Keywords

The ideas and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the view of UNESCO.

1 Early Dates

The purpose of this short article is to provide a brief historical overview of the actions of UNESCO in Afghanistan, from its early days to the present. It is a story marked by the vagaries of global geopolitics. But it is also woven, despite the challenges of the circumstances, by a remarkable will of actors around the world, in particular experts, academia, and civil society, to preserve this nation’s heritage and history.

UNESCO’s intervention in Afghanistan for its heritage dates to the early 1960s, at the request of the Afghan government to save its heritage. Among the very first projects, was the cooperation for the Minaret of Jam, “rediscovered” by the French Archaeological Delegation (DAFA) team in 1957. Missions to the Jam site in 1962 and 1963 carried out emergency conservation work with the help of local villagers. This masterpiece of Islamic heritage was declared a World Heritage Site in 2002Footnote 1 and celebrates the 20th anniversary of its inscription in 2022.

It was also the time of UNESCO’s first and largest campaign—that of saving the monuments of Nubia at Abu Simbel, whose great catalyst was a French minister and novelist André Malraux. Afghanistan, like many other countries, was inspired by this monumental campaign and aspired to a similar global action.

Thus, the campaign for the Old City of Herat began in 1976, with the approval of the General Conference of UNESCO. This project, besides the on-site training programme, included the restoration of the ancient citadel of Herat, Qala-e Ikhtyaruddin and the madrasa of Sultan Husain Baiqara, as well as a programme to establish an inventory of the monuments.

However, the civil conflict in Herat led by Ismail Khan in March 1979 against the communist government, as well as the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, interrupted the work.

In the 1970s, conservation work continued at the Jam site. The UNESCO mission in 1974 carried out the first drilling around the Minaret of Jam, in order to develop a restoration plan. As work progressed to reinforce the banks and foundations, war broke out and it would be 20 years before UNESCO could resume its work on the site.

In 1989, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the international community faced new challenges in rebuilding a country devastated by a decade of civil strife and war. In the field of cultural heritage, UNESCO immediately sent assessment missions to Balkh, Bamiyan, Herat and Mazar-I Sharif.

In a message sent in April 1990 to Federico Mayor, then Director-General of UNESCO, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, United Nations Coordinator for Afghanistan, appealed that despite the pressing need for relief commodities and rehabilitation projects in Afghanistan, he felt that the United Nations should never lose sight of the country’s unique cultural heritage.

To rebuild a stronger and more resilient society, the culture of the past should be preserved and appreciated, culture being the memory of a people and that of a world. To this end, in parallel with the programmes for the rehabilitation of monuments and sites, the revitalization of the country’s traditional crafts has been launched. One example is a training workshop on traditional Afghan carpets held in Mazar-I Sharif in 1990, in cooperation with the Afghan Carpet Exporters Guild.

Thus, little by little, we advance towards our time.

After the fall of Najibullah’s government in 1992 and the creation of the Islamic State, through the Taliban seizure of power from 1996 until 2001, UNESCO continued to deploy its efforts mainly through non-governmental organizations.

2 The Destruction of the Buddhas, a Historic Turning Point and Iconoclastic Waves Since 2001

The gravity of the March 2001 event left a deep impression on our minds. The destruction of the two Buddhas was distinguished from the destructive acts of monuments and the spoliation of art objects practised since Antiquity: this time it was an act put on display and a desire to suppress the testimonies of exchanges and interconnection between different cultures and beliefs.

At the time, UNESCO and its Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura mobilized the leaders of the Islamic world, who responded to this call by deploying deterrence campaigns. Unfortunately, these collective efforts have not stopped the Taliban from continuing to try to destroy the region’s heritage.

This iconoclastic destruction has followed one another in waves since this event, in Syria, Iraq, then in Libya, Mali and elsewhere. Paradoxically, they testify to the importance of heritage, since their existence represents an evocative power of memory, of our common and shared past. UNESCO and the Government of Afghanistan established an International Coordinating Committee for Afghanistan in 2003, and the site of Bamiyan was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2003, following the inscription of the Minaret and Archaeological Remains of Jam in 2002.

3 Bamiyan and Jam

Since the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 until today, UNESCO has played the role of coordinating the efforts of the international community to rehabilitate the cultural property in Afghanistan, in the different provinces of the country. More than US $27 million has been invested, inter alia, for the conservation and stabilization of the site, the empowerment of local communities, the revitalization of intangible cultural heritage, and the enhancement of creativity.

3.1 Restoration of the Buddha Niches and Component Sites of Bamiyan

For Bamiyan, UNESCO led six successive phases of a project, from 2001 to the present, funded by the government of Japan, for the stabilization of the niches where the Buddhas were located, which were in danger of collapsing. After more than 15 years, the work to consolidate the eastern niche was completed, while very urgent work advanced to save the western niche, until August 2021.

