UN, Afghans spar over statues ruined by Taliban

"We'll put the big pieces together, and see what comes out," says Manhart. The holes will have to be filled with concrete, or some other material easily distinguished from the sandstone original, according to the principles of anastylosis.

That procedure "is quite a usual method in archaeology in many sites – tourists wouldn't see much if it wasn't for anastylosis" says Michael Petzet, head of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, which oversees the conservation of historic monuments worldwide.

But the results will undoubtedly disappoint many Afghans, who "only want the figures back as they were before the dynamite," Dr. Petzet says.

"Why deny the Afghans the right to have a copy of their figures in place and to put the originals in a museum?" wonders Paul Bucherer, a Swiss expert on Afghanistan's cultural heritage

The local warlord in the Bamiyan region, Karim Khalili, who is now a vice president of Afghanistan, would rather have replicas of the statues built and installed. At one stage, it appeared as if President Hamid Karzai had commissioned an Afghan sculptor, Amanulah Haiderzad, to construct such replicas. The status of that commission is now unclear.

Other proposals to carve similar statues in similar cliffsides nearby, or to decorate replica statues with the bright golden, blue, and red paint with which they were adorned by Buddhist sculptors 1,500 years ago, have fallen by the wayside.

UNESCO advisers insist that any work on the site must conform to modern archaeological standards, which means no copies, and none of the damage to what is left of the site that would undoubtedly accompany the installation of a replica Buddha.

It is a question of authenticity, says Manhart. "We have to conserve the historical evidence, and the dynamiting of the Buddhas is now part of their history."

"Even before their destruction the Buddhas were already fragmentary," adds Petzet.

"We don't know what the heads looked like because they were destroyed centuries ago, so brand new Bamiyan Buddhas as they would have been in the 5th century cannot be done."

UNESCO officials, who stress that they can only advise the Afghan government, which will decide how to treat the site, believe they have won Kabul over to their thinking. What is clear, says everyone involved with the Buddhas, is the deep attachment Afghans feel for the statues.

"From the former king to common people in the bazaar, they told me that for their moral reconstruction they need the physical reconstruction of those statues," says Mr. Bucherer, who has been visiting Afghanistan for 35 years. "They say we need to get those statues back.

"The Buddhas have a symbolic value," he adds. "Reconstruction would show they had completely got rid of the Al Qaeda and Taliban yoke."

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