Al Jazeera’s Treasure Trove
Al Jazeera’s Treasure Trove Taysir Alony | Journalist specialising in Afghan affairs at Al Jazeera Media Network
At the time the Taliban was about to destroy the Buddhas of Bamiyan, I had an interview with the regime’s Minister of Information & Culture, Qudratullah Jamal. I reminded him of a verse from the holy Quran: “Revile not ye those whom they call upon besides Allah, lest they out of spite revile Allah in their ignorance.” “We are not insulting Buddha, we are simply destroying his statues. It is our property within our homeland. We have not Buddhists among us; and above all, we cannot be dictated to,” he replied. “Afghan children are dying due to lack of food and medicine because of the embargo, while the world is silent. But when we decide to destroy some stones, the whole world rises. Which is more precious, stones or human lives?” he added. I started to trace the story back. During the ongoing Afghan Civil War, the area around the Buddhas was under the control of the Shia Hizb-i-Wahdat militia, a part of the Northern Alliance which was fighting against the Taliban. Following the Taliban’s capture of Mazar-i-Sharif in August 1998, the Bamyan valley was entirely surrounded by the group.
Abdul Wahed, a Taliban commander operating in the area, announced his intention to blow up the Buddhas even before taking the valley. He was prevented from taking further action by the local governor and a direct order of the Supreme Leader, Mohammed Omar, who in 1999 issued a decree in favour of the preservation of the statues as a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors. The statues were destroyed by dynamite over several weeks, starting on March 2, 2001. We tried to document what was happening with our cameras, but it was almost impossible as Bamyan had been declared a military zone. Later, I met with one of the Defence Minister’s deputies, who had earlier helped us film battles. I tried to provoke him by saying: “It is claimed that you are killing the Shia prisoners of war.” He angrily replied: “On the contrary, they are killing ours,” citing the 1997 massacre in Mazar-i-Sharif.
It seems that I succeeded. Not only did he grant me access to interview the prisoners of war, but also arranged for a helicopter to take us from Kabul military airbase to Bamyan. Since I’d had back surgery weeks before, I was unable to board the plane. I assigned our cameraman. He came back with a rich collection of images of Hizb-i-Wahdat fighters who had frozen to death while retreating. The collection also included some footage of the monumental 6th century statues carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley at an elevation of 2,500 metres. We did not imagine it would be a scoop. They were some of the rare images of the statues in good condition before the demolition.
We tried to be present during the destruction, but no journalists were allowed into the area. So, we tried to retain a local fixer who would not be suspected as journalists. A few days later, we heard that the process had begun. In mid-March, a US television station showed some images of heavy smoke above the monuments. We learnt that a hefty amount of money was paid for those images. The following day, our fixer came back a with video tape documenting the first destruction attempt, which had failed. One of the many journalists who had flocked to the area approached me to obtain the footage. He offered a huge amount of money – enough, in his words, to “secure my retirement.” But I refused.
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