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FWIW, I recall an Art Bell show that had a guest that visited Afghanistan post Buddha, pre-US anti-Terrorist campaign.

The guy makes his living writing books on dangerous places.

Any way, talking with the then-Taliban leader, the "reason" for the destruction of the Buddhas was to show the
Western aid providers that "stone statues are nothing compared to the needs of the people".

Obviously, their culture didn't keep up with the intended use of a soccer stadium, let alone "modern" aid in the form
of vacinations, etc.

From the March 2001 issue of Geographical, a UK based magazine, didn't check the link, probably long gone:

The Statues Did no Wrong
When the Indian archaeologist Rakhaldas Sengupta first went to Bamiyan in Afghanistan in 1964, it was a tiny little village with two gigantic stone-cut Buddha statues in a state of utter disrepair. When he was there last, in 1977, Bamiyan was a bustling tourist spot, and the Buddha statues had been fully restored... The two governments shared the cost of the project, with India contributing Rs 2 million towards it. Afghanistan provided the Indian team with material and the labour - convicts who came for work heavily escorted every morning. Chemicals were shipped from India via Karachi, Pakistan... The vandalism, Sengupta believes, started in the ninth century. Medieval emperor Genghis Khan burnt a portion of the wooden armature and Mogul ruler Aurangzeb destroyed the legs. Modern vandals damaged the statues too, for Sengupta's team found the colossi riddled with gunshots and arrowheads... The big Buddha, the fourth tallest Buddha statue in the world, was 55 metres high and the smaller one, a kilometre away, was 38 metres tall. Work came to a standstill for six months every October, as the mountains turned white with snow. A guard took care of the colossi until the Indians returned in the spring.