ABSTRACT
Twin colossi once stood at the centre of world trade. To the merchants and brokers who gazed on them as they went about their business, the two enormous structures must have seemed emblems of an entire civilization. Perhaps this was why the Taliban government of Afghanistan made the destruction of the twin statues, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, one of their highest priorities. Ruling a war-torn nation with no infrastructure and paltry food supplies, they nevertheless devoted an incredible amount of time and effort to the removal of these icons. It was far from easy: the statues were hewed from solid rock, 53 and 38 metres tall, and they had presided over that part of the ancient Silk Road for 1,500 years. The Taliban treated them as physical enemies, blasting them with rockets, mortars and tank shells, drilling holes in their heads and filling them with
dynamite, burning tyres on their lips in order to blacken their faces. Finally, in May 2001, they succeeded in destroying their stone foes, thus ironically proving the truth of the Buddha’s central teaching that nothing on earth can aspire to permanence.
