Taliban: 'We have dynamited Buddhas'

The two ancient statues of the Buddha that have serenely overlooked the valley of Bamiyan in Afghanistan for almost 1,700 years were blown up by the Taliban Islamic militia at the end of last week and now lie in ruins, The Independent can confirm.

The two ancient statues of the Buddha that have serenely overlooked the valley of Bamiyan in Afghanistan for almost 1,700 years were blown up by the Taliban Islamic militia at the end of last week and now lie in ruins, The Independent can confirm.

The Taliban Foreign Minister yesterday described to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, how the Taliban had begun destroying with dynamite the two priceless Buddhas - one 120 feet (36.5 metres) in height and the other, at 175 feet (53 metres), believed to be the world's tallest Buddha. Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil then boasted that "every movable statue" had been destroyed in Afghanistan.

A Taliban fatwa had decreed the statues were an inducement to idolatry.

According to a reliable Western source who monitored radio transmission between local Taliban commanders and headquarters, the demolition of the statues was done with military precision under the direct instructions of the Defence Minister, Mullah Ubaidullah. After the Muslim festival of Eid last week, "a truckload of dynamite" was taken to Bamiyan, the lush valley of extraordinary beauty that is enclosed by the snowy mountains of the Hindu Kush and Koh-I-Baba.

Previous attempts to wreck the statues have failed although an artillery shell destroyed the head of the smaller statue several years ago and the monuments have been badly pockmarked with bullets and tank shells.

The demolition began last Thursday, while Islamic scholars were publicly appealing to the Taliban to spare the statues, while a Unesco ambassador was flying to Kabul and a Japanese government delegation was meeting the movement's leader, the one-eyed Mullah Omar, in Khandahar.

"First they drilled holes in the side of the statues and packed them with dynamite," a Western source said. "Then they exploded the statues in sections until they had planed most of the body of the Buddha. It is now a huge pile of rubble."

In a final insult to the Buddhist world, the Taliban are refusing "to hand over the bits of the monuments" to the Japanese government.

At a meeting with Mr Annan in Islamabad yesterday, the Taliban Foreign Minister said that once the fatwa was adopted there was no going back.

The destruction of movable statues in Afghanistan began in earnest on 5 February when nine senior officials of the ruling militia entered the dilapidated national museum in Kabul and expressed outrage at what they said were idolatrous images on display. "They then identified 54 Buddhist statues which they deemed most offensive," according to a Western source, "locked the doors and set about destroying them with sledgehammers."

Whether "all movable statues" in Afghanistan have been destroyed remains in some doubt, however. None of the smaller statues were destroyed in public and there is a lucrative export market in Afghan antiques on which Taliban officials levy unofficial taxes. All the museum artefacts have been catalogued and antiques dealers in the West will now be monitored.

In the past two years, the ruling militia has committed at least seven massacres. Some 170 Afghans were executed by firing squad in Yakaolang and their bodies stacked up as a warning to others.