(GVNN) The destruction of the Buddhas is the most vivid, worldwide symbol of the Taliban's jihad against Afghanistan's textured culture and history. Before the Taliban took control in 1996 and before the civil war that engulfed the nation in the early 1990s, archeologists and historians came here to catalogue its treasures and history. Today, the same scholars are grimly considering the best ways to catalogue the destruction.

The most heartrending destruction had occurred in Bamiyan where an impressive giant Buddha statue had offered solace to travellers along the ancient silk route in Afghanistan for 1,500 years. Its wanton destruction by the ruling Taliban militia in March 2001 shocked the world. Almost a year the site is revisited.....

The morning mist rises first, then the smoke from the wood stoves as the morning sky shifts from pale yellow to pink to blue. Slowly, the impeding curtain moves up, revealing the mountain bathed in dawning light that illuminates the soul.

In the very heart of the Hindu Kush mountain range is a testament to one of man's greatest achievements, the Colossal Buddhas. But when the sun strikes the mountainside directly, the rays highlight the black holes where the sculpted Buddhas once stood. Carved out of the steep rock in the 4th and 7th century, the statues were blasted off the face of the mountain in the 21st century by the Taliban.

"I was in front of the Buddha, the big one, watching when they exploded the seven bombs but it was not destroyed. It took them 17 days to destroy the two big Buddhas," said Sayed Qiam, 46, who worked for five years at the generator at the foot of the statues. When the dynamite exploded "it was a very white dust, then a very thick and black dust of the bomb," Qiam said. Although no one died in the blasts, Qiam said two local workers died of fright when they were lowered by ropes from the top of the Buddhas to drill dynamite holes. "Their hearts just stopped," he said.

The destruction of the Buddhas was the most vivid, worldwide symbol of the Taliban's jihad against Afghanistan's textured culture and history. Before the Taliban took control in 1996 and before the civil war that engulfed the nation in the early 1990s, archeologists and historians came here to catalogue its treasures and history. Today, the same scholars are grimly considering the best ways to catalogue the destruction.

The savaging of Afghanistan's history and culture ranges from the most remote parts of the nation, such as Bamiyan, to what used to be its artistic heart, Kabul. Above the entrance to the now-decimated Kabul Museum is a new sign put up after the Taliban was driven out of the capital. It reads: "A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive."

If this is true, Afghanistan is on life support.

Along the roads that lead from Kabul to other parts of Afghanistan, historical remains, artifacts, treasures and religious icons have been systematically plundered or brutalised. The reasons range from greed to ignorance.

"The destruction has lasted more than 22 years in the country," said Abdual Wassay Ferozi, director-general of the Afghanistan Center of Archeology. "The looting and then the Taliban. They totally destroyed everything they could, all the objects which introduced the previous Afghanistan history."

Ferozi has been appointed by the new Afghan government to survey the damage and devise a plan to rebuild where possible and preserve what remains. He is glum about what he will find: "At least 75 percent of the objects were destroyed and looted over the past 10 years," Ferozi said. Even the equipment needed to conduct surveys and excavations was destroyed.

In Kabul, almost all the historical and cultural sights  even those of a Muslim religious nature  have been destroyed or looted. Much of the destruction came during the civil war of the 1990s, when rival warlords put their heavy weapons and rockets on various mountains that ring Kabul and fired away indiscriminately. Maps of Kabul originally made in the 1970s and reprinted today have one telling addition in bright red letters, "Attention: In the last five years most of Kabul has been destroyed."

But the fighting cannot be blamed for all. The Mausoleum of Timur Shah in Kabul, a massive octagonal structure built in the style of early Mongol and Afghan kings and the resting place of one of the country's most popular rulers, has been turned into a faeces-strewn outhouse. Where reverence was once paid, enterprising young boys sell small bundles of toilet tissue and point the buyer to an open spot.

A self-inflicted history

The Kabul Museum used to have one of the finest collections of antiquities in Asia until nearly three-quarters of its finest collections was damaged or destroyed. Much of what was left was carted off by the Taliban and others for sale in the markets of other countries.

