What
Will Happen to Ancient Art in the Taliban's Swat?
February 20, 2009
This week, Taliban forces in the mountainous region of Swat in
northwestern Pakistan, claimed a worrying victory. For more than
two years now, these forces, led by a ruthless 28-year-old radical
cleric, Maulana Fazllulah, have fought a bloody guerilla war.
They have brutally kidnapped leading opponents, murdered police
officials, and bombed girls' schools. Desperate to end the anarchy
and violence, Pakistan's government has now struck a peace deal
with the de facto Taliban rulers of the region. Pakistan will
permit Fazllulah to impose Shariah law in Swat.
What
does this have to do with archaeology, you might ask? Well, actually
quite a lot. For centuries, the Swat River valley was a Buddhist
haven. According to tradition, Buddha himself journeyed to Swat
during his last reincarnation, and preached to the local villagers.
And by the 6th-century A.D, Buddhist pilgrims from as far away
as China flocked to the Swat valley, a beautiful lush land of
orchards and rushing mountain streams. One early Chinese account
describes as many as 1400 Buddhist monasteries perched along the
valley walls in the 7th century.
Devout
Buddhist artists left an incredibly rich legacy in Swat. Since
the valley lay along a major route of the Silk Roadwhich
stretched from China to the Mediterraneanthey were greatly
influenced by ideas from elsewhere, and gracefully blended foreign
styles in their art. They chiseled beautiful, haunting statues
of Buddha into the cliffsides, and left many stupas and other
Buddhist relics scattered across the countryside.
The
region's new Taliban rulers regard this legacy, and particularly
the images of Buddha, as an affront to Islam, and they have already
taken action against them. In 2008, they set off dynamite charges
to erase the face of a 23-foot-high Buddha carved into a cliff
near Jehanabad in the Swat River valley, an act of terrible vandalism
that recalled the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by Afghanistan's
Taliban. In a separate attack, they badly damaged parts of the
Swat Museumwhich which holds an important collection of
Buddhist artand issued threats to the staff of the museum.
None
of this, of course, bodes well for the fate of the Swat's rich
cultural legacy in years to come. But the international community
was outraged by the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, and in
2003, UNESCO issued a "Declaration concerning the Intentional
Destruction of Cultural Heritage. In part, this declaration stipulates
that "States should take all appropriate measures to prevent,
avoid, stop and suppress acts of intentional destruction of cultural
heritage
. "
Pakistan's
government is clearly caught between a rock and a hard place now,
with Taliban militants breathing down its neck, less than 100
miles from Islamabad. But I, like many others, sincerely hope
that it will not abandon its responsibility to protect Swat's
rich cultural legacy, particularly in these very trying times.
http://archaeology.org/blog/?p=310