A French archaeological team looking for a giant Buddha thought to be buried close to Afghanistan’s destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas was forced to pack its bags on Sunday after a local military commander barred them from continuing their search.
The mission led by Professor Zemaryali Tarzi, an archaeology expert at Strasbourg University, had recently begun a month-long search to find the exact location of the 300 metre long horizontal Buddha, dubbed the Sleeping Buddha.
The French experts are convinced it is hidden nearby two other Buddhas which were destroyed by the former ultra-fundamentalist Taliban regime in March last year.
The statues, which dated back some 1 500 years, were destroyed in an orgy of explosions on the grounds that their human images were un-Islamic.
Their destruction triggered a wave of international protest.
”Commander Jawad ordered us to stop our search even though we had a letter of authorisation from the Culture Minister Makhdoom Raheen and were accompanied by four specialists from his ministry,” said the Afghan-born Tarzi.
The deputy governor of Bamiyan province, Mubaligh, told AFP that officials from the Hezb-e-Wahdat party, the Hazara faction in power in Bamiyan, had demanded a letter of authorisation from President Hamid Karzai or Vice President Karim Khalili, who is also leader of Hezb-e-Wahdat.
The mission has been funded by the French foreign ministry. – Sapa-AFP