Even after the US attacks on the Taliban began, reporters crossing into northern Afghanistan from Tajikistan did not have to wait very long for the chance to get a piece of Afghanistan past. They were relentlessly offered souvenirs of historical battles with the British and fossils from a nearby excavation of Greek ruins believed to date back to when Alexander the Great was in Afghanistan.

That seemingly careless disregard many Afghans have of their history and their nation's treasures is a major part of the problem, scholars say.

"They (Afghans) don't care about the nation, they are just thinking about the money," said Abdul Baghi Hesri, chief of the history department at Kabul University. He said the plundering of the country's treasures began long before the Taliban, with items going for sale in Iran, Russia and the Shin Wari Bazaar in Pakistan. Efforts launched years ago to retrieve the items from the black market or private collectors have dramatically failed. Some of the items have been found for sale in Tokyo and on Bond Street in London.

The United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation (Unesco) has already announced it would lead a fund-raising effort to rebuild and possibly restock the museum as well as repair as many of the treasures as possible. Unesco's director general Koichiro Matsurra, visited Afghanistan on Jan 13 to voice support and spur donor attention for a resurrection of the country's culture.

But how much Unesco  or any organisation, country or philanthropy  can provide is suspect. "I walked through desolation," Martin Hadlow, a special representative of Unesco, said during a Dec 26 visit to Kabul. "I was amazed at the appalling loss of the cultural history of the Afghan people. The heritage of Afghanistan  a silk road crossing point  is under extreme threat. This is a loss for the cultural history of the world, a heritage which belongs to all humanity."

But that current debate does not even touch on the humpty-dumpty nature of the dilemma. Very few, if any pieces  especially the Colossal Buddhas  can be put back together.

Destroying the Buddhas

The Taliban arrived in Bamiyan on Sept 13, 1998, and that evening they turned off the lights that illuminated the Buddhas at night. Five days later, they dynamited the head of the smaller of the two colossal Buddhas. They then fired rockets at the Buddha's groin, damaging the luxurious folds of the figure and destroying nearby frescos.

A few weeks later, the Taliban dumped burning tires on the lips of the larger Buddha.

The Taliban had already bombed the mountain above the Buddhas eight times in the battle to capture the region, creating more cracks in the sandstone niches that held the figures. They then threatened to completely destroy the statues, but yielded for the first  and only time  to international pressure.

The two Buddhas were hewn with the classical features of all sub-continental Buddhas, but the figures were draped in Greek robes. The combination represented the unique fusion of classical Indian and Central Asian art with Hellenism, introduced by the armies of Alexander the Great. They were one of the wonders of the ancient world, visited by pilgrims from China and India.

Their presence was first recorded in 632 by Hiuan Tsang, a Chinese monk visiting Bamiyan, then a major center for Buddhist study. He described the larger Buddha as "glittering with gold and precious ornaments." They survived countless invasions, including those of Genghis Khan and Timberline, although the larger Buddha was hit with artillery by a 17th-century Mongol commander.

But they never faced an enemy like the Taliban. The reprieve for the statues was temporary. In January 2001 a 2nd century BC Buddhist complex in Ghanzi was razed. Then on Feb 26, 2001, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar issued an edict that they must be destroyed because they allegedly went against Islamic bans on human images and idolatry. Several governments and museums offered to remove the statutes and even buy them to help the cash-strapped Taliban government, but Omar refused.

Qiam said when the Taliban capture Bamiyan they destroyed the head of the smaller Buddha with Kakuska rockets. He knew his fears that it was only a matter of time until they destroyed the remainder of the statues were coming true when trucks and airplanes ferried in explosives.

"The Taliban commander was Shamshad. He was asking the people who were digging the Buddha (for the dynamite holes) to work hard. He told them there was something inside the Buddha to be treasures," Qiam said. "He said the statues should not be in an Islamic region."

The local military commander in Bamiyan, Gen Haji Mohammed Jawhari, 30, said the destruction of the Buddhas was the culmination of a consistent pattern of destruction by the Taliban fueled in part for their dislike of the Hazara ethic group that lives in the region.

The Taliban were mostly Pashtun and of a different sect of Islam. "The people were fighting the Taliban. We were killing alot of soldiers (Taliban) and they were angry and destroyed a lot of buildings. They did it in a very long period of time. They had decided in Kandahar in meetings to destroy the entire Hazara (area)," Jawhari said.

