property. The Taliban were prepared to disrupt the former and
destroy the latter if they thought it necessary to do so. One mani-
festation of this was the prohibition of music, which struck par-
ticularly hard given the popularity of music in Afghanistan and
the richness of its musical traditions (Baily, 2001). But much
the most spectacular episode, which earned the Taliban world-
wide condemnation, was the destruction on 10 March 2001 of
Afghanistan’s two greatest archaeological treasures, the giant
statues of Buddha carved in the cliffs above Bamiyan (Marigo,
2001; Centlivres, 2001). Commander Dadullah was the supervisor
of this staggering piece of cultural vandalism, but it was ordered
by Mulla Omar in a decree of 26 February directed against
statues; pursuant to this decree, two Taliban ministers smashed
their way through the Kabul Museum (McGrory and Alberge,
2001). The Buddhas had come under serious threat in 1997
(Thomas, 1997), and on 18 September 1998, a commander fired
shells at one of the statues (Rashid, 2000: 76; Griffin, 2001: 193),
but the decision finally to dynamite them in 2001 provoked con-
siderable speculation as to the motive. Various possibilities, not
necessarily incompatible with each other, surfaced in commen-
taries on what had happened. Taliban spokesmen were later to
claim that the Buddhas were destroyed in reaction to the
hypocrisy of Western statesmen who cared about statues more
than near-destitute Afghans. Since the Taliban had shown no
interest in developing policies to alleviate the plight of near-des-
titute Afghans, this bore all the hallmarks of a clumsy ex post
factorationalisation. Some saw the destruction as a primal scream
prompted by international isolation or as an attempt to force the
international community to enter discussion with the Taliban.
Others inferred a desire to punish the Hazaras, in whose land they
were located, and possibly deprive them of future tourism rev-
enue; or a symbolic display of power (Spillmann, 2001). Still oth-
ers sensed the influence of Osama Bin Laden, or other Islamic
radicals, a possibility for which some tantalising evidence later
surfaced (DiGiovanni, 2001). But it is unlikely that we will ever
know exactly why the Buddhas were blasted out of existence.
The Rise and Rule of the Taliban, 1994-2001 241