by Kirill Semenov
[REGNUM] March 26 marks 25 years since the destruction of two giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan's Bamiyan province. This event, widely considered barbaric—and one cannot deny it—requires a more careful and calm analysis years later.
The destruction of the statues is usually portrayed as an outbreak of religious fanaticism, which is only partly true. The history of this tragic chapter is a complex web of historical contradictions, ethnic rivalries, and political calculations.
To understand why what had been cherished for 1,400 years of Islamic presence in Afghanistan was suddenly destroyed in 2001, one must delve into history.
DESCENDANTS OF THE WHITE HUNS
The Bamiyan Valley lies on the Silk Road. In the sixth and seventh centuries CE, Buddhist art flourished here, incorporating the traditions of Hellenistic Greece, India, and Persia. Two statues—38 and 55 meters tall—were carved into a sandstone cliff during the heyday of the Kushan Empire.
The Kushans, originally a semi-nomadic people of Central Asian origin, created a state that stretched from the Aral Sea to the Ganges.
They were patrons of Buddhism, although their culture was syncretic—mixed. The coins of the Kushan kings featured Greek, Persian, and Indian deities side by side, which did not hinder the spread of Buddhism.
The Bamiyan statues became the pinnacle of Gandhara art (named after the region of Gandhara in ancient India, which occupied the territory of modern Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the eastern outskirts of Iran).
This unique style was also associated with the rise of the Kushan Empire, where Greek sculpture techniques, inherited by the Kushans from the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (a fragment of Alexander the Great's empire ), were combined with Buddhist iconography. It was the expression of a cosmopolitan civilization that transcended modern ethnic boundaries.
When Islam arrived in Afghanistan, the Kushan Empire had long since collapsed. New ethnic groups emerged from its ruins.
Among them are the Pashtuns, whose ethnogenetic memory is linked to the Hephthalites (White Huns), specifically to one of their clans, the Ebodalos, from which the distorted name "Hephthalites" is believed to have originated. The Pashtun confederation of Abdali tribes, who live in southern Afghanistan, are the heirs of those same Hephthalite Ebodalos and bear their name.
By the way, Hamid Karzai, president from 2001 to 2014, is from one of these descendants of the White Huns – the Hephthalites.
The Hephthalites were the Kushan Empire's bitterest enemies, inflicting a series of crushing defeats on them in the 5th and 6th centuries. This enmity was surprisingly reinterpreted in the 21st century, when the Pashtuns destroyed the last vestiges of the Kushan Empire, represented by these statues.
HOW "IDOLS" BECAME THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS
In the 7th and 8th centuries, when Muslim armies brought Islam to Central Asia, the statues had already stood in the valley for hundreds of years. Contrary to popular belief, Islamic civilization developed a complex and largely tolerant attitude toward pre-Islamic antiquities and even images of deities.
Moreover, for centuries, Muslim rulers of Egypt, Syria, Iran, and India carefully preserved the legacy of bygone eras. The Sphinx at Giza, the pyramids, the ruins of Palmyra and Persepolis—all remained untouched under Muslim rule.
Afghanistan was no exception. Rulers from the Ghaznavid, Ghurid, and Mughal dynasties, as well as the Afghan Durrani emirs, none of them encroached on the Buddhas.
Moreover, the statues were surprisingly integrated into local Muslim culture.
The people of the Bamiyan Valley—mostly Shia Hazaras, an ethnic group of Mongolian origin—created their own legend about the statues.
They were named Salsal (the large statue) and Shahamama (the smaller one). According to legend, they were two lovers—the prince of Bamiyan and a princess from a distant land. Forbidden to be together in life, they turned to stone to remain forever, but remained separated.
Another version, widespread among local Muslims, linked the statues to Hazrat Ali, the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad. He allegedly converted the pagan king of Bamiyan to Islam, and his statues became a reminder of this event. Thus, pre-Islamic monuments found new life in Islamic mythology, losing their original religious significance but retaining veneration as historical evidence.
The Islamic tradition has demonstrated its ability to assimilate other heritages and to transform foreign shrines into its own traditions.
FROM TOLERANCE TO DESTRUCTION
The Taliban* movement captured Kabul in 1996. For the first few years, the Taliban's attitude toward the Bamiyan Buddhas was tolerant. In 1999, the Taliban officially assured UNESCO that the statues would be preserved. What changed?
