Taliban tanks and artillery fire on Buddhas

By Ahmed Rashid

Reforming zeal out to kill ancient heritage

Daily Telegraph: Taliban iconoclasts

THE Taliban defied a wave of protests from around the world yesterday and began shelling 2,000-year-old Buddhist statues with tanks and artillery.

The two soaring statues of Buddha, cut into limestone cliffs in Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan, have defied the ravages of numerous wars, including the Mongol, British and Russian invasions. But Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, has decreed that all statues are anti-Islamic and must be destroyed. Mullah Qudratullah Jamal, the culture minister, said in Kabul: "Whatever means of destruction are needed will be used."

In 1998 Taliban gunmen shot at the Bamiyan statues with rocket launchers, causing considering damage to the flowing robes of the Buddhas. But the new attack was on a more determined scale. Explosives were being brought in from Kabul. Officials said they had also begun to destroy statues in the Kabul museum and at other sites.

Appeals to spare the Afghan relics were made by America, France, Germany, Thailand, Japan, Sri Lanka, Iran, Nepal, Vietnam, Pakistan, Germany, Russia, India, Malaysia, the European Union, the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, and many museums and Buddhist groups.

Francesco Vendrell, the United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan, flew to Kabul with protest notes from Mr Annan. But he was given short shrift. Mullah Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, the foreign minister, told him: "The abandoned relics are not our pride." On his return to Islamabad, Mr Vendrell said he had suggested that the statues could be moved outside the country if the Taliban found them offensive. They rejected that.

In recent weeks the Taliban have defied Security Council sanctions, massacred more than 300 people and publicly executed women. They have been in a more than usually belligerent mood since the UN imposed sanctions against them on Jan 20 for refusing to extradite the wanted Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden and 1,500 Arabs who are fighting for him and the Taliban against Afghanistan's Northern Alliance.

Bamiyan was recaptured from the Northern Alliance in January. It and the Hazarajat are the home of the the only Shia Muslim minority in Afghanistan: the Hazaras, whose ancestors were Genghis Khan's Mongols. The statues have become a symbol of Hazara pride and resistance to the Taliban. By destroying them, the Taliban aim to destroy the Hazaras' cultural identity.

The Taliban's obsession with implementing their Islamic edicts comes at a time when more than a million of the country's 22 million people face starvation. For the past few weeks the Taliban, who have banned television pictures and photography, have allowed foreign cameramen to film the plight of more than 100,000 starving and freezing refugees in Herat in western Afghanistan. The pictures have been accompanied by appeals for aid.

Some 300 people, mostly children, have died in Herat. About 300,000 refugees are scattered around the country, with 150,000 more recently arriving in neighbouring Pakistan. Many Afghan farmers are selling their daughters to stay alive. Western countries are unlikely to respond to appeals for aid until the Taliban curb their excesses.

The Taliban's refusal to deal with unemployment, the economy and the lack of governance, even though they control 90 per cent of the country, undermines appeals by their few supporters - Pakistan and some Arab states - that they should be "engaged" rather than isolated. Pakistan's military regime already faces diplomatic ostracism in the region because of its pro-Taliban policies.

Although Islamabad asked the Taliban not to destroy the statues, it will now face even more pressure from world powers, particularly President Bush's new administration in Washington, to abandon the Taliban. Saudi Arabia no longer sends financial aid to the Taliban because of American pressure, but is facing growing criticism for its refusal to speak out for the Muslim world in condemning them.

The Taliban's defiance of all international standards of decent behaviour is likely to increase the possibility that America will again consider military action to force the extradition of bin Laden. In 1988 the United States attacked bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan with cruise missiles after his terrorists bombed two American embassies in Africa, killing hundreds of people, including 12 American diplomats.

At the same time Russia, Iran, India and the Central Asian republics will be encouraged to step up their military aid to the Northern Alliance and its leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who has launched a series of attacks against the Taliban in recent weeks. Massoud has sought military aid from America and the European Union. So far this has been rejected.

It is unlikely that the Taliban's acts of vandalism against statues will change that policy, but America and the EU are likely to give the nod to Russia if it wants to step up military aid to Massoud, while putting unprecedented pressure on Pakistan to change its stance.

Although there are some scattered protests against the Taliban in their heartland of southern Afghanistan, the exhausted, starving population is in no position to rise against them. Instead, the world will try to tighten the noose around the Taliban as they step up their defiance and repudiation of the rest of the world.