Kisah Taliban memusnahkan berhala Buddha menarik perhatian banyak pihak, termasuk negara Islam sendiri. Setengah pihak akan cuba menggunakan isu ini untuk menghentam Islam dan mungkin juga Osama Bin Laden yang bersembunyi di Afghanistan. Sebenarnya Islam tetap baik dan tidak pernah silap, yang tidak baik dan tersilap adalah orangnya sahaja. Malah Osama Bin Laden tidak ada kena mengena dengan Taliban. (Osama cuma kena mengena dengan perjuangan rakyat marhain yang ditindas Amerika.) Beliau cuma lebih selamat berada di sana. Tidak perlu dinyatakan kenapa.

Sebenarnya ada banyak rahsia yang tersembunyi kenapa Taliban berbuat demikian. Saya menulis di sini bukan untuk menyokong sesiapa tetapi sekadar memerhati bagaimana dunia begitu cepat bertindak dan melalak terhadap kemusnahan patung tetapi begitu lembab menolong beribu-ribu rakyat dihujani peluru dan bom akibat permainan kuasa-kuasa besar. Ia menggambarkan seolah-olah 'nyawa' patung lebih mulia dari nyawa beribu-ribu manusia.

APA YANG HANCUR SEBENARNYA?

Kita serahkan kepada mereka yang bijak dalam hal ugama untuk mentafsirkan betul atau tidaknya tindakkan mereka. Apa yang ingin dibicarakan di sini ialah sikap kita.

"Orang taliban kata mereka hanya menghancurkan batu-batan sahaja!!!!!", celah seorang kenalan saya.

"Tetapi orang lain menghancurkan segala-galanya di bumi Afghanistan" - jawab saya.

"Orang Taliban tidak sedar di dalam 'Kaabah' masih banyak patung-patung lama tersimpan di situ....!!!", ujar teman saya lagi.

Terfikir saya sejenak. Mungkin ini jawapannya:

"Mereka sedar benda lain agaknya? Mahathir pun sedar juga tapi dia selesa berada di mahligai yang begitu bergaya ketika negara lain berjimat-jimat dan memotong belanja."

ANTARA BATU-BATAN DAN MANUSIA

Memang benar - hanya batu dan sedikit lumpur yang berupa wajah manusia yang diagungkan dunia walaupun ia tidak bernyawa. Malah ia tidak dapat berbuat apa-apa untuk mengelakkan dirinya musnah dengan sedikit campuran bahan letupan sahaja. Tidak ada sesiapa pun yang bernyawa sanggup mati kerananya. (Mereka cuma mahu kemewahan yang tersimpan di dalamnya?) Tetapi ramai yang maut kerana mahu berkuasa di bumi Afghanistan sekian lama. Dunia tidak mengirim sesuatu pun yang dapat meredakan pergaduhan disana, malah masing-masing membekalkan senjata supaya musnah bumi Afghanistan semuanya. Yang tetap sakit dan merana masih rakyat Afghanistan (yang tentunya ramai Islam) juga.

Tetapi peristiwa patung Buddha ini menyebabkan banyak pihak sakit mata dan sakit hati nampaknya! Baru hendak mengirim satu dua orang untuk bersekemuka. Jika tidak jangan harap ada sesiapa ingin menjenguk mereka. Memang orang Taliban pandai menarik perhatian! Jangan lihat patung sahaja, tetapi lihatlah bumi Afghanistan yang sudah hancur-sehancurnya. Perbuatan siapakah yang sebenarnya? Dan mengapa dunia asyik menyekat bantuan kepadanya begitu lama?

-Kapal Berita-

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Protests in Pak on Taliban's action

ISLAMABAD: While the government kept a discreet silence, some politicians, diplomats and social workers in Pakistan joined in the international protest on the smashing of ancient statues, including two giant stone Buddhas, by the ruling Taliban Islamic militia in Afghanistan.

Pakistan Muslim League acting president Javed Hashmi said by breaking the statues, ignoring mass international protest, the Taliban would slip further into international wilderness.

Intellectual and poet Ahmed Faraz said the Taliban move to destroy the statues was against Islam. Islam respects other cultures even if they include rituals that are against Islamic law, Faraz told IANS.

And Afghan refugees living in Pakistan, first baffled by the decree, have now condemned the destruction. Afghans were not happy with Mullah Omar's decree, said Fuwwad, an Afghan living in Islamabad.

"It is causing big damage to our history," another Afghan living in Pakistan said. "The war had taken everything else. We had only these (monuments), which are now fading," he added. A long running civil war between rival militia in Afghanistan has ruined the country's economy and left thousands dead.

