Osama Bin Laden's fingerprints have been seen on the ruins of the Bamiyan Buddhas.(AFP/File)
Posted on 10/21/2006 12:59:28 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan (AFP) - In a huge cavity dug into the side of a cliff, workers search through the rubble to exhume the remains of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan.
At the scene of the crime carried out in 2001 all evidence points to Osama bin Laden as the mastermind.
"This is the terrorism of the Taliban," says Rahim, an official at the work site in front of the empty niche of the biggest of the two statues, one of which stood 55 metres (182 feet) tall and the other 38 metres.
Wearing a hard hat and a mask over his mouth, one of the workers, Rajab, is trying to save the remains of the destruction in which one of his family members played a part.
"The Taliban took Ali Reza, one of my relatives, and they suspended him from a cable at the side of the Buddhas. Then they forced him to beat at the statues with an axe and an iron rod," he says.
"They took four or five like him, to punish them for having fought against them."
He says there were Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens among the Taliban fanatics who oversaw the demolition of the ancient relics -- until then the largest standing Buddhist statues in the world -- carried out on the orders of the head of the Taliban regime because they were deemed idolatrous.
One of his colleagues, Abdul Ali, adds: "The Taliban were the executors, but the masterminds were the Arabs and the Pakistanis."
At the nearby village of Sangchaspon, where the government has sent people who once lived in caves dug into the cliff around the Buddhas, two more witnesses give a similar account.
"They started with tanks but that did not do much damage so they brought in explosives," says Mirza Hussein, another of the prisoners the Taliban brought in to destroy the Buddhas.
"There were Arabs and Pakistanis," says Hussein, who was present for all 25 days it took to demolish the statues. As he recalls it, the foreigners "came by helicopter".
It is no secret that Osama bin Laden moved around Afghanistan in a helicopter. Indeed, former Tunisian footballer Nizar Trabelsi told investigators ahead of his 2003 trial in Belgium on terrorism-related charges that he accompanied bin Laden on a day trip to Bamiyan aboard the Al-Qaeda leader's personal helicopter.
Trabelsi, who was sentenced in September 2003 to 10 years in prison for having planned a suicide attack on a military base, described in great detail how he and bin Laden had used the statues as targets for shooting practice.
Documents found in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban attested to the influence exercised by bin Laden and Al-Qaeda on Mullah Mohammed Omar, head of the Taliban regime, that led him to decide to demolish the monuments.
The destruction of the Buddhas was an expression of the ultraconservative salafi Islam, whose followers believe it to be a pure form of the religion, according to Afghan specialist Olivier Roy, who adds that Al-Qaeda followers are salafists.
The destruction of the Buddha, he said, was proof of the influence of the terror network on the Taliban.
"It is at the same time an alignment with Al-Qaeda in the field of ideas and also an endorsement of the protection of bin Laden," he said.
In 1999 Mullah Omar issued a decree that the Bamiyan statues "shall not be destroyed but protected" because Afghanistan's Buddhist population no longer existed and so there was no possibility they would be worshipped as idols.
But a resolution passed by the UN Security Council in December 2000 demanding the extradition of bin Laden and toughening of sanctions against the Taliban regime seems to have inspired a reversal of that hands-off policy towards the Buddhas, not only in Bamiyan but nationwide.
A few weeks after the Security Council resolution was passed, the Taliban issued a new decree ordering the destruction of all statues across Afghanistan because they "may be turned into idols in future".
The destruction of the two Bamiyan Buddhas allowed Al-Qaeda to drive the Taliban to a point of no return with the international community.
"It was a direct response to the demand of the Americans to hand over bin Laden," says Roy of the pounding of the Buddhas.
"This attempt (to have Bin Laden surrendered) was done for from the moment at which they destroyed the Buddhas."
Osama Bin Laden's fingerprints have been seen on the ruins of the Bamiyan Buddhas.(AFP/File)
The fingerprints of hate, death... and ignorance.
GGG PING
Bushes Fault again.
The two colossal statues of Buddha carved into the sandstone cliffs of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, were demolished by the Taleban on March 2001. The Taleban people was a fundamentalist Islamic militia that has governed most of Aghanistan from 1996 to December 2001. Against international protests and appeals, the supreme Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar ordered their destruction as part of a campaign to rid the land of all un-Islamic graven images. The leader issued an edict declaring the statues (and therefore the ancient Buddhas) as insulting to Islam. This means that all idolatrous images of humans and animals and all those idols considered by them to be an insult to Islam had to be destroyed. Taleban leader rejected also a proposal to build a concrete wall in front of the two Buddhas statues instead of their destruction.
The explosion of one of the Buddha statue (Courtesy of CNN)
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Can you imagine if anyone would blow up a statue of Mohammed?
"The destruction of the two Bamiyan Buddhas... was a direct response to the demand of the Americans to hand over bin Laden,"
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This was done in MARCH 2001. They can't have it both ways -- either they have to admit that the Bush administration was working on trying to get Bin Laden BEFORE 9-11, or they cannot blame this on President Bush.
"But a resolution passed by the UN Security Council in December 2000 demanding the extradition of bin Laden and toughening of sanctions against the Taliban regime seems to have inspired a reversal of that hands-off policy towards the Buddhas, not only in Bamiyan but nationwide. "
I guess it may be Clinton's fault...
The author's version was that the Buddha's were destroyed to teach "the West" a lesson about caring for stone
more than [the Afghani] people.
Binnie still creeps me out. I think it's the freakazoid smile that puts it over the top. Wherever he is now, I hope he has nothing to smile about.
Pity they didn't fall on his head. Bin Laden and his minions are swine.
Everything can be blamed on President Bush.
Not much chance of that in the first place, you ignorant raghead, since most Buddhists don't do that. But intent still generates karma even if you're actions are misplaced. Have a nice eon in a hot hell, jihadis.
Er... you wanna re-think that question?
I remember writing to the NY Times at the time that blowing up the Buddhas was comparable to the destruction of Confederate flags by Liberals; both were holy to some people, profane to others and destroyed by the latter.
They didn't publish it. ;^)
And bin Laden's finger prints are all over the 9/11 attack on the WTC, the Pentagon and the airliner crash in Pennsylvania. Just imagine what these Arab/Muslim creeps would do in Washington D.C. if they got the chance. Down goes the Washington Monument; and they'd love to destroy the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Stutuary Hall in the Capital building, the headstones and monuments at Arlington Cemetary. And anything they can think of that "offends" Islam. What a truely hateful religion/cult and people they are.
["Bushes Fault again."]
You're being silly, of course.
Nice pic of islumms Pope.
As a Buddhist, I don't know that there are any remonstrations against revenge. Buddhism, like our American Constitution, isn't a suicide pact. So tit-for-tat, Islamic idols are fair game - The Dome of the Rock and the Kaaba.
Let's hear any Muslim argue that those sites are not Islamic idols. The test would be simple - would Muslims cry foul if anyone destoyed them?
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