The Fate of Bamiyan’s Giant Buddha Statues

Abstract

This contribution outlines the debate around a possible and (from the Afghan side until 2021) sought after reconstruction of Bamiyan’s giant Buddha statues, which started after their destruction in 2001, and lasted up until the UNESCO conference on the subject in 2017. This debate gains significance against a background of ongoing discussion concerning the legitimacy of heritage reconstruction in general, which has greatly altered the key concepts of authenticity and integrity. This general discussion is, naturally, still open. But consideration of the Bamiyan case has been rendered obsolete by the political events of August 2021. This contribution advances the opinion that a physical reconstruction of the statues would be redundant, since their destruction has established them firmly and universally in the collective imagery.

1 Premise

The debate surrounding the possible reconstitution, revivification, reassembly, anastylosis and even complete reconstruction of Bamiyan’s two giant Buddha statues (38 and 55 m) started right after their destruction in March 2001. This debate involved technical and theoretical issues, given that the international heritage preservation community, UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM etc., had already committed itself to strict technical, theoretical and financial limitations. The milestone achievements in this effort at stringency are the Venice Charter of 1964, the World Heritage Convention of 1972, and the Nara Document on Authenticity of 1994, whose warranties had to be reconsidered or worked around alongside strictly technical questions regarding the remnants of the two Buddha statues and their now empty niches.

Despite a remarkable commitment by the international heritage preservation community, this debate is still open on all sides involved. The state partner, the Islamic Republic has continuously demanded (until the events of August 2021) some sort of reconstruction work on one or both the Buddha statues. The international consultant bodies have withheld making a decision, have had reservations and put a number of technical proposals on the table. The theoretical debate concerning the criteria of reconstruction which safeguards the authenticity and integrity of a site as demanded by UNESCO has grown truly global since 2001, the oxymoron of “authentic reconstruction” has enticed the attention of academics around the world. The problem of funding, obviously, remains fundamental.

In this contribution, we will recall the debate surrounding the possible reconstruction of Bamiyan’s giant Buddha statues, contextualizing the proposals brought up within the framework of the broader contemporary discussion on the recovery of lost cultural heritage. We will start by briefly reconsidering the events and political decisions that led to the destruction of the Buddha statues (as well as many other heritage assets in Afghanistan), so as to understand their significance, both intended and real. Only an assessment such as this allows for an estimation of how the local population and their political representatives might react to any intervention by the international heritage preservation institutions. The second section reviews the two-decade-long debate on the future management of the remnants of the two Buddha statues, its main actors being UNESCO and its advisory bodies on the one hand, and the Afghan state party on the other. The third section discusses the technical proposals exhibited at the UNESCO conference of 27–29 September 2017 in Tokyo. In the fourth part of the article, we offer some concluding remarks.

2 The Destruction

In July 1999, Mullah Omar, the Supreme Leader of the first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan issued a decree whose first point reads: “All historical cultural heritages are regarded as an integral part of the heritage of Afghanistan and therefore belong to Afghanistan, but naturally also to the international community. Any excavation or trading in cultural heritage objects is strongly forbidden and will be punished in accordance with the law” (Falser 2011, p. 159).¹ In 1979, Afghanistan had in fact adhered to the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) and although the country lacked a World Heritage nomination in those years, the Taliban explicitly recognized the authority of the international bodies over its cultural heritage.

This decree, as well as early Taliban policy in general, were effective. Indeed, the relevant volume of the Handbook for Oriental Studies asserts: “Contrary to what many people think, the illegal excavations and the illicit trade in antiquities did decline sharply during the time of the Taliban rule” (Van Krieken-Peters 2006, p. 206). Following this decree, even the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul, formerly devastated and heavily looted over the years of the Mujahidin civil war, prior to the Taliban’s rise to power, could briefly reopen in August 2000 (Grissmann 2006).

Bamiyan is explicitly mentioned at length in point six of Mullah Omar’s decree quoted above: “The famous Buddhist statues at Bamiyan were made before the event of Islam in Afghanistan, and are amongst the largest of their kind in Afghanistan and in the world. In Afghanistan, there are no Buddhists who worship the statues. Since Islam came to Afghanistan, until the present period, the statues have not been damaged. The government regards the statues with serious respect and considers the position of their protection today to be the same as always. The government further considers the Bamiyan statues as an example of a potential major source of income for Afghanistan from international visitors. International Buddhist communities recently issued a warning that in the case, the Bamiyan statues are damaged, then mosques will be damaged in their regions. The Muslims of the world are paying attention to this declaration. The Taliban government states that Bamiyan shall not be destroyed but protected” (Falser 2011, p. 159). Already in 1999 there evidently existed tensions around the Bamiyan Buddha statues.

