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Afghan archaeologists race to study Buddhist site before destruction
We all remember the Bamiyan statues, those giant stone Buddhas the Taliban blew up in 2001. One of the 1,500 year-old statues is pictured here. Pictures are all we have left of them.Now another Buddhist site in Afghanistan is under threat of destruction. This time the danger isn't the Taliban, but a Chinese mining company. The site of Mes Aynak in eastern Afghanistan was home to a thriving Buddhist monastery in the seventh century. It's also right next to an abandoned Soviet mine that may have the world's second-largest reserve of copper. A Chinese mining company has invested $3.5 billion to exploit the mine and Afghan officials are eager for work to get underway.
A team of Afghani archaeologists is busy excavating the site and has found an entire monastery complex with more than 150 statues. They were originally given three years, a woefully inadequate length of time for a team of barely forty people, and now they're being pressured to finish by the end of this year. The archaeologists fear that once the miners move in, the monastery will get wrecked.
The mine will bring much-needed jobs and wealth to Afghanistan, which is also courting adventure tours, so the in the rush to yank copper out of their land they might want to think about preserving some of their past.
[Photo courtesy Marco Bonavoglia via Wikimedia Commons]
Filed under: Arts and Culture, History, Learning, Asia, Afghanistan, China, News
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
daniyal Dec 2nd 2011 3:52AM
I say stop the mine, Afghanistan is nothing without its history-If people care then we have lots of other stuff to offer the world. Why can't the international community declare this place a world heritage area? Why the rest of the international community condenm this?There are plenty of other sites rich in minerals which have been largely untapped all these years. Most afghans are not aware of whats going on in Kabul or they would surely protest the rape of their beautiful land. Let it be known the warlords in Kabul will taking in the lions share of whatever the Chinese throw our way-the laborers will will be facing the most risks at the lowest earnings.
nanzaar samadi Dec 4th 2011 3:53AM
Where is all the rage and anger that we saw all over the world when the taliban commited this crime?
Something tells me that the same wall street mafia that that robbed the Americans clean is behind this heist or wall street's propaganda machines would have been working overtime exposing to the world how china is exploiting the poor afghans. Wonder how much the greedy American middlemen got paid? Or they need pacify the chinese by giving them some of the loot so the chinese are not inclined to be sympathetic to any Afghans thinking of ways to take back control of their nation or its resources.