troops from the Taliban religious militia used explosives and rockets on Saturday to destroy two soaring statues of Buddha.
Despite international anger, Taliban Information and Culture Minister Qudratullah Jamal said several dozen wooden and clay "idols", the country's ancient Buddhist relics and fragments of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past, had been demolished at historic sites in Herat, Ghazni, and Nangarhar province. Most of an estimated 6,000 statues in the Kabul Museum were destroyed as well, although the Taliban refused to allow anyone inside the war-battered building.
Jamal told reporters the Taliban had been busy removing bit by bit the world's two largest Buddhas, hewn into a Bamiyan cliff.
``We have the intention to spare no statues. Work is going on now on the destruction of Bamiyan's statues and don't know how much of it is done so far,'' he added.
Mortars and cannon were being used to destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas and according to a Pakistan-based Afghan news service, explosives were being assembled to complete the job.
The two Bamiyan Buddhas, towering 175 feet and 120 feet high in cliff-side niches, are the first known examples of the massive Buddha images that spread through Asia.
Humanitarian crisis
Mullar Omar has ruled all statues in Afghanistan should be destroyed because they are un-Islamic. The Taliban compares keeping statues with idol worship disallowed by Islam.
The Taliban militia, which rules 95 per cent of Afghanistan, including Kabul, adheres to a strict brand of Islamic law. Their interpretation has been questioned by Islamic scholars in other Muslim countries and Islamic institutions. Some Islamic countries have called the order to destroy the historical relics embarrassing to Islam.
India termed the envisaged destruction ``a regression into medieval barbarism'' and offered to look after the artifacts.
Muslim Iran, which has tense relations with Kabul, said the monuments were part of the ``country's cultural and national heritage and belong to the history of the region's civilization in which all humanity has a share.''
A leading official of the Buddhist Association of China expressed shock and sorrow about the destruction on Saturday.
By destroying the statues, Taliban has raised overseas wrath when the country is facing an increasing humanitarian crisis and is in dire need of aid.
A statement by a UN Coordinator's office in Islamabad said the Afghan humanitarian situation was ``in a sharp downwards spiral that will continue until at least next summer.''
Through some unexplained error, the statues however were never listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites deserving special protection.
The Paris-based UN Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization, UNESCO, sent an envoy to Afghanistan on Friday to plead directly with the Taliban leadership to halt their destruction of the country's priceless statues.
Purchase offers
Neighbouring Muslim Pakistan, one of only three countries along with Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates to recognize the Taliban government, and Buddhist Sri Lanka made fresh moves to dissuade the radical Islamic movement from its plan.
Francesc Vendrell, an assistant UN secretary-general and chief UN envoy for Afghanistan, said on Friday he had warned Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil of world wrath at the destruction in a three-hour meeting in Kabul on Thursday.
Vendrell said he had suggested the statues the Taliban find so offensive be moved outside the country, and had relayed an offer from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to buy the treasures rather than see them smashed.
In New York, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he had also relayed the Met's offer to Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, as well.
The Association of Art Museum Directors, which represents the directors of 175 major art museums in the United States, Canada and Mexico, said it would ``stand by any effort'' to retrieve the art.
Appeals to the Afghan Taliban government to halt destruction of non-Muslim art were also voiced on Saturday by the G-8 at its environmental meeting in Trieste.
Italy's UNESCO representative, Gabriele Sardo, said that over the past few years, Italy alone has spent about US$250,000 to restore many of the Afghani statues that the Taliban now wants to destroy.(SD-Agencies)
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