Lets Destroy The Bamiyan Buddhas!

Digging Into a Buddha Rivalry

By Guy Gugliotta

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, April 23, 2001; Page A07

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50432-2001Apr22.html

He was born in a tiny town called Lumbini, in what is now southern Nepal. He could both walk and speak at birth. He told his mother that he had come to relieve the world of all suffering.

He was called Siddhartha -- ``he who has attained his goals`` -- and lived in the city of Kapilavastu until he was 29, when he left home to seek his destiny as the Buddha -- ``the Enlightened One`` -- founder of one of the world`s great religions.

For decades Nepal and India have argued over the location of ancient Kapilavastu, with each nation claiming the city for its own. Now, two archaeologists from England`s University of Bradford have presented new evidence that Kapilavastu is modern Tilaurakot, a Nepalese town about 130 miles west of Kathmandu.

In a 13-foot-deep trench beneath a swatch of gentle woodland, Bradford`s Robin Coningham and Armin Schmidt over the past three years have unearthed artifacts demonstrating that the site was inhabited during the Buddha`s lifetime and perhaps even earlier.

The key, Coningham said, was pieces of ceramic painted greyware, used in South Asia between the 9th and 6th centuries B.C. The Buddha is generally recognized to have lived between the 7th and 5th centuries B.C.

``The site is clearly right at the center of the Buddhist holy land,`` Coningham said in an interview. ``It`s the only fortified site, it`s the only urban site around and there are no rivals in the region.``

In fact, however, there has been a rival for 30 years -- the Indian town of Pipprahawa, about 600 yards south of the Nepal border and four miles from Tilaurakot. There, in 1972, archaeologists digging beneath a Buddhist monument, known as a stupa, found a casket containing human remains and coins bearing the legend: ``Here is the vihara [monastery] of the monk of Kapilavastu.``

At that time, Tilaurakot`s reputation was in eclipse, because Indian archaeologists had failed to find artifacts contemporary with the Buddha there, and therefore deemed the site too modern to be Kapilavastu.

The Bradford discoveries, resulting from deeper and more extensive digging, will bring Tilaurakot firmly back into the competition. But they are not likely to settle an argument in which nationalism and the quest for tourist dollars ultimately play as large a role as science.

For although Nepal has charged that the earlier Indian work was politically motivated, India will likely say the same now, because the Bradford excavation was financed through the Nepalese government by the United Nations` World Heritage preservation program.

Coningham said that his team, led by Nepal`s chief archaeologist, Kosh Acharya, will recommend that Tilaurakot be put on the World Heritage list, but would have done so anyway, because the site ``represents the best preserved provincial urban hinterland in South Asia.``

Pipprahawa, by contrast, is ``clearly a monastic site,`` he added, and suggested that the inscribed coins could have been sent from another monastery, either as a gift or as relics from a ``mother monastery`` to one of several satellites.

Still, although the weight of evidence may have shifted in Tilaurakot`s direction, it has not tipped the balance. ``There are all sorts of problems like this, whenever you start dealing with prehistoric sites,`` said Nancy Wilkie, a Carleton College archaeologist and president of the Archaeological Institute of America. ``Even finding greyware, and even with a radiocarbon date -- all it will prove is that there is another site that is a potential candidate.``

The search for Kapilavastu began in the late 1800s after archaeologists unearthed a stone pillar erected in Lumbini in 249 B.C. by the Indian Emperor Ashoka to commemorate the Buddha`s birthplace.

European scholars subsequently surveyed the region in an attempt to match its contemporary geography with early accounts of the Buddha`s life, and with the journeys of the Chinese monks who traveled to Kapilavastu in the 4th and 7th centuries A.D.

The westerners found little help on site, because Buddhism had all but disappeared from an area that had become ``a buffer zone between the Nepali state and the[British] Raj,`` Coningham said. ``It was very much a wilderness. There were tigers there.``

And although the monks` stories differed, the scholars nevertheless concluded that Tilaurakot was Kapilavastu, in part because it was an urban site in a rural area. The Buddha`s father, Shuddhodana Gautama, was a warrior chieftain wealthy enough to move his son among three luxurious palaces during his upbringing.

Bradford`s Schmidt described Tilaurakot today as a section of ``lovely green`` wooded lowland about 500 yards long and 250 yards wide. ``It is surrounded by a shallow moat and covered with trees, with rice paddies all around,`` Schmidt said.

There is an intact gate on the western side of the site and fired brick walls, he added, but all of this is from a ``later phase`` of occupation. The inhabitants of the Buddha`s time built their structures of wood.

