UN, Afghans spar over statues ruined by Taliban

The monumental stone Buddhas of Bamiyan, reduced to rubble by Taliban demolition experts last year, might one day rise again to defy the intolerance that destroyed them.

That is the hope of a UNESCO team of experts due to meet later this month to launch the delicate and controversial task of restoring Afghanistan's best-known historical monument. Enough large pieces of the big Buddha – which stood 175 feet tall in its cliffside niche – remain intact to re-create the statue, says Christian Manhart, a cultural-heritage specialist with the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

"We'll never be able to rebuild these statues," he admits. "But everything that fell from the big Buddha is still there, and part of it is in recognizable big pieces. Perhaps 50 percent of it is useable."

That is enough for archaeologists and restoration experts to work with, using a method known as "anastylosis" – doing a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle with as much of the original stone as remains and filling in the gaps with modern materials.

It is not enough, however, for many Afghans, who would prefer to see replicas of the statues constructed out of concrete or resin – an idea that Western conservationists are doing their best to discourage.

Overlooking the ancient Silk Road, the massive Buddhas carved in sandstone cliffs had stood for around 1,500 years when the fundamentalist Islamic Taliban authorities ruled that they violated their religious ban on human images and idolatry, and ordered their destruction.

Local Taliban fighters, sentimentally attached to the figures, refused to carry out the command. Eventually, local inhabitants say, foreign demolition experts were brought in to set the explosives. Over three weeks and in three separate attempts, the Buddhas were blown up in March 2001.

At the time, UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura called the willful destruction "a crime against culture" and said it was irreversible. But two UNESCO missions to Bamiyan have decided that perhaps enough can be salvaged – at least from the bigger Buddha – to make a restoration effort worthwhile.

The plan, once spring thaws the high mountain plateau next year, is for archaeologists to hunt through the mountain of rubble at the foot of the bigger niche, and to lay out the identifiable pieces on the ground, so as to re-form the statue lying down. If all goes well, says Mr. Manhart, the job could be done by next October.

The Japanese-funded team will be able to draw on a wealth of studies conducted on the Bud- dhas over the years, from Indian archaeological records to geological research that will help pinpoint which layer of the cliff – and thus the statue – a particular block of sandstone came from.

Especially valuable will be a set of stereoscopic photographic images, made 30 years ago by an Austrian mountaineer, which will enable restorers to take the original monuments' measurements to within half an inch of accuracy.

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