"The abandoned relics are not our pride," the official Bakhtar news agency quoted Afghan Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil as telling U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, who arrived in Kabul with an appeal from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to stop the destruction.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news service later quoted Culture Minister Mullah Jamal as saying statues had been destroyed at museums in Kabul, Ghazni, Herat and at Farm Hadda near Jalalabad. (IANS)

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Muslim leaders condemn Taliban
destruction

NEW DELHI: Leading Islamic clerics and leaders on Friday condemned the destruction of Afghanistan's ancient Buddha statues in central Bamiyan province by the ruling Taliban regime's move as "un-Islamic" and "an act of cultural genocide against humanity."

"It is an outrageous act. It should be treated as a crime against humanity. Bamiyan is part of the world's cultural heritage. The destruction of Buddha statues is an act of cultural genocide against humanity," Babri Masjid movement leader and former diplomat Syed Shahabuddin said.

Declining to draw a parallel between the Taliban action and the destruction of the disputed structure at Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, Shahabuddin said, "here it was some groups whereas in Afghanistan, the government itself is committing the crime."

"In the entire history of Islam, ancient and pre-historic sites have only been preserved and not destroyed whether it be in Iran, Egypt, Syria or India," Shahabuddin said.

The Shahi Imam of the historic Fatehpuri mosque here Maulana Mufti Mohammad Mukarram Ahmed termed the destruction of the statues as "un-Islamic."

"Islam has always respected other faiths. It has taught us not to abuse other faiths. The Taliban could have either veiled it or asked the Buddhist countries to relocate it if they were so averse to the statues," he said.

Christian leader Rev Valson Thampu said the Taliban action symbolised "selective use of religious prescription". (PTI)

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Taliban demolish Buddha statues

KABUL: Most of the ancient Buddhist relics, including the head and legs of two soaring statues of Buddha in central Afghanistan, have been destroyed, despite internal pleas to save the priceless treasures, a Taliban official said on Saturday.

What hasn't been destroyed will be destroyed on Sunday and Monday, the Taliban's Information Minister Quadratullah Jamal said.

"Two-thirds of all the statues in Afghanistan have already been destroyed, the remaining will be destroyed in the next two days."

"The head and legs of Buddha statues in Bamiyan were destroyed yesterday," he said. "Our soldiers are working hard to demolish their remaining parts. They will come down soon. We are using everything at our disposal to destroy them."

The two Buddhas, 175 and 120 feet tall, are hewn from the side of a mountain in Bamiyan - located roughly 130 km northwest of Kabul.

The tallest statue is thought to be the world's tallest of a Buddha standing rather than sitting.

The Taliban troops used heavy explosives and rockets to destroy the statues carved in the third and fifth centuries, relics of Afghanistan's pre-Islamic past. Both the statues were already damaged by artillery fire during Afghanistan's protracted civil war. Jamal did not have details about which statue was targeted first and whether the heads of both statues had been removed or of only one.

On Friday Taliban officials said preparations were under way but that demolition had not begun. Jamal said his information was from Taliban troops in Bamiyan.

The destruction was being carried out in keeping with an order issued Monday by the Taliban's reclusive supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, to destroy all statues in Afghanistan, including the soaring Buddha statues. He said they were idolatrous and offensive to Islam.

The order generated international outrage. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York offered to take the statues and preserve them. The Taliban have not responded to that offer.

Also on Saturday, a special envoy of UNESCO met Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador in neighboring Pakistan, to register the world's outrage with the destruction.

Pierre La France, special representative of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said the destruction of the statues will only worsen the Taliban's already troubled relations with the world community.

But Zaeef said there was no reversing the order. "But it's a decree by ulema (clerics) and the government can't stop its implementation," Zaeef said.

The Taliban Islamic militia, which rules 95 percent of Afghanistan, including Kabul, adheres to a strict brand of Islamic law. Their interpretation has been questioned by Islamic scholars in other Muslim countries and Islamic institutions.

The Taliban have been unmoved by international appeals to save the statues as historical artifacts. Some Islamic countries have called the Taliban order to destroy the historical relics embarrassing to Islam. Even the Taliban's closest ally, Pakistan, joined the international appeal to save the statues. But the Taliban say there is no place for statues in an Islamic country.

An estimated 6,000 statues were housed in the Kabul Museum. It's believed most have been destroyed, although the Taliban have refused to allow anyone inside the war-ravaged building. Two armed Taliban guards keep watch outside the building.

Previously Jamal said the Taliban would put the ruins on display.

"Words fail me to describe adequately my feelings of consternation and powerlessness as I see the reports of the irreversible damage that is being done to Afghanistan's exceptional cultural heritage," Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the UNESCO said on Friday.

