Art in Afghanistan: Devastated – Culture

The first head of a statue, it is already on the ground. On Sunday the Taliban hoisted their white flag in front of the governor’s seat of the central Afghan province of Bamiyan, on Monday the newly appointed administrator of the province announced that minorities had nothing to fear in the new Islamic emirate of Afghanistan. In the evening there were the first rumors, finally pictures: The base of the monument on a central roundabout in the provincial capital is empty.

The plastic that was blown up by the Taliban is not of great artistic value. The memorial shows a man with a beard and a prayer chain, sitting and somewhat squat. The symbolic value was all the higher for the inhabitants of the Bamiyan Valley: Abdul Ali Mazari was a political leader of the Hazara minority living here, who are viewed as inferior and discriminated against by many in Afghanistan.

Under the Islamists’ first rule until 2001, the Hazara were also persecuted for their Shiite beliefs. Mazari organized the resistance against the Taliban, who killed him in 1995. They reportedly lured him into a trap, tortured him and pushed him out of a helicopter. Since 2008 the statue has been commemorating Mazari, and in 2016 President Ashraf Ghani granted him the status of “martyr for national unity”.

Long before they stormed Kabul, the Taliban were trying to build a more modern image. As early as February they declared that they wanted to respect the country’s cultural assets. When they arrived in Kabul, their spokesman Abdul Haq Hammad repeatedly stated that all political opponents would be forgiven, and that women and minorities also had nothing to fear. “I still wonder why people are afraid of the Taliban,” he said.

In the demolition of the Mazari monument, some now see the first evidence that the Islamists’ announcements that they have learned over the past twenty years cannot be trusted. Others point out that the assurances of the political leadership in Kabul may not necessarily interest commanders in the province. However, there is agreement that the destruction of the Mazari monument is a highly symbolic signal, if only because of its geographical location.

If you land on the gravel runway at Bamiyan airport and drive towards the city, the road first leads you through fields. Shortly before you reach “Martyrs Mazari Square”, half-sunken tanks from another war protrude from the field, remnants of the Soviet invasion. But they only distract the view for a short time: on the opposite rock face, less than 1.5 kilometers as the crow flies, the gigantic rock niches gape, which like nothing else illustrate the cultural ignorance of the Taliban in their first rule. The Buddha statutes of Bamiyan arose here for a millennium and a half – until March 2001.

Although the statues were no longer religiously worshiped, the Islamists at that time forced residents of the valley to destroy the two 53 and 35 meter high figures. Taliban leader Mullah Omar is said to have ordered the iconoclasm out of anger at the international community, which refused to recognize his regime and refuse financial support to the starving people. Others, such as the former Taliban governor of Bamiyan, attributed the destruction to the then growing influence of al-Qaeda. The action with explosives, artillery and anti-aircraft guns lasted almost two weeks.

The first attempts at reconstruction began soon after the Taliban had been driven out in 2001, and German experts have also been working on securing the rubble, documenting and restoring remains since 2007. Like other archaeologists who dug in Afghanistan, they now fear for the safety of their local workers. Many German archaeological associations and institutions are now writing in an open letter in which they call on the federal government to rescue their employees. Attacks are so far only known on deposits: A depot of the Strasbourg archeology professor Zemaryali Tarzi in Bamiyan is said to have been cleared.

It is unclear whether the Taliban or ordinary criminals were responsible for this looting. But in addition to religious fanaticism, the precarious security situation in particular threatens the country’s cultural assets. The illegal trade in stolen artefacts and those from robbery excavations had boomed in recent years, especially in Syria, almost all warring parties and mafia networks tried to turn antiquities into money: the areas around the ancient city of Apamea on the Orontes looked like a lunar landscape, Aerial photos showed how crater after crater was lined up after unprofessional excavations. The United Arab Emirates were an important transshipment point for stolen Syrian cultural goods – the place where the corrupt elites of Afghanistan have acquired large villas and business addresses in recent years.

The staff of the Afghan National Museum in Kabul begs for help

A few hours before the Taliban finally took power in the capital on Sunday, perhaps for this reason, employees of the Afghan National Museum in Kabul pleaded in an urgent press release “Security forces, the international community, the Taliban and other influential parties” to prevent that “opportunists use the situation” to “destroy or smuggle” goods in the museum.

Susanne Annen, exhibition manager at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, has been in contact with some of the museum’s employees since she advised the Kabul Ministry of Culture on the reconstruction of the museum for three years. It had been looted several times since the outbreak of the Afghan civil war in the 1990s, and almost 70 percent of the artifacts were lost. “At the moment the situation is calm,” reports Annen, “yesterday the staff received the news that a new minister had been appointed”. At a press conference, the Taliban introduced their previous spokesman, Zabeehullah Mujahid, as the new head of department for information and culture, saying that the museum employees are now at home and are waiting to see how the situation develops. “Of course they will also ask themselves whether they want to work for the new regime.”

An iconoclasm, such as the one organized by IS in the then newly renovated “Mosul Museum” in Iraq – 2015 shocked videos in which fighters destroyed plastic with sledgehammers and jackhammers – experts are less afraid that the Taliban 2.0 is far too much into international ones Appreciation. Susanne Annen says, for example, that she cannot imagine that the new masters of Afghanistan will once again enforce a complete ban on art and culture – “the hope would be that they might move pre-Islamic art into the depots and only Islamic art in the exhibition rooms show”.

Open detailed view

The finds from Tilla Tepe, the “golden hill”, are said to be in a “safe place” not in the museum’s depots. In 1978, six graves were discovered in northern Afghanistan containing more than 20,000 weapons, jewelry and bowls – mostly made of gold. The treasure survived the civil war and the first Taliban period in a hiding place; in 2003 it was rediscovered in a central bank vault. Because of the uncertain situation in the country, Susanne Annen from the Bundeskunsthalle helped to bring the “Bactrian Gold” abroad. License fees for an exhibition tour through 29 museums in 13 countries brought the government in Kabul in the following years 4.5 million dollars.

The treasure returned last year, and the now deposed Minister of Culture soon announced that he would be sending the collection on the road again for her own protection. Corruption in the country is too high and the Afghan National Bank lacks credibility. “We will send him off as soon as we have reached an agreement,” said Minister Mohammad Tahir Zuhair. But it shouldn’t come to that.