He said the decision was made by the Taliban and other leaders of al-Qaeda, who wanted to destroy the Buddhas because "it showed the history of Afghanistan and they wanted to destroy the history."

Jawhari said it took almost a month to destroy the two Colossal Buddhas, two smaller Buddhas also in the mountains and a third small Buddha in the valley.

"The first day the Taliban defence minister and other people came by helicopter from Kabul. They had a meeting here and they gave speeches to the people about Buddha and Islam. Then they read an order on the paper from Mullah Omar at the end of the meeting  it said that Mullah Omar ordered the soldiers to destroy Buddha. He said that the Afghan people are Muslim people and they should not leave the statues (standing) and that sometimes people worshipped them as Gods," Jawhari recalled.

Jawhari dismissed that charge that the local people worshipped the statues. "No, never. They never loved them as a God, they loved them as history. They made Bamiyan proud and a famous and important province known around the world," he said.

A similar scene at the Kabul Museum

Today the most important art at the Kabul Museum may be the modern section  the drawing posted on the entrance and the walls, detailing what different types of landmines look like and warning that they are nearby.

Only a few parts of museum roof remains in the windowless building. The museum was first hit by rockets and gunfire from 1990 to 1992, then shot up and looted some more during the Afghan civil war. Much of the collection was relocated and protected but later returned to the museum only to have the Taliban come and destroy it.

Lions used to flank the entrance to the museum, much like those at each side of the entrance to the New York Public Library. They were blown apart and now two heavy machine guns sit in their place.

The Kabul Museum housed the most comprehensive record of Central Asian history. Many of its pieces have been dated as far back as pre-historic times.

One of the museum's largest displays was the Bagram Collection. Discovered in 1939, by archaeologists excavating a Kushan fort, it contained 1,800 pieces from India, Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Central Asia. The museum also had one of the largest displays of Greek and Roman coins found near Kabul. This collection was a historical treasure, as it contained coins from numerous civilisations dating from the 8th century BC to the late 19th century.

Thus the loss of those treasures  looted and sold in Pakistan and elsewhere  were the most crippling to the soul of many Afghans. But at least they did not have to witness the Bagram collection being destroyed before their eyes.

The curator, Yehya Mohibzada, remembers the moment when the Taliban came with the hammers and rocks, shouting, "God is great," as they began to destroy the museum's treasures. It went on for three days, led by Mullah Qadradullah Jamal, the Taliban minister of culture.

"It's not hard material. It was not difficult to destroy," Mohibzada said.

Mohibzada said the first day Qadradullah was accompanied by the minister of finance. "We were told they were coming and I expected them to come see the damage (from the war) and how it repair it. But contrary to my expectation, he took a stone and started destroying the statues. I was a witness to all of this," Mohibzada said.

Mohibzada said Qadradullah shouted "God is Great" as he destroyed works, then berated employees. "Why did you keep these for a long time," Mohibzada recalled the minister lambasting the employees. "Who made these statues, who looked at these statues, who took care of them," he said. The destruction lasted three hours the first day. Taliban guards were posted to make sure no employees interfered with the rampage.

First to go was a statue of Kanishka, the Kushkan king who ruled in the 2nd century into northern India and Central Asia. It was the only known likeness of him.

The Taliban wedged a wooden plank between the statue and the pillar where it was attached and snapped it from the wall. What did not break from the crash on the floor was shattered by hammers.

Today the visitor is greeted by a photo of the statue the pillar behind where it stood until September 2000. The pedestal and the faint stumps of Kanishka's feet still remain. The rest of Kanishka is in a back room, a pile of chunks of rubble. "We hope, we so hope we will repair it," Mohibzada said. "It will be very difficult for us, it is broken in so many pieces."

Mohibzada estimates about 70 percent of the collection has been destroyed and another 20 percent lost or missing. There are about 2,500 broken pieces which they hope to repair. For now, the pieces are wrapped in thick brown paper, labelled and numbered for repairs and reconstruction.

The rout of the Taliban saved some of the museum's work. In one back room there are dozens of old vases, gathered by the Taliban for shipment to Pakistan for sale.

