Ancient Treasures destroyed in Taleban's War against In

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Taleban ministers led art raid that destroyed counry s ancient cultural heritage.<p>The Times, UK<br>Friday 23rd NOvember, 2001<br>BY DANIEL MCGRORY AND DALYA ALBERGE<p>TWO Taleban ministers armed with pickaxes and mallets led a gang on a rampage through Kabul’s National Museum, smashing more than 2,750 works of art. <p>Witnesses described for the first time yesterday how treasures, some more than 4,000 years old, were destroyed on the direct orders of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taleban’s supreme leader.<p>UN experts are desperate to reach Afghanistan to investigate the extent of the Taleban’s destruction of cultural monuments and artefacts and looting by fighters. <p>It was the Taleban’s so-called “war against infidels” last year that provoked the assault on the museum, just weeks after Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Mullah Qudratullah Jamal, Minister of Information and Culture, and Aqajan Motaseb, the Finance Minister, spent three days touring the museum with its senior curators. The curators were forced at gunpoint to point out the significance of each exhibit before the Taleban officials took turns to smash it. <p>Mir Abdul Rauf Zaker, 50, an archaeologist and director of the Institute of History at the Afghan Academy of Science, described to the Los Angeles Times how he was forced to witness the official vandalism. “I don’t know why they became the enemy of our ancient things,” he said. <p>He was joined on the forced march through the museum by Kabul’s most respected art historian, Yahya Mohebzadah, 38, who had spent years trying to protect thousands of cultural treasures. Both risked their lives by hiding some items. Some treasures hidden in a basement were, however, smashed beyond repair. <p>Mr Mohebzadah said that the Taleban started with one of the prized possessions, a clay image of a bodhisattva, a Buddhist who seeks complete enlightenment, made 1,600 years ago. When the Taleban saw the historian crying, they threatened to kill him. <p>At first the two officials believed that the Taleban ministers were sent to make an inventory of the collection. “But when they entered, they were like a hungry tiger looking for prey,” Mr Mohebzadah said. <p>Soldiers from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice used sledgehammers to speed up the process. The Culture Minister took particular delight in smashing a limestone statue of King Kanishka, who reigned around AD2 when Buddhism reached its peak in the region. The only thing left of the statue were its feet so the officials suggested that there was not much point destroying it. The mullah reached for an axe and laughed. <p>The museum’s records were destroyed, so all that Mr Mohebzadah has left as an inventory is a tourist guide- book from 1974. <p>When the Taleban came to power in 1996 more than 70 per cent of the museum’s collection had already been stolen or destroyed. At first the new rulers protected the hoard. That attitude changed last year with Mullah Omar’s edict to allow nothing but Islamic art. <p>UN investigators are trying to establish what happened to crateloads of treasures stored at the Ministry of Information and Culture. Taleban gangs were seen loading crates from its office on to lorries before they fled Kabul.<p><br>