M A I N   N E W S

Taliban act barbaric: Houses
India offers to bring Buddhist relics
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 2
Parliament today sought immediate intervention of the world community to halt the “senseless” destruction of Buddhist relics by the Taliban militia in Afghanistan as India offered to bring the artifacts and preserve them as treasures of the Afghan people.

Strongly condemning as “barbaric and anti-civilisational” the destruction of Buddhist relics in Afghanistan, including a 2000-year-old Bamiyan Buddha statue, both Houses adopted unanimous resolutions seeking UN intervention to ask the Taliban to desist from this “senseless, destructive act”.

The resolution adopted by Parliament said: “Today, in this millennium, when all civilisations are coming together through dialogue and shared values, we are shocked by the Taliban announcements of intended acts of religious fundamentalism and terrorism against human culture and civilisation.”

“They have moved tanks and guns to destroy one of the greatest examples of human creativity”, the resolution said.

External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, in a statement in Parliament, said: “The Taliban appear bent upon committing a grave wrong, indeed, a sacrilege to humanity, to the civilisational and cultural inheritance of all mankind by wanting to destroy the incomparable and unique statue of Buddha in Bamiyan.”

Meanwhile, experts opine that demolition of ancient heritage sites representing religions other than Islam in Taliban controlled Afghanistan marks the beginning of a dangerous trend that can make sites across the world vulnerable to attacks by fundamentalist and terrorist outfits.

The Taliban had been contemplating this action for quiet some time, but now they have decided to go in for destruction of these heritage sites in the wake of UN sanctions.

Talking to TNS, India’s former High Commissioner to Pakistan G. Parthasarthy said this showed their intent to defy the international community by not only continuing with the repression of women and minorities but also by carrying out such vandalism to make their defiance known.

This kind of intolerance, which is typical of the Taliban, would give spurt to jehadi activities in Chechnya, Central Asia, Kashmir and elsewhere because the Taliban have close links with jehadi groups like the Hizb- ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammad within Pakistan, Mr Parthasarthy said.

Islamic countries are sharply divided on the Taliban’s actions as was evident in the comments of dipolmats of Muslim-dominated countries.

Few were prepared to express their view as many diplomats avoided and others who came on the line were circumspect in their comments.

While Saudi Arabian Ambassador Abdur Rahman Nasir Alohaly refused to comment saying that “I am a diplomat not a politician” and “if you want to have the view of my government, write to me and I will get it for you”, Turkish Ambassador Yusuf Buluc said it was a “regrettable development”.

“We have always pointed out that actions of the Taliban were anachronistic” but now the attack on heritage sites was “unacceptable”, Mr Buluc said, adding that this “demonstrates that the Taliban are not yet prepared to act as a responsible element of the international community”.

High Commissioner of Pakistan Ashraf Jehangir Qazi was not available for comment as TNS was directed by the High Commissioner’s office to a minister, Mr Kamran Ali Khan who declined to say anything.

Mr Khan, however, advised TNS to see media reports about Islamabad’s stand on the issue.

Egyptian Ambassador Gehad Madi, while being diplomatic, said that though “I don’t have exact information, but wherever such attacks on heritage take place, one automatically disapproves”.

On expected lines, Palestinian Ambassador Khalid el-Sheikh said this was something which was “anti-religious and anti-Islam”. He said that Islam respected other religions.

Even while there is universal concern and condemnation of the Taliban’s frontal attack on ancient culture and heritage, experts see the development in Afghanistan just a beginning of a dangerous phase of clash between religious extremism and forces of moderation.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has written to world leaders about the reported decree of the Taliban militia in Afghanistan to destroy all statues in that country, including Bamiyan Buddhas, describing this order as a “disquieting development”.

In letters to leaders of the USA, the UK, France, Japan, Russia, China, South Korea, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and the UN Secretary General, Mr Vajpayee stressed that “the collective voice of humanity be raised against this outrage and that the Taliban be made to see reason.”

Buddhas on Taliban gun

Kabul, March 2
Afghanistan’s ancient Buddha statues in central Bamiyan province are under a barrage of rocket and tank shells from the ruling Taliban militia, official and opposition sources said today.

They said Taliban fighters started attacking the two giant stone Buddhas, dating back almost 2,000 years, with rockets, tank shells and even automatic rifles.

“They have started attacking the Buddhas with guns and tank shells — with whatever arms they are carrying,” a militia source said, declining to be named. “People are firing at them out of their own sentiments,” he added.

Ignoring international protests, fanatical Taliban soldiers yesterday started destroying all statues throughout the country in compliance with a decree issued on Monday by their supreme leader, Mulla Mohammad Omar.

Omar said the decision was in line with a fatwa from local Islamic clerics designed to prevent the worshipping of “false idols.”

Minister of Information and Culture Qudratullah Jamal said historic statues in the Kabul museum and elsewhere in the provinces of Ghazni, Herat, Jalalabad and Kandahar were also being destroyed.

Opposition official Mohammad Bahram, speaking from the western mountains of Bamiyan which are controlled by anti-Taliban groups, confirmed the attack on the Buddhas.

“We have also heard reports that they are attacking them with rockets and tank shells,” he said.

The Afghan Islamic Press news agency said today in a report monitored in Islamabad that Taliban militia had also gathered explosives around the two ancient Buddha statues in order to blow them up.

The most famous of Afghanistan’s statues are the two Buddhas carved into a sandstone mountain in central Bamiyan province.

Afghanistan was a centre of Buddhism before Islamic armies came 14 centuries ago. The largest of the two is the biggest standing Buddha in the world at 50 metres (165 feet) tall.

The United Nations cultural agency Unesco described the campaign as a crisis for world heritage and urged Muslim nations to help halt the destruction. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art offered to buy the artefacts rather than see them destroyed.

The Taliban rejected a last-minute appeal from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a rethink.

“The abandoned relics are not our pride,” the official Bakhtar news agency quoted Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil as telling UN special envoy for Afghanistan Francesc Vendrell, who arrived in Kabul with the appeal on Thursday.

Buddhist countries like Thailand and Sri Lanka expressed alarm at the Taliban’s focus on eradicating reminders of the centuries before Islam when Afghanistan was a centre of Buddhist learning and pilgrimage.

Muslim Pakistan, one of Taliban’s few foreign supporters, joined the international chorus yesterday. AFP