Every month we highlight one of the 690 locations worldwide that UNESCO has declared World Heritage Sites since 1972. World Heritage Sites are natural formations and cultural artifacts (ancient cities, ruins, works of art) that because of their natural or historical significance are regarded as treasures to be preserved intact for all time in the name of humanity.
Not every significant site is on the World Heritage list. That is why it is such a sad thing to have to comment on the malign destruction of one of the world’s greatest cultural treasures, the 1,300-year-old Bamiyan Buddhas of central Afghanistan, destroyed by artillery fire in March by the Taliban. Taliban is the army of teenage barbarians that has plunged Afghanistan into a dark age with its deadly parody of Islam, built upon an ignorance so willfully deep that it has replaced Allah as Taliban’s god.
In many ways, Taliban is the descendent of all the other barbarians who destroyed what their ideologies could not fathom or abide: the Vandals and Huns as they sacked the Roman Empire; Stalin’s destruction of churches; Mao’s Cultural Revolution; Pol Pot’s razing of schools and cities; Hitler’s book burnings and desecration of synagogues.
Some people might argue that sovereignty is so sacred a concept that a government can destroy whatever artifacts or monuments it wants. That may be, although a better case would be made for Taliban’s sovereignty if it were a legitimate government freely chosen by the will of its people. But it is not. It rules by threat of quick death and it has already enslaved half of its subjects – women – as vassals under a permanent, virtual house arrest.
But beyond considerations of what those in power can claim to have rightful control over is the simple recognition that anybody who maliciously uproots and destroys the past is no friend of free thought. In Orwell’s 1984, one of the Party’s slogans was “He who controls the past controls the future.” In their own primitive way, Taliban’s thugs understand this: If you can remove memories of a better or different time, your subjects can be brought to believe that your regime is the best that has ever been.
The brighter side to this is that virtually no government agreed with Taliban’s savagery. For a few days the world was treated to the spectacle of nations from every corner of the globe condemning Taliban’s actions. Iraq stood with the United States, Israel stood with China, Argentina stood with Great Britain against the vandalism.
That spontaneous international unity was a sign that at least in some matters, people worldwide agree on a common humanity and the need to protect significant artifacts and wild places.
