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Taleban shows off smashed statues
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From International Herald Tribune March 27
BAMIAN, Afghanistan--For the first time since blasting apart the towering statues, Taleban soldiers on Monday showed foreigners the mutilated remains of two Buddhas carved into the mountainside in the third and fifth centuries.
Spent artillery shells, lined up like sentries, stood at the base of the mountain alcove where the tallest statue once stood 53 meters (175 feet) high. The Buddha's outline and piles of rubble were all that remained.
A narrow stairwell carved into the sandstone mountain wound its way up the side of the other, 36-meter Buddha. The stairs led to dusty rooms, their walls decorated with empty niches where smaller statues once stood.
A month ago, the Taleban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ordered the destruction of the mammoth mountain carvings and all other statues in Afghanistan. He said they were idolatrous and against the tenets of Islam, which forbids idol worship.
The largest of the two statues was believed to have been the world's tallest standing Buddha. Bamian residents called the sandstone Buddha "Solsol," meaning year after year.
The smaller statue was thought by the residents to be a woman, although no body parts were visible when it stood. They called it "Shahmama," or king-mother.
On Monday, the Taleban flew about 20 foreign journalists aboard an old, government-owned Ariana Airline prop plane from Kabul to Bamian Province in central Afghanistan.
Four trucks carrying Taleban soldiers armed with rocket launchers and heavy machine guns then took the reporters - the first foreigners known to have visited the area since the destruction - to a plateau overlooking the site.
There, the journalists saw the holes in the mountainside where explosives had been placed.
“First, we destroyed the small statue,” said Abdul Haidi, the Taleban commander who oversaw the destruction. “It was a woman. Then we blew up her husband, the big statue.”
One soldier said it had taken four days to destroy the larger statue.
The Taleban ignored worldwide criticism by Muslims, Buddhists and appreciators of art as they felled the ancient relics.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz, chief of the Foreign Ministry's press department, told reporters who came to see the mutilated monuments that the destruction was not intended to offend any religious groups.
“This decision was not against anyone,” Mr. Faiz said. “It was totally a domestic matter of Afghanistan. We are very disappointed that the international community doesn't care about the suffering people but they are shouting about the stone statues of Buddha.”
Caption: The smaller of the two gaint Buddhas in Bamian Province, left, before Taleban troops used explosives to obliterate them, leaving mere rubble, as seen Monday.
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