Taliban defies world by destroying ancient treasures

Despite international efforts to stop the destruction, Afghanistan's ruling Taliban carried out its leader's edict to destroy all statues by firing mortars and cannon at two immense edifices of Buddha carved from cliffs of solid rock at Bamiyan. Not satisfied with creating an intolerable present and doubtful future for the Afghan people, the fundamentalist Islamist militia is now bent on eliminating all vestiges of Afghani stan's ancient past as well.
In his zeal to establish the world's purest Islamic state, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar considers it the duty of all true believers to demolish idols -- even those 1,500 years old and considered world treasures. The fundamentalist movement, which regards all human likenesses to be un-Islamic, have even targeted artwork housed in Afghanistan's museums.
Cultural 'purification': Eradicating a people's culture -- its history and religion -- has long been a means by which one group has gained and maintained ascendancy over another. Destroying temples, churches and statuary; burning literature and holy books and murdering clerical leaders were practiced in ancient Greece and Rome, in renaissance Spain, in reformation Europe, and in the 20th century in Germany, Russia and China, for example.
But the Taliban barbarians, invoking a brand of Islam practiced in no other nation, are bent on destroying the lives of their own people as well.
No rights: Human and civil rights do not exist in Afghanistan. Women and girls have been particularly repressed, forbidden to go to school, denied health care and denied the ability to work. Brutal punishments -- stonings, executions, arms or hands hacked off -- have marked the regime.
So it should probably come as no surprise that works considered world cultural treasures are receiving the same treatment.
Governments around the world as well as the U.N. agency UNESCO have called on the Taliban to cease and desist. The foreign minister of India, Jaswant Singh, said his nation "would be happy to arrange for the transfer of all these artifacts for all mankind, in the full knowledge and clear understanding that they are, in the first place and above all, treasures of the Afghan people. & quot;
It is bad enough when natural forces like earthquakes, flood and moving sand destroy or bury the world's cultural heritage. It is much worse when the destruction is by human intent.