"The Japanese government is deeply concerned," said Kazuhiko Koshikawa, spokesman for Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in Japan, where most people consider themselves followers of both Buddhism and the native Shinto religion. "Those statues are assets to all human beings."

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi condemned the decision.

"Unfortunately, the Taliban's destruction of the statues has cast doubt on the comprehensive views offered by Islamic ideology in the world," he said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. "Clearly, the world's Muslims pin the blame on the rigid-minded Taliban."

In Afghanistan's civil war, Iran supports the northern alliance of ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani against the ruling Taliban. Rabbani rules in about five percent of the country and some of the groups in his alliance espouse a brand of Islam akin to the Taliban.

In Egypt, the chief Muslim cleric, Grand Mufti Nasr Farid Wasel, told the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat that keeping the statues is not forbidden by Islam.

In comments published Friday, he said such statues, like Egypt's Pharaonic monuments, bolster the economies of Islamic countries through tourism.

Ancient statues are "just a recording of history and don't have any negative impact on Muslims' beliefs," he was quoted as saying.

(AP)

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Hope for Buddhas as Taliban send
mixed messages

KABUL: A hint of hope emerged on Saturday that Afghanistan's priceless Buddhist heritage could be saved even as Taliban officials insisted nothing could stop their "Islamic" mission to destroy ancient statues.

Disregarding a wave of international protest, Minister of Information and Culture Mawlawi Qudratullah Jamal said two thirds of the statues had been smashed and "work" was continuing on the two famous Buddha figures in central Bamiyan province.

"The process is being carried out both by gunpowder and spades and hammers. Work is underway for the destruction of the all the Bamiyan statues," he said, adding that it would be complete within four days.

Already an international pariah recognised by only three countries, the puritanical Islamic militia have been condemned by governments and religious leaders around the world for their move to destroy so-called "false idols."

They have also been flooded with desperate ideas to save the ancient relics, including the Bamiyan Buddhas built between the second and fifth centuries AD.

"It is not a big issue. The statues are objects only made of mud or stone," Jamal said, stressing that he had received no update on how much of the world's tallest standing Buddha at Bamiyan had been reduced to rubble.

"They will be totally destroyed. It is easier to destroy than to build. The order has been given to destroy them altogether including their hands, heads and legs."

He qualified earlier claims from Taliban officials that the statues, carved into a massive sandstone cliff, were being attacked with tanks and rockets.

"They do not (need) much rockets and tank shells. They are being destroyed with the use of some gunpowder," the minister said.

Taliban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar on Monday issued what officials said was a decree ordering the total annihilation of Afghanistan's statues to stop idolatry.

Special representative of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Pierre Lafrance, who was dispatched on an emergency mission from Europe on Friday, said he saw a "faint glimpse of hope" after a meeting with the Taliban ambassador in Pakistan.

Lafrance, a former French ambassador to Iran and Pakistan, said "my interlocutors this morning told me the destruction has not started and no real order for this destruction had been delivered."

"We are not sure that a real decree has been issued. Many people (Afghan and Pakistani officials) say it was not a decree, it was just a statement - at least they wonder. There's a faint glimpse of hope," he said.

On Sunday he was expected to leave for the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar for talks with Omar, but he said so far only Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel was available.

Jamal said that apart from three countries - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have recognized the religious militia - the world had no right to complain about the destruction.

"The implementation of the decree will not be delayed because of this (international uproar)," he said, adding that the world community "was not kind" to the Afghan people before.

Pakistan has issued two protests and UNESCO's Arab Group, comprising all 22 members of the Arab League including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has described the move as "savage."

"The Arab Group of UNESCO condemns these savage acts and notes that successive Islamic governments in Afghanistan have preserved these masterpieces for 14 centuries," it said on Friday.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the Taliban to accept an offer by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to house statues destined for destruction.

Council of Europe Secretary General Walter Schwimmer denounced the destruction, saying: "No political or religious power has the right to deliberately destroy cultural property that belongs to humankind."

Special UNESCO envoy sees hope

ISLAMABAD: UNESCO special envoy Pierre Lafrance said he saw a "glimpse of hope" that Afghanistan's cultural heritage could be saved after a meeting with the Taliban ambassador here on Saturday.

Lafrance, who arrived overnight, told Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef of the world's strong opposition to the Islamic militia's destruction of ancient statues throughout the country.

The fundamentalist Islamic militia said on Thursday it had begun destroying the statues - including two huge Buddhas dated to between the second and fifth centuries AD - to prevent idolatry in line with an Islamic decree.