When the Buddha died, perhaps in 483 B.C., no central religious authority was established. Instead, the Buddha`s disciples radiated across South Asia to spread his teachings, said Boston College theologist John J. Makransky, and ``the whole history of Buddhism has been one of diversity.``

Ashoka was instrumental in the early spread of Buddhism, but its prominence in countries ranging from Tibet to China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan was cemented by pilgrims and monks traveling to the Far East along the ``Silk Road,`` during the first millennium A.D.

It was also during this period, between 200 A.D. and 400 A.D., when followers in what is now the Afghan city of Bamian sculpted the two giant Buddhas that were destroyed last month by the Muslim fundamentalist Taliban government.

Buddhism in southern Nepal and India was all but wiped out in the 12th century when Muslims sacked the monasteries across the holy land. Although a partial recovery has occurred in India in the past century, the theological tradition -- and its archaeological embodiment -- are largely subject to the interpretation of foreigners.

``In most countries, the mythological importance of [Kapilavastu] has been replaced by that of their own sites,`` said Makransky, who is a Buddhist. But defining Kapilavastu`s location ``will have significance`` for world Buddhists, because ``to the degree that people agree that it is here or there, it confers legitimacy on the mythology.``

Thus far, there is little indication that the dispute is over. India has long conducted tours to Pipprahawa, and last year Coningham said at least 1,500 pilgrims visited the dig at Tilaurakot during the six weeks he was working there, among them several monks who scooped handfuls of clay to take with them.

``It`s very different when you`re dealing with sites that aren`t purely of academic interest,`` Coningham said. ``They are alive: People are interested in them not merely for their ceramic sequences, but for their significance. It made me a lot more aware.``

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

Much has been said against or in favour of Taliban, on the premises of respecting cultural heritage, religion, etc. All this is bullshit. Western countries r as dumb as Talibans r. Many ppl fail to understand the real factors behind this incident.

To me, the psychology of a neglected child seems to be at work: the child wants attention, and nobody gives a damn, so he starts throwing things here and there in the hope that the people, out of concern for ``these things``, would try to take care of the child. Simply speaking, ``Attention deficit disorders``. Nothing to do with Islam and Hindu or Budhist heritage.



Taliban has done its ``best`` to be accepted by the world as a legitimate power in Afghanistan. But for some reasons (not to speak of revival of medieval history), nobody has accepted them except the governments who installed them in Afghanistan thru their monetary and military power: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It is this frustration that is driving Talinab crazy. But China was also not accepted either by the west, and we did not see chairman Mao play havoc with other civilizations and religions. What they did in the name of cultural revolution was for the perceived sake of their red revolution, and not to draw western attention.



So what can be done: Better ask a child psychologist rather than foreign policy experts, as we are dealing with rationalized abnormal behavour here. But my two cents: Leave Taliban alone in the confines of steep hills of strong rocks, ignorance, and sadistic derive for self-destruction. Maybe it is too late for psychotherapy.

http://atimes.com/ind-pak/CC22Df01.html

According to Kacem Fazelly, an ex-professor of Law at Kabul University, ``the destruction of the statues is also a consequence of a strategic manipulation. The Pakistani military want to get rid of Afghanistan`s cultural, historic, and above all Persian past. They want to get rid of its cultural mix so there is no more national Afghan thinking, nor resistance toward a Pakistani takeover of the country.``



THE ROVING EYE

How a thief saved the Buddhas from Taliban

Story: Pepe Escobar

Pictures: Jason Florio

Picture 1: The shack that houses the Bamiyan collection

Picture 2: Saved sculpture

Picture 3: Saved sculpture

Picture 4: Part of a frieze

``Oh, I have Buddhas from Bamiyan.``

The news - as cool, calm and collected as a Taliban rocket launch - took a while to sink in. The Cousin of the Mine King of Baluchistan was still smiling. I had just crossed Afghanistan overland from east to west, from the Pakistan border at Landi Kotal to the Iranian border at Islam Qillah. With my photographer, we were the first Western journalists to undertake this gruelling marathon in quite a while - as NGO workers in Afghanistan themselves acknowledged.

We had been in Quetta, frontier capital of the Pakistani side of Baluchistan, for only a few hours. In Afghanistan, we had been arrested (twice), menaced with a trial by a military court, accused of being ``UN spies``. We were exhausted, and as far as Bamiyan was concerned, frustrated. Taliban officials in Kabul had denied us a visa to visit Bamiyan, allegedly for ``security reasons``. I live in Buddhist Thailand. Apart from trying to understand what makes a madrassa * worldview tick at the beginning of the third millennium, I had always longed to see the Bamiyan Buddhas.