Before 2021, the team installed ten rows of steel ropes in the top part of the former head-neck area and the industrial climbers, hanging on a rope from the top of the former head area of the Western Buddha statue, managed to drill holes for the anchor points by leaning on the existing protecting steel net. The temporary measures will allow for the extension of the scaffolding up to the top of the niche, and for upcoming operations of grouting, nailing, and anchoring of the loose rock materials.

A series of workshops were led by government officials and UNESCO experts in four different community areas in Bamiyan (Qala e Ghamay, Tolwara, Sukhqohl, and Jogra Khel) in order to involve around 500 people from local communities in the implementation of the Cultural Master Plan.

The issue of buffer zone management and regulating urban expansion in the Valley remains one of the challenges, to preserve the site as a cultural landscape by possibly bringing to the modification of the boundaries in order to include heritage assets and resources which are not included in the current zoning.

The other project, supported by Italy, focuses on the safeguarding of the fortress of Shahr-i-Gholghola, a component site of Bamiyan, including research and training for caves covered with murals, remarkable expressions of Indian and Chinese influences encountered on the Silk Road.

Technical working meetings on Bamiyan were held 14 times between 2003 and 2018, and an international conference in 2017 in Tokyo was dedicated to the question of a possible reconstruction of the destroyed statues.

3.2 Preservation of Minaret of Jam

For Jam, “Emergency consolidation and Restoration of Monuments in Herat and Jam, Phase I and II” were implemented from 2003 to 2012, under the Italian funding. The project aims at the emergency consolidation, conservation and restoration of the Minaret of Jam and The Fifth Minaret in Herat. The long-lasting cooperation achieved, among others, the consolidation and rehabilitation of Minaret of Jam and Fifth Minaret in Herat, increased national capacity in the conservation of cultural heritage, income generation and training provided for Afghans of various backgrounds, in particular craftsmen and workers, thus improving the living conditions of local communities.

The Expert Working Group for the Old City of Herat and World Heritage property of Jam was established in 2002, with the mandate of coordinating all cultural projects in the country entrusted to UNESCO by the Afghan government. The Group co-ordinates activities carried out under the funds provided by Italy, Swiss and Norway to UNESCO, and reviewed other bilateral activities carried out in Afghanistan by other agencies such as the Aga Khan Trust for Culture over the previous years.

In September 2012, at the end of the 3rd Expert Working Group Meeting held at the Museo d’ Arte Orientale in Turin, Italy, the project’s final recommendations were drawn for future safeguarding actions for the two sites by more than 30 experts and high-ranking officials from Afghanistan, as well as representatives of donor countries.

Such a mechanism of Expert Working Group, like the one on Bamiyan, greatly enhanced synergies between the initiatives underway in Afghanistan to help safeguard the country’s cultural heritage.

The history of international cultural cooperation is in detail recounted in two books: the first, Safeguarding the Cultural Heritage of Afghanistan: Jam and Herat, was published by UNESCO in 2015Footnote 2 and a more recent book entitled The Future of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues Heritage Reconstruction in Theory and Practice co-published by Springer and UNESCO in 2021,Footnote 3 collecting high-quality scientific articles on the extremely complex issue of reconstruction.

3.3 The Case of Bamiyan: Reflection on the Reconstruction and Reinterpretation of an Archaeological Site

The two giant Buddha statues and associated archaeological features in Bamiyan had become an iconic and integral part of the wider cultural landscape in the Bamiyan Valley, and long after the decline of Buddhism in the region, they had continued to be a source of national pride and integrated into local traditions and folklore. Their destruction was a significant loss to the country and to humankind.

Inscribed on the List of World Heritage in 2003, the “Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley” was simultaneously placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger. As a serial World Heritage property, it consists of eight separate component sites located in the Valley and its tributaries. Once an important strategic location between East and West on the Silk Roads, the property also includes many caves that form several ensembles of Buddhist monasteries, chapels and sanctuaries dating from the third century to the thirteenth century C.E., representing the artistic and religious developments of ancient Bactria, and integrating various cultural influences into the Gandharan school of Buddhist art. The Buddhist monastic ensembles and sanctuaries, as well as fortified structures from the Islamic period, testify to the interchange of Indian, Hellenistic, Roman, Sasanian and Islamic influences.

A significant proportion of the attributes that express the property’s Outstanding Universal Value remain intact after the attacks, including the vast Buddhist monastery in the Bamiyan Cliffs which contained the two colossal sculptures of the Buddha.