Cries of condemnation have come from across the globe but so far the Taliban, recognised by only three countries, have not backed down. Officials in Kabul on Saturday said 60 per cent of the statues had already been smashed.

But Lafrance, a former French ambassador to Iran and Pakistan, said "my interlocutors this morning told me the destruction has not started and no real order for this destruction had been delivered."

"We are not sure that a real decree has been issued. Many people (Afghan and Pakistani officials) say it was not a decree, it was just a statement - at least they wonder. There's a faint glimpse of hope," he said.

On Sunday he was expected to leave for the southern Afghan city of Kandahar for talks with Taliban supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar, but he said so far only Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel was available.

"We have told him this is an Islamic decree, that is why we have given orders for the destruction of the staues," Ambassador Zaeef was quoted as saying earlier by the Afghan Islamic Press.

Lafrance said "it is quite possible" that local commanders had fired tank shells and rockets at the Bamiyan Buddhas, as Taliban officials said Friday, but it could not be confirmed.

He said he would ask permission to visit Bamiyan and the Kabul Museum.

Remembering his last trip to see the Bamiyan Buddhas, which are carved into the side of a sandstone mountain, he said: "They are stately, serene, impressive, and despite the fact that they are made of stone, they are immaterial."

"If some people think that they can make a blow to the West by attacking the remnants of Buddhist heritage they are totally wrong," he said.

"It's not to the West that they will give this blow, but to the whole of mankind."

Lafrance said he also hoped to visit Jeddah in Saudi Arabia on his way back from Afghanistan and meet Abdelouahed Belkeziz, the secretary general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

"Words fail me to describe adequately my feelings of consternation and powerlessness as I see the reports of the irreversible damage that is being done to Afghanistan's exceptional cultural heritage," Matsuura said on Friday.

He said he had brought together the ambassadors of the 54 countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to discuss ways to end the destruction.

"They were all united in vigorously condemning these unacceptable attacks on humanity's common heritage," he said.

(AFP)

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How the Taliban stand to gain

By Sreedhar

NEW DELHI: Taliban supremo Mullah Umar's February 26 fatwa, to destroy all idols of worship and its implementation within five days, can be interpreted from four different angles.

Foremost among them would be that after the UN Security Council Resolution 1333 imposing sanctions against the Taliban regime came into effect on January 19, Afghanistan became a pariah for the international community.

Offices of international agencies were shut down and workers sent back home. The international community also started monitoring the movement of men and material to and from Afghanistan.

This questioned the very legitimacy of Taliban rule. Even their sympathisers in countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have found it extremely difficult to interact with or extend support to them.

Along with this isolation, nature played havoc with agriculture in Afghanistan. In most parts of the country the rainfall this winter was very poor and the country is experiencing one of the worst droughts in living memory.

International aid is not forthcoming because of the UN sanctions. There is an exodus to neighbouring countries like Iran and Pakistan and there is every chance of people revolting against the Taliban leadership.

While Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is going through this human misery, the anti-Taliban forces controlling less than 10 per cent of Afghanistan have gathered support from the international community. In fact, this support enabled them to blunt the Taliban's winter offensive this year.

In this difficult situation, how can the Taliban and its leadership assert their position in the country? This extraordinary fatwa issued by Mullah Umar has brought them back into the international arena. The same UN, which imposed sanctions six weeks ago, is pleading with the Taliban not to destroy the artifacts. The Taliban response to these pleas, as articulated by its ambassador in Pakistan is, "Why this hue and cry for stone figures when there is no compassion for people who are dying."

To an outsider this may seem perverse logic, but for the majority of Afghans it could look like the world's mightiest have been humbled by Mullah Umar. In fact, Mullah Umar tried this in 1998, when the international community refused to recognise the Taliban regime.

At that time too, the target was the statutes of Buddha in Bamiyan. The international protests prompted the Taliban to issue a statement that some over-zealous cadres indulged in this vandalism and necessary steps had been taken to stop them.

Fanatical belief

A second interpretation could be that the Taliban leadership genuinely believes that other than their version of Islam, no other form of faith should exist within their sphere of influence. That is the reason they indulged in ethnic cleansing within the area controlled by them. The cadres trained by them do the same thing in other places. The burning down of the Chrar-e-Sharif in Kashmir by Taliban-trained militants in 1995 is one example.

Historically too, this is not an uncommon phenomenon in South Asia. Rulers from Mohammad Ghazni and Mohammed Ghauri to Aurangazeb indulged in similar vandalism. According to some reports, the ideological gurus of the Taliban, the Jamaat-e-Ulema-Islam of Pakistan, consider Mohammad Ghauri and Aurangzeb as the true Muslims. If this is true then one need not be surprised at the Taliban destroying the Buddha statues.

