The Taliban regime in Afghanistan and cultural property. The case of the Buddha statues of Bamyan

Abstract

The aim of the article was to conduct an in-depth reflection on the attitude of the Afghan Taliban to the issue of cultural heritage and cultural goods, Many events, especially the spectacular destruction of Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley in 2001, have been interpreted in stereotypes based primarily on religious argumentation. The author tried to show the more complex genesis of the act of cultural barbarism, which was undoubtedly the destruction of the monuments from Bamiyan. The motivation of the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam is only one of the factors that led to the destruction of the dowries. Political and ethnic perspectives, issues of the politics of remembrance and many others should also be taken into account. To what extent was the act of destruction and what followed in the next quarter of a century merely a manifestation of barbaric fanaticism, and to what extent did it contain an element of pragmatism? The author tries to get closer to the answers to these non-obvious questions.