In the winter and spring of 2001, the Taliban regime was in a critical situation.
First, there was an ongoing, brutal war with the Northern Alliance, which controlled the northeast of the country and consisted mainly of Ahmad Shah Massoud's Tajiks and Rashid Dostum's Uzbeks.
Bamiyan province was a strategically important area populated by Shia Hazaras, with whom the Taliban had different relationships.
But by early 2001, the Taliban had finally cleared the valley of those Hazara forces who opposed them. Now they had to consolidate their power. The Buddhas, in a sense, were a symbol of the Hazara's special status.
Secondly, pressure from the international community was growing against the backdrop of Osama bin Laden's move from Sudan to Afghanistan, where he blew up American embassies in Africa and barracks in Saudi Arabia.
UN sanctions, isolation, demands for Osama's extradition—all of this was a challenge to the Taliban. The destruction of the statues was a response to these challenges, a demonstration of defiance, a provocation in the face of pressure from the international community, and above all, the United States. It was a response to the West, disguised as a religious imperative.
Thirdly, within the movement itself, there was a struggle between moderate and radical factions. By 2001, the radicals had gained the upper hand.
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This decision wasn't unanimous even among the Taliban. Many ordinary fighters and mid-level commanders privately expressed regret; for many of them, having grown up in Afghanistan, these statues were part of their land's heritage.
PASHTUN NATIONALISM UNDER A RELIGIOUS GUISE
A key factor that often escapes the attention of Western observers is the ethnic dimension of this act.
The Taliban is a movement composed predominantly of Pashtuns. Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, and for a long time they were synonymous with the word "Afghan," and until the mid-20th century, they were the only ones referred to as Afghans.
For centuries, Pashtun rulers dominated other peoples—Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras—until civil war and the introduction of Soviet troops allowed minorities to come to power in the country for the first time in history: Tajiks Burhanuddin Rabbani and Massoud, and Uzbek Dostum.
The Pashtuns took this as a challenge, and soon the Pashtun Taliban movement emerged under religious slogans.
The Taliban's ideology combines traditional Islam with Pashtun nationalism. Many of the Sharia provisions introduced by the Taliban are selected to align Islamic law with Pashtun customs and the Pashtunwali code.
The Taliban often choose the strictest, most uncompromising Islamic norms simply because they conceal Pashtun traditional values. Religious rhetoric serves as a cover for ethnic domination.
The most striking example is the attitude towards women.
In classical Sharia, women have inheritance and property rights, the right to education, the right to divorce, etc.
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The same logic was at work in Bamiyan. By destroying the statues, the Taliban invoked the prohibition of idolatry. But behind this lay a desire to erase the memory of the Hazara, for whom the Buddhas had become a symbol of identity.
Their cultural landscape, their connection to the land, their mythology—all of this was concentrated in the Bamiyan Valley. The attack on the statues was a blow to the Hazaras, an attempt to assert Pashtun hegemony in this land.
The destruction of the Buddhas demonstrated that no international protests, no requests even from friendly states (Pakistan urged them to preserve the statues), could shake their resolve. It was a gesture of absolute sovereignty, albeit expressed in destructive form.
Even statements from recognized Islamic authorities at the time, heeded by the radicals, were of no help. For example, Egyptian theologian Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi called on the Taliban not to destroy the statues.
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In March 2001, the front line was just a few kilometers from Bamiyan.
Massoud's Northern Alliance, composed of Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, was preparing for a spring offensive. For the Taliban, control of central Afghanistan was a sensitive issue.
The destruction of the Buddhas was not only a symbolic act, but also a military measure: it demoralized the Hazaras, deprived them of support in their own cultural space, and showed that the Taliban were ready to do anything to retain power.
Six months later, the events of September 11th would change the world. The US operation in Afghanistan seemed to have swept away the Taliban regime.
But by that time the Buddhas were gone, and the Taliban, despite everything, had returned and were now even able to establish good relations with the Shiite Hazaras.
Perhaps some of them regret that they rushed into this decision, which was unnecessary in a religious sense and wrong in a political sense, turning the entire world against the Taliban.
Twenty-five years later, the empty niches in the rock of Bamiyan remain a silent reminder of the complexity of Afghan society. And this isn't a story of "Islam versus Buddhism"—Islam peacefully coexisted with these statues for 1,400 years. But civil war, ethnic rivalry, and political isolation have led to these cultural monuments paying a price.