Only one of the two giant Bamiyan Buddhas blown up by the Taliban is to rebuilt, according to a sculptor commissioned to oversee the project.
”The plan is to rebuild the big sculpture and leave the small one destroyed (as a permanent reminder) of the barbaric act of the Taliban and al-Qaida,” Amanullah Haidarzad told the Kabul Times.
”The total cost of the project is estimated at seven million dollars and all the materials will be provided locally. No artificial plastic or other material will be used.”
The fundamentalist Islamic militia provoked outrage when they destroyed the 1 500-year-old structures with a barrage of dynamite, rockets and tank shells over a period of 20 days last March. The movement’s spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered the destruction of the 55 metre male Buddha Sorkhbot and the 38 metre female Shah Mama statue on the grounds that they were idolatorous.
The statues, which were symbols of the local ethnic Hazara population’s history, were once one of Afghanistan’s main tourist attractions.
Haidarzad, the founder of Kabul University’s arts faculty, returned from exile in the United States earlier this year after being commissioned by the interim administration to undertake a reconstruction feasibilty study.
He said that local artists as well as art students would take part in the rebuilding project.
They would construct a steel frame which would then be cemented and covered with local clay.
”It will come out with no difference in shape and will be stronger than before,” he told the weekly.
Funding has still to be finalised, according to Haizardad who said he had been in talks about the project with interim leader Hamid Karzai and the former king Mohammed Zahir Shah.
A conference, organised by the interim government and the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Group (Unesco), to explore the possibilities for reconstructing the statues is due to take place in Kabul at the end of this month.
Taiwan-based Buddhist leader Hsin Tao announced last Thursday that he was pledging around $130 000 to the reconstruction project. ? Sapa-AFP