Destruction and Outstanding Universal Value (OUV)

In the framework of a discussion on reconstruction, it is worth noting that the World Heritage Committee inscribed the Bamiyan Valley under criterion (vi), “directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance”. The Statement of OUV notably highlights that “Due to their symbolic values, the monuments have suffered at different times of their existence, including the deliberate destruction in 2001, which shook the whole world”. Therefore, the attempts to destroy parts of the property at various points in time, including by the Taliban, form an integral part of the OUV for which the property was inscribed. This element has a profound bearing on any discussion about a possible reconstruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues, as the property was recognized as being of Outstanding Universal Value after and for its partial destruction.

During the 40th session of the World Heritage Committee in Istanbul (Turkey) in 2016, the Government of Afghanistan requested that at least one of the Buddha statues be reconstructed. However, heritage practitioners and experts have highlighted the challenges of reconstructing the Buddha statues according to strict conservation ethics and other considerations. At the Committee’s 41st session (Krakow 2017), general decisions concerning reconstruction (41 COM 7) were also taken.

Responding to the request of the Government of Afghanistan and the decisions of the World Heritage Committee concerning the deliberate destruction and reconstruction of cultural heritage in areas of conflict, in particular the Buddha statues in Bamiyan, UNESCO, together with the Government of Afghanistan and the Tokyo University of the Arts and with a financial support of the Government of Japan, organized an international technical meeting entitled “The Future of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues: Technical Considerations & Potential Effects on Authenticity and Outstanding Universal Value” in Tokyo, Japan from 27 to 30 September 2017. These meetings aimed to discuss the potential reconstruction of the Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley and provided an ideal forum to discuss and clarify the current theory and practice surrounding the reconstruction of cultural property and restoration ethics; they also allowed to address the issue of authenticity and the impact on the OUV of the Bamiyan World Heritage property by such restorations and reconstructions. Through a series of presentations delivered by international experts, the Forum concluded that further consultation and reflection are needed to address relevance and feasibility of the reconstruction.

Warsaw International Conference on Reconstruction: The Challenges of World Heritage Recovery in 2018

A conference entitled “The Challenges of World Heritage Recovery. International Conference on Reconstruction” was organized in Warsaw, Poland, in May 2018. The participants adopted the Warsaw Recommendation on Recovery and Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage, which notably highlights that “Memorialization of the destruction should be considered for communities and stakeholders; … In the context of post-conflict recovery and reconstruction, such places should integrate as much as possible a shared narrative of the traumatic events that led to the destruction, reflecting the views of all components of the society, so as to foster mutual recognition and social cohesion, and establish conditions for reconciliation”. The Declaration also points out that “The key to a successful reconstruction of cultural heritage is the establishment of strong governance that allows for a fully participatory process, is based on a comprehensive analysis of the context and on a clear operational strategy, including mechanisms for the coordination of national and international actors, and is supported by an effective public communication policy”.

Reconstruction of cultural properties in the context of the World Heritage Convention

Reconstruction of cultural properties is outlined in the Operational Guidelines of the Convention as follows: “… reconstruction of archaeological remains or historic buildings or districts is justifiable only in exceptional circumstances. Reconstruction is acceptable only on the basis of complete and detailed documentation and to no extent on conjecture” (UNESCO World Heritage Center 2023). Given the current move towards heritage reconstruction in post-conflict contexts, some more detailed guidance is required to reflect the multi-faceted challenges that heritage reconstruction brings, especially with regard to the OUV of the World Heritage properties.

Any further exploration of reconstruction should be made in very close consultation with impacted communities who have particular connections with heritage and suffered from its loss, in order to understand the meaning of this heritage for them, incorporate the multiplicity of interpretations of heritage, and determine whether they wish to rebuild, reconstruct and re-establish such heritage properties.

If there is community consensus for reconstruction, a number of additional inquiries arise, such as how it will be done; who will make decisions; and what purpose the reconstruction may fulfil?

Moreover, when it comes to the inscribed World Heritage properties, how can reconstructed heritage using new materials be considered to retain authenticity? Reconstruction of cultural heritage requires not only in-depth discussion in a multidisciplinary approach by experts and academia but also a long-term vision for the preservation and interpretation of such reconstructed heritage, which duly requires the involvement of communities who have suffered from damaged and/or lost heritage.

Specific concerns for Bamiyan

The inscription of Bamiyan took place after the destruction of Buddhas. This particular situation prompts us to ask: what to reconstruct, what to preserve?

Additionally, the reconstruction of the Great Buddha is discussed in the context of Muslim country. It should be noted that the two Buddha statues of Bamiyan were not considered as religious figures by the inhabitants of the Bamiyan Valley for centuries, but instead as a prince of Bamiyan and a princess of foreign extraction. As such, the two statues have dominated the landscape of Bamiyan for centuries and left their mark on local legends and folklore. We understood that the desire of inhabitants of the Bamiyan Valley to see the rehabilitated Buddha statues has been motivated by this and not by the desire to reconstruct statues in the perspective of religious worship.