During the 21st World Heritage Committee meeting in Naples, December 1–6, 1997 (WHC-97/CONF.208/17), shortly after the Taliban took control of Bamiyan, at the request of the Japanese delegate, the WHC expressed its concern for “news reports on threats to the cultural and natural heritage of Afghanistan, particularly the Buddhist statues in Bamiyan”, and invited “the authorities in Afghanistan to take appropriate measures in order to safeguard the cultural and natural heritage of the country” (UNESCO 1998, VII.58, p. 34). UNESCO’s plea was directed to a government recognized only by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Arabic Emirates, and had no seat in the UN (which was occupied by a representative of the previous Rabbani government). However, whether as a reaction to the plea or not, the Islamic Emirate in its search for larger international recognition was keen to assure the world community that it would protect its national cultural heritage, paying particular attention to the Bamiyan Buddhas, as documented in Mullah Omar’s 1999 decree.

Hopes for international recognition came to nothing. The country’s economic crisis, exacerbated by a terrible drought (1999–2001), plagued the country, causing widespread deaths. The political climate also changed rapidly.² While the Supreme Leader’s decrees of 1999 passed largely unnoticed, his decree broadcasted on Radio Shari’at, 1 Hut 1421 (26 February 2001) and two days later in Afghan newspapers, announcing the destruction of Bamiyan’s Buddha statues and other pre-Islamic assets in the country, caused an immediate worldwide outcry: “Based on consulting religious leaders of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the religious Ulema’s and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Supreme Court’s judgment, all the statues in the different parts of the country must be broken because these statues have remained as shrines for infidels and they are worshipping these statues and still the statues are being respected [by them] and probably they will be changed to shrines again, while God Almighty is the real shrine and all the false shrines must be smashed. Therefore, the authorities of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have given the duty to the Ministries for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice as well as Information and Culture to destroy all the statues in order to implement the judgments of the Ulema and the Supreme Court. All the statues must be annihilated so that no one worships or respects them in the future”.³

This new decision was swiftly implemented. By the 12th of February 2001, the BBC had already reported that Taliban militias had started to destroy antique statues in the National Museum in Kabul. The demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas turned out to be a more complicated affair than expected, taking several weeks. On the 2nd of March, the Afghan Islamic Press reported that explosives had been collected around the country and transported to Bamiyan. On the 10th of March, the same news agency reported that detonations had resumed after having been interrupted for the Eid-al Adha holiday. On the 11th of March, Al Jazeera broadcast the blasting of the Buddha statues to appalled audiences worldwide. The Taliban government was evidently eager to boast about its achievements to the international public. On the 22nd of March, a group of journalists was invited to a then looted National Museum in Kabul and on the 26th of March, another group was flown to Bamiyan to report on the empty Buddha niches.⁴ A Taliban envoy was sent to the United States and interviewed on American TV on the 18th of March. According to the interview, published by the New York Times a day later, “The Islamic government made its decision in a rage after a foreign delegation offered money to preserve the ancient works while a million Afghans faced starvation. (…) The destruction … was prompted when a visiting delegation of mostly European envoys and a representative of the UNESCO offered money to protect the giant standing Buddhas at Bamiyan. (…) At the time the foreign delegation visited, United Nations relief officials were warning that a long drought and a harsh winter were confronting up to a million Afghans with starvation. The envoy said that when the visitors offered money to repair and maintain the statues, the Taliban’s mullahs were outraged. The mullahs told them that instead of spending money on statues, why didn’t they help our children who are dying of malnutrition? They rejected that, saying, ‘This money is only for statues.’ ‘The mullahs were so angry, they said, ‘If you are destroying our future with economic sanctions, you can’t care about our heritage.’ And so they decided that these statues must be destroyed. The Taliban’s Supreme Court confirmed the edict” (Crossette 2001). The envoy further stressed that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues must not be understood as a measure of religious repression, since there are no Buddhists in Afghanistan, whereas Hindu temples in the country would continue to be protected. Around the same time, Mullah Omar insisted in a statement that he preferred to be remembered as a “smasher of idols (bot-shekan) rather than a seller of idols”.⁵

