Destroyed Buddha Statue

HIR: The Taliban’s dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddha marked just one of many instances of cultural loss in Afghanistan’s history. In the 1960s, French archaeologists caused irreparable damage by using bulldozers to excavate Ai-Khanoum, an ancient Greek city. In 1989, Russia ended its 10-year occupation of Afghanistan. When its forces pulled out, civil war ensued. During the conflict, in 1993, a bomb aimed at the Ministry of Defense hit an unintended target across the road: the National Museum of Afghanistan. That opened up the walls to plunderers, who stole an estimated 70 percent of the museum’s collection over the following months, including statues from antiquity and the famous Begram ivories, thousands of decorative plaques and figures carved from ivory and bone. The loss of cultural heritage persists today. In April 2023, a report revealed that Dilberjin, the largest ancient city in northern Afghanistan, had been significantly and systematically looted from 2019 to 2021. Looting and illegal excavations in the Bamiyan Valley, where the Bamiyan Buddhas had been located, have also been reported. Click here to read more (external link).