But we never made it to Bamiyan. Instead, Bamiyan came to us.

At the Quetta Serena Hotel - a plush compound straight from Santa Fe, New Mexico - the Cousin of the Mine King showed up in style: chauffeur-driven in a Toyota Hi-Lux. This could only foment our paranoia: Toyotas Hi-Lux constitute the entire Taliban motorized force, and when we were arrested by the religious police in Kabul stadium in the middle of a soccer match for (not) taking photos, we were taken to interrogation in the back seat of a Toyota Hi-Lux. But the Cousin of the Mine King had other plans.

``Let`s go meet some nomads.``

A few hours later, we are in a tent sipping tea with a family of Baluchistan borderland nomads. Compared to the destitute Ghazni nomads we had seen in Afghanistan, fleeing from the worst drought in the last 30 years, these ones are positively deluxe. The head of the family promptly says he is about to offer 300,000 rupees (US$5,046) as downpayment for a brand new Hi-Lux. He also tries to sell us a falcon: customers from the Arab Emirates are supposed to buy them for as much as 1 million rupees.

The head nomad reveals himself to be an Afghan trader in the Punjab. His take on Afghanistan is extremely self-assured: the Taliban are falling apart, and the country has now split into three factions. All of them are responsible for the widespread destruction.

Back in Quetta, after the nomad warm-up, we are taken through a mud-brick labyrinth to a house in the middle of a desert wasteland. Kids swarm in the dusty ``streets``. One of them disappears inside a shack and emerges with a statue. And another. And then another. We are now contemplating the private collection of the Cousin of the Mine King. It features astonishing Greco-Buddhist boddhisattvas * *, Hellenic arhats * * * with their ribs protruding, and even part of a frieze. Some could be 3rd or 4th Century, some even older. They are all pre-Bamiyan Buddhas.

The Cousin of the Mine King is naturally evasive. He would love to sell his collection to a Western museum - but can`t get it out of the country. The Guimet Museum of Asian Arts in Paris, recently reopened after lavish restoration work worth $50 million, would kill for this ``private collection``. He ``obtained most of the statues from the Bamiyan valley``. Some of them ``came from the Kabul museum``. The methods were effective: ``We just went there and took them.``

With the boddhisattvas still on our minds, the Cousin of the Mine King takes us to meet the Great Man himself. We are ushered into his living room, decorated with a silk qom almost the size of a tennis court and worth the GDP of whole Afghan provinces. The Mine King is a Baluchi from the borderlands - a member of the Sanjirani tribe. He controls coal, onyx, marble and granite mines. And he gets straight to the point.

``Afghanistan is a tribal society. We should leave it like that.`` For him, the only solution for the country would be the return of King Zahir Shah: ``But that was already proposed in the early `90s. Now it`s too late.`` The Mine King regards the Taliban as ``very nice people``. But he worries about the future, considering the vast amount of weapons in the country: ``If there is a total collapse in Afghanistan, the ashes will be coming straight to Pakistan.``

The Mine King waves us goodbye, dreaming of enjoying New York City nightlife. That was a few months ago. Today, somewhere in the wasteland outskirts of Quetta, a few Afghan Buddhas are still sleeping half-buried in the sand. They escaped the fate of the Bamiyan Buddhas, bombed to ashes by the Taliban. But as the Mine King himself remarked, these ashes, brought by the winds, headed straight into Pakistan.

According to Kacem Fazelly, an ex-professor of Law at Kabul University, ``the destruction of the statues is also a consequence of a strategic manipulation. The Pakistani military want to get rid of Afghanistan`s cultural, historic, and above all Persian past. They want to get rid of its cultural mix so there is no more national Afghan thinking, nor resistance toward a Pakistani takeover of the country.``

A new geopolitical Great Game is in play in Central Asia. The Taliban are just some of the minor players. They can obliterate Buddhist art that predates Islam itself. But Buddhism teaches us that everything is impermanent. Impermanence: a few months ago the Cousin of the Mine King would have been accused of being a thief; now, he can be seen as a man who saved a significant part of the world`s heritage from the Taliban`s orgy of destruction. And more impermanence: considering Central Asian volatility, the bombers themselves, sooner or later, could be reduced to ashes in the new Great Game.

*Madrassa: an Islamic religious school.