The demolition of the Buddha statues was so carefully orchestrated for the international news that its outreach should chiefly be analyzed in the international community. Nationally and regionally, public reaction was quite weak. The Buddha statues can hardly be addressed as symbols of Afghan cultural identity,⁶ but they had formerly gained some prominence on a national level, having been used on banknotes in 1939 (reproduced in Morgan (2012, p. 32) and on postal stamps in 1979 (reproduced in Elias (2007, p. 14).⁷ Internally, their destruction did not stir an immediate outcry,⁸ since both public opinion and the press were under strict control. Only after the fall of the Taliban regime did poems and short stories about the destruction of the Buddhas appear in Afghanistan.⁹ The local Hazara population, who had lived among the Buddha statues for centuries, and who had integrated them into the local folklore (Morgan 2012, pp. 129f; Hackin and Kohzad 1953; Klimburg-Salter 2020), was certainly opposed to their destruction as it was opposed to the Taliban regime more generally, but statements about the Buddha statues as incarnations of Hazara cultural identity appeared only after the fall of the Taliban Emirate (for ex. (Ahmadi 2012, pp. 51f)).

It makes no sense to examine the censored Afghan media of that time, but largely enthusiastic reactions in the Pakistani press have been described by Jamal J. Elias (Elias 2007, pp. 22ff). The same author indicated that the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas occurred during the Haj period of the Islamic calendar (Elias 2007, p. 20) around the Eid-al Adha holiday which commemorates Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, thus underlining the strictly monotheistic creed of Islam. It is evident that the timing of the event was carefully planned, charging it with religious significance. The Taliban Emirate certainly did not see a Buddhist danger in Afghanistan, yet it is clear that the regime saw fit to ruthlessly reaffirm its own monotheism.¹⁰

Western observers agree that the blowing up of the Bamiyan statues was mainly orchestrated as an international media event, following a “modern” logic, directed mainly towards an international, i.e. Western, public (Falser 2011, p. 163; Francioni and Lenzerini 2003, p. 620; Flood 2002, p. 651; Morgan 2012, pp. 20–23; Boggs 2017, p. 30). In its immediate reaction in the Heritage at Risk Report 2001, ICOMOS declared that the demolition “would remain written in the pages of history as among the most infamous acts of barbarity” (ICOMOS 2001, p. 26). The term “vandalism” with which the destruction has frequently been labeled in the West, together with “barbarity”, does not seem fully appropriate, since acts of vandalism are not ordinarily premeditated. In the following years, the concept of “iconoclasm” has largely prevailed in the scientific literature ((Falser 2011; Flood 2002; Morgan 2012) among others) and this is for good reason: Iconoclasm not only has a long history behind it (the same can be said for both vandalism and barbarity), but also has a theory behind it.¹¹ It is, in this sense, both deliberate and elaborately staged.¹²

We cannot enter into debates about what the Taliban really intended with their iconoclastic policies, and which theory stood behind their specific iconoclasm. The opinion of some commentators that the so-called “idolatry” that the Taliban wanted to eradicate, evidently not the Buddhist one, should consist of the aesthetic, western idolatry of heritage itself (Falser 2011; Crossette 2001; Klimburg-Salter 2020) seems too far-fetched and confers too much cultural credit to the Taliban Emirate. These commentators see in Taliban iconoclasm a “revolt against the museum” itself and hold that the status of the destroyed objects as world heritage not only did not shield them, but rendered them a target (Latour 2002). Such hermeneutics of the Taliban mind do not lie within the scope of the present contribution; suffice it here to say that in 2001 the Bamiyan Buddhas were still not considered world heritage. Since such interpretations are not substantially supported by the available documents, they appear dictated ultimately by the urgency of Western critical intellectuals to distinguish themselves through bodacious paradoxes. Given what we currently know, we have to limit ourselves to view the iconoclastic Taliban policies as being little more than a provocative act of self-affirmation; an attempt to assert their sovereignty over the country, including its cultural heritage. In this sense, the message has indeed been directed towards the West.

In 2001, Afghanistan still had no site on the UNESCO World Heritage list, but the Taliban demolition of the Buddha statues paved the way for the emergency nomination of two World Heritage sites in the country: first, the Minar-e Jam from the Islamic (Ghorid) period and, a few months later, the “Cultural Landscape and Archeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley” (2003).

