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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Taliban Destroyed Sandstone Figures in 2001, but Momentum Is Growing to Reassemble Them
By
MARGHERITA STANCATI
CONNECT
Sept. 24, 2014 5:33 p.m. ET
A farmer tends to his fields in front of the Buddha of Bamiyan. Paula Bronstein for Wall Street
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan—A pair of brick pillars, with an uncanny resemblance to feet, appeared late last year where a giant Buddha stood here.
The pillars were meant to hold a platform that would prevent rocks from falling on the heads of visitors to the Bamiyan site, where the Taliban destroyed two ancient Buddhas in 2001, horrifying the world.
The pillars' construction had an important consequence: it sparked a global debate on whether the two sandstone Buddha statues, cut out of a mountain face dominating this central Afghan city, should rise again.
Until now, the prevailing view among cultural experts was that the sites of the ancient Buddhas should be kept as they are: empty, a reminder of their tragic history. Islamist radicals blew up the statues as they tried to stamp out the reminders of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past.
Enlarge Image
A pair of brick pillars, resembling feet, were built last year where one of the giant Buddhas stood. Paula Bronstein for The Wall Street Journal
But now, the United Nations' cultural agency, the Afghan government and heritage experts are increasingly open to reassembling at least one of the Buddhas, which once towered 174 and 115 feet over the Bamiyan valley.
"We want one of the Buddhas rebuilt," said Abdul Ahad Abassi, who heads the Afghan government's department for the preservation of monuments. "Buddhism doesn't exist here, but the people of Bamiyan and the Afghan government want to revive our historical heritage."
The controversial brick pillars with feet-like bases were built over several months in 2013 by German restorers with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a Unesco advisory body.
Unesco, which is responsible for safeguarding this World Heritage site, asked the restorers to construct a platform to shelter visitors from falling rocks at the site of the smaller of the two Buddhas.
Enlarge Image
Bert Praxenthaler, a restorer with ICOMOS Germany, has spent much of the past 11 years demining and stabilizing the areas around the Buddhas. Paula Bronstein for The Wall Street Journal
What Unesco officials didn't expect was that the platform's pillars would resemble the Buddha's giant feet. Shocked, Unesco officials stopped the work in progress in December.
"Fortunately or unfortunately this happened," said Masanori Nagaoka, who is in charge of cultural affairs at Unesco in Afghanistan. "And it opened a box. I wouldn't quite call it a Pandora's box, but it opened a box."
To the surprise of many, calls to rebuild the mutilated monuments have grown louder in recent months. The Afghan government has asked the World Heritage Committee, which is responsible for the site's listing, for feedback on whether restoring one of the Buddhas is possible.
Civil-society activists already plan to raise money for the statues' reconstruction through public donations once it is approved.
A girl watches her flock of sheep and goats grazing in front of the site where one of the Buddhas of Bamiyan once stood. Paula Bronstein for The Wall Street Journal
Shukria Neda, a Bamiyan resident, is campaigning for local people to donate at least two Afghanis (four U.S. cents): one for each Buddha. "I hope we'll collect enough money for the reconstruction of the Buddha," Ms. Neda said. "If we don't have these statues, we don't have a part of our history."
While no complete assessment has been carried out, experts say rebuilding one of the Buddhas could cost as much as $20 million and take as long as five years. Unesco, which previously suggested that Bamiyan's valley should remain in its current state, is also open to debates on a possible reconstruction.
For the first time, it is planning to hold a large-scale international conference for Afghan officials, foreign experts and representatives of civil society to discuss the feasibility of rebuilding the statues. The conference is likely to take place in Japan next year.
"Knowing that the Afghan government and the people are really fond of constructing at least one of the Buddha statues, we have to tell them what can be done and what cannot be done," added Mr. Nagaoka. "We are just facilitating. We are not going to decide yes or no, that's not Unesco's role."
The Bamiyan valley and its archaeological remains were included in Unesco's list of World Heritage sites in their current state in 2003. Should one of the statues be rebuilt, the site risks getting dropped from the list.
The statues were carved from the cliffs more than 1,500 years ago, when Buddhism flourished in this valley along the Silk Road. The religion has long disappeared in Afghanistan, but the people of Bamiyan—most of whom belong to the ethnic Hazara minority—took pride in the monuments, which they saw as male and female, and nicknamed Salsaal and Shahmama.