The guerrilla effort

Some rare museum pieces were smuggled out and hidden. They remain hidden today, part of a successful guerrilla effort by artists, curators, museum staffs and sympathetic watchmen to save some of Afghanistan's heritage. "We don't want to explain (how they smuggled out the items), but we have it in a safe place," Mohibzada said.

The effort was often aided by the Taliban's ignorance of culture. In the museum, for example, the staff was able to foil the Taliban by turning elaborate Buddhist works backward so the plain side was hanging. They would scratch in some Islamic verses and tell the Taliban it was a rare Islam tract.

A more elaborate effort was underway at the National Gallery to save that collection. The National Gallery opened in 1983 with 200 paintings, with the collection rising to about 800 by the 1990s civil war. About half of those paintings were destroyed in the civil war.

The Taliban destroyed about another 200 paintings showing animals and the human body. Then the guerrilla campaign kicked into gear.

Abdual Fatah Adil, 42, the curator at the National Gallery, said the staff took 62 of the very rare paintings, dating back 200 years or more, to a remote part of the basement where there was ventilation. The elderly guards who worked at the museum duped Taliban officials, mumbling that the covered paintings were not very important.

"They were rare, expensive art that that was saved," Adil said. "It was easy to deal with those Taliban. They could not tell the difference."

But the bulk of the work was saved by Yousef Asefie, an artist and gallery employee.

The Taliban were closing in on the gallery, having just destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, what was left at the National Museum and 18 paintings in the presidential palace, including eight Asefie painted. In a three-month period, working about 90 minutes a day, Asefie used watercolors to paint over the humans and the animals of 122 paintings.

If the painting had glass over it he would simply apply the watercolor onto the glass over the offending figures. Otherwise, the watercolor would go right onto the oil, turning flower girls into flowers, fishermen into rocks and water, geese into lilies, swans into trees.

Any frames or markings to indicate a foreigner did a painting were also removed.

"I would take them in the other room (at the gallery) under the pretext of repairing them," Asefie, 40, said. He said he tried out the technique on his own paintings at his home to make sure it worked. "Necessity is the mother of invention," he said. "There was no need to do this before."

Asefie also benefited from the Taliban's apparent lack of knowledge regarding art and a general sloppiness to their enforcement of "vice and virtue" regulations. "They came but they didn't understand all the paintings," Asefie said. "I was scared (when the Taliban were looking at the covered paintings) because I knew this, but they didn't know the difference in this paint. I was shaking."

Had they discovered his subterfuge, his fate would have been death. Asefie said he did what he had to do, "When the people are needy, they will be in your control," he said. "I just felt the need to resist."

For his work, Asefie was awarded the Order of Star and the First Grade Letter of Merit by the new Afghan government, among the highest civilian honors an Afghan can receive. He now spends his days repairing damaged painting and removing the watercolors he had applied to conceal the artwork.

It is marvelous to watch. The sponge is dipped in water, Asefie lightly brushes down on a seemingly routine landscape of a pond and suddenly ripples in the pond appear and there is "The Swan Tableau." Asefie turns and smiles, the reward of a successful artist. But bringing back all of Afghanistan's lost history and treasure will not be as simple.

In a perverted sense, the destruction of Afghanistan's history is as much as the country's history as anything else. Almost every invader or local warlord has taken his share of plunder and added their destructive touch to almost all parts of the country. Only the invading Soviets spared the country in this one area; they even repainted and repaired some of the crumbling rooms at the National Museum.

But history also provides inspiration. "This nation always has been able to rebuild itself," Raheen Makhdoom, the minister for culture and information, said. "When Genghis Khan attacked Herat, it was probably the best city and the most cultural city in the world. He completely destroyed the city, burned everything and killed all but 16 people who were out of the city. They came back and rebuilt it, and it came back to have a renaissance and music and art and poetry."

The Taliban's wrath was just as furious as Khan, Makhdoom said, and it will take equal effort to have another renaissance.

"We have been damaged much more than any other ministry from the Taliban. Businesses destroyed can be rebuilt. We only have pieces," Makhdoom said.

Almost all of the professional staff for the arts and history had fled the country and Makhdoom's list of priority projects continues to swell.

"We start from zero," Makhdoom said. "We have to rebuild the national confidence. We have to do that. I want to do that."