3 Bamiyan as World Heritage Site

Both UNESCO and its advisory body ICOMOS reacted immediately and on a high-ranking diplomatic level to the events occurring in Afghanistan. UNESCO director-general, Koichiro Matsuura, wrote a letter to Mullah Omar on the 28th of February and, on the 8th of March 2001, and convinced the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, to send a delegation of Al-Azhar scholars, the most prestigious religious institution in the Sunni world, to Kandahar. The delegation arrived on the 11th of March, while the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas was underway (Bouchenaki 2020, pp. 19–30). The Al-Azhar delegation was accompanied by Pierre Lafrance as a special UNESCO envoy, and by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most popular Arab preacher (Elias 2007, p. 17) of the time. On the 12th of March, having been informed that all efforts had been in vain, UNESCO’s director-general labeled the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas and other iconoclastic acts carried out by the Taliban government, “a crime against culture”,¹³ as per the terms of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954, and that it ought to be taken to the International Court of The Hague.

Once the destruction of the Bamiyan statues was accomplished, UNESCOs World Heritage Committee was quick to organize the first safeguarding measures to protect what had survived.¹⁴ In January 2002, UNESCO was officially requested by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Afghan interim administration to play a coordinating role in all future international and bilateral activities aimed at safeguarding Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in March 2002 with the Afghan Minister of Information and Culture, Mr. Said Makhdoom Raheen, entrusting UNESCO with the coordination of international efforts for the restauration of the National Museum of Kabul. In May 2002, UNESCO organized a seminar in Kabul, continued at a conference in Tokyo held in July 2002 on “The Culture of Afghanistan”, where Mr. Matsuura personally handed over to Minister Raheen the certificate of inscription of the Minaret of Jam on the World Heritage List. He also announced that at the next session of the World Heritage Committee, the proposal to include the Bamiyan site on the World Heritage List would be considered (UNESCO dossier DG/2003/086). The international meetings were also a chance to install a (short-lived) International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage (ICC) at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, soon supplanted by the Bamiyan Experts Working Group (BEWG), organized by UNESCO and ICOMOS, which held its first meeting in Munich (Germany) from 21 to 22 November 2002. The BEWG had then met 14 times by 2017 and had established the framework, which would bring together international conservation experts and representatives of the Afghan government and the principal donor countries (Japan, Italy, Germany, South Korea e.a.). In fact, spanning 2002–03, more than 7 Mio $ could be raised for Bamiyan alone (Manhart 2003, p. 83).

In December 2001, UNESCO organized a mission to Bamiyan with the aim of assessing the condition of the site, while covering the remaining rock fragments with fiberglass sheets, which would protect them from harsh weather conditions during winter. In July 2002, a second UNESCO mission, jointly organized with ICOMOS, was undertaken so that conservation measures could be prepared at the Bamiyan site. A third ICOMOS mission, aimed at further substantiating the project and composed of German, Italian and Japanese experts was then undertaken from the 27th of September to the 6th of October 2002. These missions laid the groundwork for the nomination of the “Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley (Afghanistan)” as a World Heritage site (World Heritage Committee, Decision 27 COM 8C.43) on the 5th of July 2003.¹⁵ Simultaneously, Bamiyan was placed on the cultural heritage “in danger” list, as had already happened with Minar-e Jam. Bamiyan’s nomination bears all the marks of an emergency nomination, made hastily in order to take a stand against Taliban iconoclasm. Bamiyan, in fact, was nominated as a “cultural”—not “natural” or “mixed”—heritage site, more specifically as a “serial nomination”, naming eight quite distant and historically heterogeneous archeological sites in the valley, among which the central Buddha cliff, which came in the first place, plus a “cultural landscape”, not defined topographically or conceptually.

The nomination of Bamiyan by UNESCO (dossier 208rev), laid the foundations for the intense conservation work in the Buddha niches, the surrounding caves and other archeological sites that were to follow over the next years. In this context, the question of a possible recovery of the Buddha statues has been debated right from the beginning. The Japanese painter and scholar Ikuo Hirayama suggested leaving the Buddha niches empty immediately, as a powerful monument in their own right (Morgan 2012, p. 199). Other proposals were of more questionable taste. On the 15 July 2002 issue of the New Yorker, the artist Otto J. Seibold responded to an invitation to design a fitting memorial of the site of the Twin Towers destroyed on 9/11: his image depicted the two Buddha sculptures of Bamiyan recreated in Manhattan, while miniature Twin Towers, housing refugees, were presented as occupying the empty Bamiyan niches.¹⁶

