The Buddhas of Bamiyan

More than 99 percent of the Afghan population is Muslim, with the vast majority belonging to the Sunni branch of the religion. However, there have always been reminders of the other religions that were once found in the country. Few artifacts testified so elegantly to the pre-Islamic past as the famous Buddhas of Bamiyan. These two huge statues rose 175 feet and 120 feet high and were carved into the sandstone cliffs of the Bamiyan valley, site of a once-thriving cultural and religious center northwest of Kabul along the old Silk Road.

The pair of 1,500-year-old stone Buddhas—a monumental reminder of the nation’s Buddhist legacy—was a part of Afghan heritage that the Taliban little valued. In 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar ordered the destruction of the statues, pronouncing them idolatrous and an affront to Islam. “These idols have been gods of the infidels,” he declared.

Despite international outcry, the authorities began their demolition work. At first, they fired artillery rounds at the stone figures, then antitank mines. While they damaged the statues, this ordnance failed to bring them down. Destruction finally came when they inserted dynamite into niches in the statues and blew the great Buddhas apart. Belatedly, the now-destroyed statues and surrounding area were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.

A decade later, researchers from Munich’s Technical University launched a campaign to put the smaller of the Buddhas back together again. The researchers believe that the hundreds of sandstone fragments from the statue can be reassembled, piece by painstaking piece, and held together with an organic silicon compound. Some 1,400 of the fragments are currently in storage, with the larger pieces under protective cover at the site. However, the Afghanistan government has decided against reconstruction without further research. Someday, stone Buddhas may stand again at Bamiyan. But because the sandstone of the statues is extremely porous, time is not on their side.