"They are statues, they are not temples. We don't worship them," said Mohammad Sajjad Mohseni, one of Bamiyan's leading mullahs, or Islamic clerics, who witnessed the Buddhas' destruction and now wants them rebuilt. "The people of Bamiyan respected them as their historical heritage. But the Taliban got angry because they thought people were worshiping the Buddha."
Despite world-wide condemnation, the Taliban lined the statues with explosives and blew them up in the spring of 2001 because they considered them idols, and thus un-Islamic. In the years after the destruction, the priority has been to remove the rubble and the explosives from the niches and to strengthen the cliff, which risked collapsing.
Rebuilding the Buddha would be no easy task: It is comparable to assembling an enormous 3-D puzzle with plenty of missing pieces. The fragments of both Buddhas are kept in shelters opposite their niches, but no one knows for sure how many fragments still exist, with estimates ranging from 25% to 70% of the total.
But their layered stone, made of rocks and mud compressed over millions of years, offers clues as to where they can be placed, said Bert Praxenthaler, a restorer with Icomos Germany who spent much of the past 11 years demining and stabilizing the Buddhas' sites. "Technically, it is possible," said Mr. Praxenthaler, who oversaw the work on the feet-like pillars. "Let's bring them back to their original position and show the gaps and the holes. Historically, it would be a decent approach."
Meanwhile, the fate of the pillars already erected also hangs in the balance. Unesco hasn't yet decided what to do with the pillars, which are still incomplete, but many in Bamiyan want them to stay no matter what.
The German experts who built them make no mystery of their intention. "In the future, either us or someone else will be able to use the pillars as the Buddha's feet," said Sekandar Ozod-Seradj, an engineer with Icomos who believes the pillars were built in line with historical principles.
"I don't want the feet to be destroyed because it would remind us of the destruction of the Buddhas," says Mukhtar, a middle-aged man, who on a recent day was in a shop in Bamiyan's main bazaar. "It would remind me of what the Taliban did."
— Ehsanullah Amiri contributed to this article.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/rebu...llars-give-legs-to-debate-1411594383?mod=e2fb
By
MARGHERITA STANCATI
CONNECT
Sept. 24, 2014 5:33 p.m. ET
A farmer tends to his fields in front of the Buddha of Bamiyan. Paula Bronstein for Wall Street
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan—A pair of brick pillars, with an uncanny resemblance to feet, appeared late last year where a giant Buddha stood here.
The pillars were meant to hold a platform that would prevent rocks from falling on the heads of visitors to the Bamiyan site, where the Taliban destroyed two ancient Buddhas in 2001, horrifying the world.
The pillars' construction had an important consequence: it sparked a global debate on whether the two sandstone Buddha statues, cut out of a mountain face dominating this central Afghan city, should rise again.
Until now, the prevailing view among cultural experts was that the sites of the ancient Buddhas should be kept as they are: empty, a reminder of their tragic history. Islamist radicals blew up the statues as they tried to stamp out the reminders of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past.
Enlarge Image
A pair of brick pillars, resembling feet, were built last year where one of the giant Buddhas stood. Paula Bronstein for The Wall Street Journal
But now, the United Nations' cultural agency, the Afghan government and heritage experts are increasingly open to reassembling at least one of the Buddhas, which once towered 174 and 115 feet over the Bamiyan valley.
"We want one of the Buddhas rebuilt," said Abdul Ahad Abassi, who heads the Afghan government's department for the preservation of monuments. "Buddhism doesn't exist here, but the people of Bamiyan and the Afghan government want to revive our historical heritage."
The controversial brick pillars with feet-like bases were built over several months in 2013 by German restorers with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, a Unesco advisory body.
Unesco, which is responsible for safeguarding this World Heritage site, asked the restorers to construct a platform to shelter visitors from falling rocks at the site of the smaller of the two Buddhas.
Enlarge Image
Bert Praxenthaler, a restorer with ICOMOS Germany, has spent much of the past 11 years demining and stabilizing the areas around the Buddhas. Paula Bronstein for The Wall Street Journal
What Unesco officials didn't expect was that the platform's pillars would resemble the Buddha's giant feet. Shocked, Unesco officials stopped the work in progress in December.