* *Boddhisattva: One who delays final enlightenment and attainment of Nirvana in order to pass his wisdom on to others. A fully compassionate being.

* * *Arhat: One who has attained Nirvana.

To all those who like to talk about the hypocrisy of the people criticizing the Taliban while they are quiet about other issues in Afghanistan and are posting such articles:

1. What has the international community really done regarding the Buddhas? NOTHING. ZILCH. ZERO other than appeal to the Taliban to stop.

2. What has the international community done to prevent the Taliban`s disgraceful conduct against its own population? Give money, arms & support to the Northern Alliance.

So what is the hypocrisy that the international community is being accused of?

These articles about hypocrisy are toilet paper.

The Taliban`s actions perhaps should be seen as an attempt to wipe out all alternate identities.

E.g., I picked this up from a posting by a historian on another newsgroup. Taliban-like actions are aimed at erasing this version of history and identity. The issue is not whether the version is accurate or not; but that it must be wiped out.

-Arun Gupta

Quote :

You may be interested in what an elderly Balouchi historian, Prof. Agha Mir (Noori) Naseer Khan, told me in Quetta in April. He said that ``Balouchis are less fundamentalist than are Pathans and Afghans``.

He explained how Balouchis were converted to Islam during one of the first waves of Arab invasions in the ninth century. He said at that time, Balouchis had agreed to observe Islamic customs in exchange for keeping sovereignty of their land.

``Prior to converting to Islam, Balouchis had been fire worshippers, Zoroastrian, and even up to the present day, when Balouchis take a vow, they swear their oaths on fire.`` They still, a thousand years later, he informed me, ``have myths and stories about the sun and about fire.``

Professor Noori Khan claimed that ``Pathans and Afghans are more fundamentalist than are Balouchis because Pathans were converted to Islam numerous times. As successive waves of Islamic invaders moved across Central Asia, the Pathans and Afghans were their victims, time and again.``

The octogenarian Balouchi gentleman, who had been the emissary of the Khan of Kalat in the forties when Jinnah came for negotiations, explained that the people living in Afghanistan and NWFP had been Buddhist for centuries. After each invader would pass through their territory, forcefully converting the inhabitants, the local residents would again revert to Buddhism. Then the next invaders would come and convert them ``by the sword`` again and again.

This, he explained, was why the Pathans and Afghans practiced such a conservative and rigid Islam. They felt they had to prove their ``Islamness`` to save their lives, so they became strictly orthodox and conservative. Balouchis, though often outwardly conservative, particularly regarding the role of women, don`t support the type of fundamentalist Islam promoted by the Taliban.

End quote

To PM,

In the opinion piece of dawn today, titled ``sectarian violence and law`, there is a statement that hardly any one is tried for the mass killings, like the recent shooting in a mosque. The article also states that the only one is the recent hanging after several protest from the iranians, that too after 11 years. I find this hard to believe, but from your general impression of the situation in pakistan, do you consider this credible.

I regret to ask you this, but I remeber a few years ago, you gave a true response to a touchy question.

regards

jay

The main reason for the international furor over the destruction of statues, and almost universal condemnation of the people who carried out this act or condoned it (like Mr. F. Khan!) is that it was simply unnecessary and stupid. A government is supposed to take care of people it rules. Taleban, instead of dealing with those severe issues which are torturing its population for years, came up with this edict and diverted their attention and resources to a cause which was neither a security issue nor a bread-butter issue and it was an issue which no other government in this World will prioritize.

If your argument is this that it happened because the Taleban were pushed to the wall; then it means that you admit that international sanction and isolation against the Taleban are working. And, now,the statue destruction will increase that isolation not reduce it.

Finally, get this. Among the journlist reports that Pakistan had silent approval of this deed, Its FM is blaming the West that it did not do enough to stop the destruction!

What a game!!

Taliban’s idol-smashing edict had Pakistan’s tacit approval

TWO MEMBERS of the Taliban council that passed the edict calling for the destruction of Buddha statues in Afghanistan`s Bamiyan province were Pakistani nationals, say diplomatic sources here. Analysts say this may mean Islamabad, despite its pleas to the Taliban regime not to destroy the statues, tacitly gave a green signal to the edict.

The Taliban have two theological councils, or shura. The theological council, Dar ul Ifta, has five to seven members. It was this shura, at the instance of the hardline Taliban Justice Minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, which past the edict calling for the breaking of ``all statues and idols.`` But two of the council members are Pakistanis and they each head two fundamentalist Islamic groups based in that country.