In addition, while raising the issue of intentionally destroyed cultural heritage, there is a huge difference between the reconstruction of a Buddha statue in human form (idol), considered as alive, and the reconstruction of a building that is recognized as having no life in the first place.

4 Today: Actions to Remove Bamiyan and Jam from the List of World Heritage in Danger

Today, UNESCO is paying particular attention to guiding actions in Bamiyan and Jam for the removal of properties from the List of World Heritage in Danger. This requires fulfilling a number of the major conditions adopted by the World Heritage Committee: for Bamiyan, among others,

  • ensured site security;

  • ensured long-term stability of the Giant Buddha niches;

  • adequate state of conservation of archaeological remains and mural paintings; and

  • implemented Management Plan and Cultural Master Plan (the protective zoning plan).

For the Jam site,

  • Increased capacity of the staff of the Afghan Ministry of Culture and Information in charge of the preservation of the property ensured;

  • Precisely identified World Heritage property and clearly marked boundaries and buffer zones;

  • Long-term stability and conservation of the Minaret of Jam ensured;

  • Site security ensured;

  • A comprehensive management system including a long-term conservation policy developed and implemented.

The ongoing project at Jam, funded by ALIPH, is aimed at developing a comprehensive conservation plan focusing on its overall protection and monitoring, including the design and implementation of emergency actions to strengthen the structural stability of the Minaret.

5 Museums and Collections

Another area of UNESCO’s intervention in Afghanistan concerns the museum sector. Readers probably remember that famous slogan hanging at the entrance of the National Museum of Afghanistan, in the aftermath of the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, saying “a nation stays alive when its culture stays alive”.

Since its inception in the 1930s, the National Museum in Kabul has shone as a place of exchange on an international scale.

Since 2001, many organizations and donors from the cultural sector have been working with UNESCO to restore the heavily damaged building of the National Museum and its collections: DAFA, Musée Guimet in Paris, Austrian Society for Afghanistan, British Museum, National Geographic Society, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Hellenic Aid, International Council of Museums (ICOM) as well as the governments of Italy, Japan and the United States.

In addition, in order to combat the scourge of illicit trafficking of works of art, UNESCO and its partners have focused their efforts on the rehabilitation of collections and the compilation of documentation from inventories of the National Museum. “Catalogue of the National Museum of Afghanistan, 1931–1985”Footnote 4 was published in 2006 to save the records on national collections in case of their loss, theft and in preparing for their possible return.

Some will remember that the Museum-in-Exile in Switzerland or the Hirayama Foundation in Japan housed valuable art objects evacuated from Afghanistan in their respective institutions during these turbulent times and returned these collections to the national authorities. The first was a large collection of ethnographic objects, and the latter included fragments of archaeological pieces from various sites, including Ai Khanum, a Hellenistic city said to be built by the Seleucid successors of Alexander the Great.

In Gazni, eastern Afghanistan, the Museum of Islamic Art and the Museum of Pre-Islamic Art have been rehabilitated, helping to house monuments and art objects.

This Italian-funded project through UNESCO contributes to the inventory and enhancement of collections from the Buddhist site of Tapa Sardar, dating from the Kushan period, thanks to the technical support of ISIAO—Institute of Africa and the Orient and the Afghan Department of Historical Monuments.

The Cultural Centre for Bamiyan, whose construction was recently completed in 2022, is being built with Korean funding. Intended to safeguard artefacts, promote access to intangible culture and knowledge on heritage, its programming and concrete activities remain to be determined soon.

Due to the security situation in Afghanistan, which remains highly volatile and has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the de facto government takeover since August 2021, field operations require a number of adjustments. The interim Transitional Engagement Framework (TEF) recently terminated and the Strategic Framework for Afghanistan (UNSAF) was endorsed in July 2023 for a period of two years. This Strategic Framework articulates the UN’s approach to addressing basic human needs of the people of Afghanistan.

UNESCO, through its office in Kabul, continues to monitor the situation on the ground and seizes all possible opportunities to sensitize political and administrative actors on the importance of heritage.

Throughout UNESCO’s institutional history and in dialogues with its Member States, the challenge of mutual understanding lies at the confluence of the orders of cultural values and relations between peoples.

Afghanistan was and remains today as a crossroads of cultures, beliefs, and trade over millennia. Its art and heritage bear witness to this incessant intermingling between Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Our goal remains, not only to restore the heritage, the finest treasures of art and archaeology of Afghanistan and Central Asia, but also to allow the culture of the country, with its diversity and richness, to regain its pre-eminent place in Afghan society as an essence testifying to the complexity of multicultural identity, past and present, of this nation.