Actually it appears it was outsiders that persuaded the Talibs to destroy the statue, namely bin Laden. One of the Taliban high-ups (Khaqzar) at least believed it was a travesty to destroy them. It seems like the Arabs waltzed in, overawed the provincial Talib leaders with all the money they threw around, and took them for a ride by appealing to their fundamentalist religious sensibilities.
Good link:
udel.edu
A one-page document discovered in a house in Kabul, labeled the "minute of a meeting," described how al Qaeda fighters, as well as Uzbek, Chechen and Pakistani militants who were allied with them, had sent a delegation to the Taliban to "discuss the fate of the Buddha statues," a reference to the two sculptures in Bamian province carved out of a brown sandstone cliff during the 3rd and 5th centuries. The Taliban blew up the statues earlier this year, apparently at the behest of al Qaeda.
The document suggests the "Islamic groups" or "foreigners" met repeatedly and lobbied the Taliban to take various actions, some of which were opposed by the Afghan leaders. Said Amin Mujahed, who was involved in trying to persuade the Taliban to spare the statues, said, "I believe from the first days that this was not the Taliban doing this. This was the Islamic radicals from Pakistan, the Arab Wahhabis. The Taliban were not the ones deciding -- they were only the implementers.
"Other people were dictating to them, and they were just repeating the words," said Mujahed, a history professor at Kabul University. "You can easily say they [the Taliban] were just the spokespersons for bin Laden."
"In recent months, the Taliban lost control over themselves," said another history professor, Abdulbaki Hasari, who appealed to the Taliban not to destroy the statues. "They were just controlled by these Islamic groups from outside the country." |