According to a diplomatic source both these Pakistani groups have “well-known links with the Pakistani establishment.” Analysts say it is unlikely that Islamabad`s military and intelligence establishment would not, therefore, have known about the vote or been in a position to influence the vote. In fact the members of the Dar ul Ifta voted unanimously in favour of the edict.

Reports of Islamabad`s links to the Taliban edict are surfacing at a time when the Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar is in Tokyo trying to persuade Japan to resume financial aid to Islamabad. It would mean Mr Sattar`s ‘regrets’ over the Taliban edict are the diplomatic equivalent of crocodile tears.

Most Japanese are Buddhists and Tokyo was at the forefront of international efforts to try and save the statues. “Incidentally Pakistan was initially reluctant to issue any statement critical of the Taliban edict,” say the diplomatic sources.

aicha #239,

Thanks for bursting my bubble before it got too big.

dammit :)

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/170301/detnat02.asp
Taliban’s idol-smashing edict had Pakistan’s tacit approval
HT Correspondent
(New Delhi, March 16)

TWO MEMBERS of the Taliban council that passed the edict calling for the destruction of Buddha statues in Afghanistan`s Bamiyan province were Pakistani nationals, say diplomatic sources here. Analysts say this may mean Islamabad, despite its pleas to the Taliban regime not to destroy the statues, tacitly gave a green signal to the edict.

The Taliban have two theological councils, or shura. The theological council, Dar ul Ifta, has five to seven members. It was this shura, at the instance of the hardline Taliban Justice Minister Mullah Nooruddin Turabi, which past the edict calling for the breaking of ``all statues and idols.`` But two of the council members are Pakistanis and they each head two fundamentalist Islamic groups based in that country.

According to a diplomatic source both these Pakistani groups have “well-known links with the Pakistani establishment.” Analysts say it is unlikely that Islamabad`s military and intelligence establishment would not, therefore, have known about the vote or been in a position to influence the vote. In fact the members of the Dar ul Ifta voted unanimously in favour of the edict.

Reports of Islamabad`s links to the Taliban edict are surfacing at a time when the Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar is in Tokyo trying to persuade Japan to resume financial aid to Islamabad. It would mean Mr Sattar`s ‘regrets’ over the Taliban edict are the diplomatic equivalent of crocodile tears.

Most Japanese are Buddhists and Tokyo was at the forefront of international efforts to try and save the statues. “Incidentally Pakistan was initially reluctant to issue any statement critical of the Taliban edict,” say the diplomatic sources.

t-bhai #237,

nice article. thanks for posting it.

scout 236

It is ``Jayaprakash`` as in ``Chandrashekhar`` or ``Madhusudan``

and not ``Jaya Prakash``

Extract from a commentary in the Washington Times:

``As they confront increasing internal opposition, the Taleban zealots have managed to pull off something rather extraordinary, in geo-strategic terms. They have provided Iran, Russia, China, India and the United States with a common enemy. Iran plies the Shi`ite connection. India supports the Northern Alliance,because Pakistan supports the Taleban. China says the Taleban supports Muslim rebels in western China. Russia resents Taleban-trained terrorists who stir trouble in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.``

``The Russians also see direct links from the Taleban and Osama bin Laden to Chechen rebels. For the United States, harboring terrorist kingpin bin Laden puts the Taleban in the crosshairs.``

``The Taleban leaders can blast stone Buddhas. Confronting their own failures and the wrath of the globe`s most powerful nations is a much more difficult battle.``

Taleban a monument to Western folly

Rosie DiManno

COLUMNIST

DON`T BOTHER crying over limestone Buddha statues if you`ve no tears for living - and dying - Afghan children.

It must say something about us, both in the West and in Islamic Arab nations, that more outrage has been expressed over the demolition of two monolithic monuments - which only students of antiquity had heard of a fortnight ago - than 2 million Afghans on the verge of starvation.

It`s indeed hideous that the one-eyed Mullah Mohammed Omar, spiritual leader of the ultra-orthodox version of Islam at the heart of the ruling Taleban movement, issued the obliteration order against the historic twin Buddhas, carved from an isolated mountainside 1,500 years ago. The Buddhas were doing no harm and had few worshippers in a country where Buddhism died out a millennium ago. Even if Afghanistan were a nation that encouraged tourism, it`s doubtful whether many would make the arduous journey to Bamiyan at the southwestern juncture of the nearly untraversable Hindu Kush.