"Fortunately or unfortunately this happened," said Masanori Nagaoka, who is in charge of cultural affairs at Unesco in Afghanistan. "And it opened a box. I wouldn't quite call it a Pandora's box, but it opened a box."
To the surprise of many, calls to rebuild the mutilated monuments have grown louder in recent months. The Afghan government has asked the World Heritage Committee, which is responsible for the site's listing, for feedback on whether restoring one of the Buddhas is possible.
Civil-society activists already plan to raise money for the statues' reconstruction through public donations once it is approved.
A girl watches her flock of sheep and goats grazing in front of the site where one of the Buddhas of Bamiyan once stood. Paula Bronstein for The Wall Street Journal
Shukria Neda, a Bamiyan resident, is campaigning for local people to donate at least two Afghanis (four U.S. cents): one for each Buddha. "I hope we'll collect enough money for the reconstruction of the Buddha," Ms. Neda said. "If we don't have these statues, we don't have a part of our history."
While no complete assessment has been carried out, experts say rebuilding one of the Buddhas could cost as much as $20 million and take as long as five years. Unesco, which previously suggested that Bamiyan's valley should remain in its current state, is also open to debates on a possible reconstruction.
For the first time, it is planning to hold a large-scale international conference for Afghan officials, foreign experts and representatives of civil society to discuss the feasibility of rebuilding the statues. The conference is likely to take place in Japan next year.
"Knowing that the Afghan government and the people are really fond of constructing at least one of the Buddha statues, we have to tell them what can be done and what cannot be done," added Mr. Nagaoka. "We are just facilitating. We are not going to decide yes or no, that's not Unesco's role."
The Bamiyan valley and its archaeological remains were included in Unesco's list of World Heritage sites in their current state in 2003. Should one of the statues be rebuilt, the site risks getting dropped from the list.
The statues were carved from the cliffs more than 1,500 years ago, when Buddhism flourished in this valley along the Silk Road. The religion has long disappeared in Afghanistan, but the people of Bamiyan—most of whom belong to the ethnic Hazara minority—took pride in the monuments, which they saw as male and female, and nicknamed Salsaal and Shahmama.
"They are statues, they are not temples. We don't worship them," said Mohammad Sajjad Mohseni, one of Bamiyan's leading mullahs, or Islamic clerics, who witnessed the Buddhas' destruction and now wants them rebuilt. "The people of Bamiyan respected them as their historical heritage. But the Taliban got angry because they thought people were worshiping the Buddha."
Despite world-wide condemnation, the Taliban lined the statues with explosives and blew them up in the spring of 2001 because they considered them idols, and thus un-Islamic. In the years after the destruction, the priority has been to remove the rubble and the explosives from the niches and to strengthen the cliff, which risked collapsing.
Rebuilding the Buddha would be no easy task: It is comparable to assembling an enormous 3-D puzzle with plenty of missing pieces. The fragments of both Buddhas are kept in shelters opposite their niches, but no one knows for sure how many fragments still exist, with estimates ranging from 25% to 70% of the total.
But their layered stone, made of rocks and mud compressed over millions of years, offers clues as to where they can be placed, said Bert Praxenthaler, a restorer with Icomos Germany who spent much of the past 11 years demining and stabilizing the Buddhas' sites. "Technically, it is possible," said Mr. Praxenthaler, who oversaw the work on the feet-like pillars. "Let's bring them back to their original position and show the gaps and the holes. Historically, it would be a decent approach."
Meanwhile, the fate of the pillars already erected also hangs in the balance. Unesco hasn't yet decided what to do with the pillars, which are still incomplete, but many in Bamiyan want them to stay no matter what.
The German experts who built them make no mystery of their intention. "In the future, either us or someone else will be able to use the pillars as the Buddha's feet," said Sekandar Ozod-Seradj, an engineer with Icomos who believes the pillars were built in line with historical principles.
"I don't want the feet to be destroyed because it would remind us of the destruction of the Buddhas," says Mukhtar, a middle-aged man, who on a recent day was in a shop in Bamiyan's main bazaar. "It would remind me of what the Taliban did."
— Ehsanullah Amiri contributed to this article.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/rebu...llars-give-legs-to-debate-1411594383?mod=e2fb
Mecca is a holy place for all muslims no matter their race or location. You think it's reserved for Arabs only?