Published On:Wednesday 1 October 2014
Posted by Unknown
Rebuild Afghanistan's Giant Buddha’s? Foot-Shaped Pillars Give Legs to Debate
Taliban Destroyed Sandstone Figures in 2001, but Momentum Is
Growing to Reassemble Them
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| 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.
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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
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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."
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.
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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
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"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.
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| 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.
Write to Margherita
Stancati at margherita.stancati@wsj.com