What public indignation exists towards the Taleban, particularly in the sophisticated West, has been aimed - and with good reason, I don`t disagree - at the theocracy`s crushing decrees against its own population, specifically the denial of basic human rights to females. This is a country which, since the Taleban seized power by overrunning the capital Kabul in 1996, has forced women into a rigid form of house arrest. Females must wear the traditional burqah, the head-to-toe blue (not black) covering that hides even their eyes, whenever they step outside their homes, which they can do only in the company of male family members, a husband or a brother. Girls may not attend school, although a recent loosening of the law has permitted, or at least tolerated, girl-children attending privately run classrooms. But even boys receive an education that teaches them little beyond the recitation of the Koran and other approved Islamic texts. Women may not hold jobs, except for female doctors working in all-female hospital wings. Not that the career prospects are all that much better for male doctors, who earn about $4.50 a month working under appalling conditions in government-run hospitals.

The Taleban does not allow photographs of any human image, which they consider sinful by their reading of the Koran, just as they forbid all graven images of artwork - the basis upon which the Bamiyan Buddhas were ordered dynamited. Everyone must pray five times a day - a customary practice for Muslims, except in Afghanistan those found to be neglecting their religious duties are flayed on the spot by the roving ``soldier-monks`` of the Taleban. Music is forbidden. TV is forbidden. Videotapes and cassettes are forbidden. Only the proscription against kite-flying - an expertise elevated to an artform in Afghanistan - has been quietly dropped by the government, which is now also allowing its citizens to keep pet birds, another avid pursuit of Afghans.

What`s happened is that Afghanistan`s educated class, or at least those who can afford the $20,000 to $25,000 required for forged documents and exit papers, have fled their homeland. But what must be remembered by those of us in the West who can`t even imagine such a strict existence is this: For the majority of Afghans, having come through two decades of horrendous civil war and Russian occupation verging on genocide, the Taleban`s edicts are not so insupportable. What the Taleban gave Afghans was a measure of peace and security that many had never before known, so decimated had this country become by violence and inter-tribal warfare.

And the only reason the Taleban was able to assume power is because the West permitted it.

It was the West, specifically the United States, that propelled the Taleban to ascendancy in the first place. Only a decade ago, the U.S. funnelled arms and military expertise to the mujahideen guerrillas because it was strategically imperative to thwart Russian imperialism and Moscow`s lust for the rugged jewel that is Afghanistan, with all its economic riches and its geographic situation in the heart of Central Asia.

The mujahideen, in rather spectacular fashion, pushed the Russians back over the border. When the Russians turned tail, the Americans lost their keen interest in Afghanistan and the glorious mujahideen fell into a decade of factional, tribal and ethnic warfare, Sunni versus Shiite, fundamentalist versus secular. Now the most fierce of all the mujahideen military commanders, Ahmad Shah Massoud, is isolated in a small corner of Afghanistan while the Taleban, enjoying the endless military and political succour of Pakistan, controls 90 per cent of the country and official recognition from only two other nations.

The Americans, who had encouraged Islamic militancy when it meant thwarting Russia, allowed Pakistan to take the lead of political influence in Afghanistan. Strategically, the U.S. is more preoccupied with bringing oil out of neighbouring Turkmenistan via a pipeline that would go through Afghanistan and Pakistan, but at all costs not Iran. Meanwhile, the Taleban - which cannot feed its own people - reaps the stupendous profit from its newfound distinction as the world`s largest producer and exporter of opium poppies and heroin.

For those of us who love Afghanistan - a magnificent nation that gets in your blood, with a proud people whose likes may never be seen again - there is an abiding faith that the country will endure and survive the ravages of the Taleban, if merely by its sheer obstinacy, just as it has always endured and survived - on its own. Politically, the Taleban will go into eclipse, eventually. There are many who believe if foreign aid was shut off, the Taleban would be ousted from power by an enraged citizenry, most of whom practise a form of Islam that takes its lifeblood from tribal and regional cultural affiliations.

But three consecutive years of devastating drought have left the Afghan citizenry weak and dying. Hundreds of thousands are starving and freezing in camps. Foreign aid is a slim lifeline, but all they`ve got. I`ve no idea what`s to be done, except that the West, the U.S., should hold itself accountable for what it has wrought.

By comparison, why all the wailing about two stone Buddhas reduced to rubble?

jay is a girl?

woohoo

Rajanjua, sigalph & others re. asif n

I really wish the guy doesn`t stop. It always gives me a perverse kick from peeping into his mind through his posts - a bit like watching a freak show.

Free entertainment is otherwise hard to come by nowadays.....