Pakistani instigation

Third, arson and looting of Afghanistan heritage started when the Taliban came on the scene in September 1994. According to one version, Pakistani advisers to the Taliban instigated them to remove all artifacts from Afghan soil as they were all against Islam.

The now widely-publicised collection of artifacts from the Kabul National Museum with Naseerullah Babbar, interior minister in the second Benazir Bhutto government, and in the London and Dubai houses of Benazir Bhutto give some credence to this theory. The drug cartels also made tidy sums by selling some of them in the international antique market.

All this indicates that a section of the Pakistan leadership appears to have instigated the Taliban to indulge in this cultural vandalism and the Taliban succumbed to it. Will the Taliban cadres in Pakistan make Taxila their next target is the question being asked now by South Asian watchers.

Provoking India

Lastly, there seems to be an India angle too to this development. After the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar in December 1999, India's relations with the Taliban leadership have become bitter. Since then India has been canvassing extensively in various forums to isolate the Taliban internationally. This has made the Taliban look for ways to acquire pressure points in India.

Their training to Kashmir militants proved to be ineffective. By threatening to demolish the Buddha statutes in Bamiyan, they managed to provoke India. One of the Taliban spokesmen in an interview to a television channel is reported to have remarked that they are destroying the Buddha statutes in retaliation to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Again this may not stand to reason, but the Taliban sees that it has certainly scored a point.

In this whole episode one development surprised everyone. While the world opposed this extraordinary fatwa of Mullah Umar, two countries that have diplomatic relations with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan - Saudi Arabia and the UAE - have maintained a stony silence. Pakistan has not gone beyond a formal criticism.

In the past, none of theses countries ever tried to restrain the Taliban from indulging in this cultural vandalism. Under intense pressure from the international community, more than 48 hours after the fatwa was issued, Pakistan issued a meek appeal to the Taliban to stop implementing it.

The statement of the Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, that the edict is irreversible seems to have closed all options. "Have you ever seen any decision of the Islamic Emirates reversed" he is reported to have said.

After 72 hours of this statement this cultural heritage of mankind is in ruins. What has the Taliban achieved by this? For them they have defied the world. By this action, they have lost the few sympathisers they had outside Afghanistan. This seems to have been not realised by Mullah Umar. Outsiders now know what is cultural terrorism is all about.

(The writer is a Senior Analyst with the Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses, New Delhi)

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Why the Taliban are doing it

By Siddharth Varadarajan

NEW DELHI: Fanatical they may be, but the Taliban's threat to destroy ancient Buddhist statues is the perverse product of a political strategy aimed at highlighting what they feel is the indifference of the international community towards the plight of Afghanistan.

Though the Taliban have been in power for two years, it is the imposition of UN sanctions in November 2000 that has hardened their attitude. Afghanistan's rulers say the military and financial sanctions - sponsored by the US and Russia over the Osama bin Laden issue - are discriminatory because arms sales to the opposition Northern Alliance have not been banned. They also say that the UN move will lead to a humanitarian disaster and refugee efflux since the Afghan economy is severely dislocated after nearly 20 years of civil war.

On the last point, at least, the Taliban's fears have been echoed by UN relief officials and even UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Gen Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and a man closely associated with Islamabad's Afghan policies, told The Times of India it was hypocritical for the world to protest the statues' destruction when it has ``silently stood by as 10 million Afghan lives have been placed at risk''. Gul said the Taliban's move is linked to the UN sanctions. ``This is their way of forcing the world to pay attention, to take them seriously''.

Though Gul said Kabul should allow the statues to be sent out of the country rather than destroying them, he claimed there was nothing un-Islamic about what the Taliban were doing. Using logic similar to the BJP - which said that the Babri Masjid was not really a mosque as prayers had not been offered there for years - Gul argued that since the Bamiyan statues are not being worshipped, they would not attract the Quranic injunction against the desecration of places of worship. ``It's their country. Nobody can do anything''.

An Islamabad-based Pakistani businessman who is very close to the Taliban leadership told TOI that the timing of the latest announcement is also linked to the capture two weeks back of Bamiyan from the opposition Hizb-e-Wahdat. ``For two years, Bamiyan has changed hands several times,'' he said, ``but only now do the Taliban have complete control''.

He said it was possible the Taliban do not intend fully to carry out their threat. ``If they wanted to do it, the statues would already be rubble. Maybe the announcement was made to tell the world that the Taliban cannot be simply wished away''. He added that no one, not even Pakistan, could compel them to abandon their plan.

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