Apart from such individual proposals, the international heritage conservation community answered to the reconstruction demand from the Afghan state party in the above mentioned seminar on Afghan Cultural Heritage, May 27–29, 2002, in Kabul (conclusions IV/14): “The decision to engage in the reconstruction of the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan is a matter to be settled by the Government and people in Afghanistan.” For the moment, the international experts would postpone the issue: “The Seminar participants underscored that such work could be undertaken only after major stabilization work on the cliffs at Bamiyan has been completed” (Toubekis et al. 2017, p. 41). This deferral of an admittedly sensitive, complex and potentially very expensive decision set the tone of the debate for the following years, whose general pattern opposed the skepticism of international conservation experts against Afghan demands (Morgan 2012, p. 180; Toubekis et al. 2017, p. 274). For the time being, ICOMOS would concentrate on “Safeguarding the remains” of the Bamiyan statues—as the subtitle of voluminous technical documentaries of their works states (ICOMOS XIX 2009; ICOMOS XXI 2016)—rather than on any form of reconstruction. On the 9th BEWG meeting of 2011, the president of ICOMOS international, Michael Petzet, declared: “I believe it will be no disaster if not all the dreams of a total ‘resurrection’ of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas … can be implemented here and now. Considering the disaster of ten years ago we can be quite satisfied with having saved what could be saved—in the awareness that our efforts could open up chances for future generations to continue working in the sense of … partial reconstruction” (ICOMOS XXI 2016, p. 93, again 2012, p. 180). This variously repeated statement was based on the fact that a full reconstruction would imply “reconstructing” a statue of which important details (face,¹⁷ arms and hand positions, feet) are unknown.¹⁸

Moreover, managing the remains of the Buddha statues would have had to resolve a series of problems:

• (1) How to conserve the highly fragile rock fragments that had remained and been recovered.

• (2) How to display these remains, given that their placement in a museum is ruled out by their sheer mass.

• (3) Finally, how to restore some idea of the Buddha figure that once inhabited the two niches.

The ICOMOS experts, and especially its international president, Michael Petzet, the “leading champion of anastylosis”, as Morgan calls him (Morgan 2012, pp. 199f), therefore opted right from the beginning not so much for a “reconstruction”, but for an anastylosis, in which the original fragments of the statues would be replaced in their original position, within a steel structure roughly the shape of the original Buddha, within the niches. This was the proposal pursued right from the beginning. The first BEWG meeting of 2002 in Munich already stated: “The experts welcome that the Afghan authorities acknowledge the possibility of an anastylosis as one well-established method of proper relocation of the rock fragments to their original position.” According to its supporters, this solution would satisfy the three requirements listed above, would conform to §§ 9 and 15 of the Venice Charter and to § 86 of UNESCO’s Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, and would, furthermore, “preserve the authentic spirit of the place” (ICOMOS XIX 2009, p. 14). In 2002, Petzet published an essay, Anastylosis or Reconstruction: The Conservation Concept for the Remains of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, in which he attempted to settle the question on theoretical grounds. In particular, he contrasts his proposal of anastylosis with competing ones and states:

• (1) A virtual reconstruction of the statues, proposed and prepared by Armin Grün (Zürich) would not resolve the problem of the management and preservation of the remaining, original rock fragments (Grün et al. 2004), see also Toubekis et al. (2017).

• (2) The same holds for a reconstruction of one or both Buddhas using traditional techniques, suggested by an Afghan sculptor, i.e. hewn out of the rock and coated with loam plaster. This solution would, furthermore, irretrievably destroy what has remained of the original statues on the back walls of the niches. Deepening the niches by a few meters would also compromise their connection with the surrounding caves.

• (3) “A reconstruction with modern materials (a brand new Buddha made of concrete?) or at least its evocation with laser techniques in a future sound-and-light show seems under the present circumstances rather strange” (ICOMOS XIX 2009, pp. 46–48).

In order to circumvent the restrictions placed on reconstructions in both the Venice Charter and UNESCO’s Operational Guidelines, Petzet makes reference to the Old City of Warsaw, the Mostar Bridge, the Xian Terracotta Army and many other examples in which the international conservation community has accepted even a complete reconstruction.¹⁹ An anastylosis, in short, requires a “provisional structure” within the Buddha niches, made out of steel or another load-bearing but inconspicuous material, into which the original rock fragments would be put, in order to be integrated in their original position. Anastylosis, so the argument goes, would at the same time resolve the problem of the reconstitution of the Buddha statues, and that of where and how to place the remaining original rock fragments. However, according to Petzet, the limits of anastylosis would be reached “when only a few original fragments would appear as a sort of ‘decoration’ on the provisional structure” (BEWG meeting 2011, (ICOMOS XXI 2016, p. 131), see for 2014, (ICOMOS XXI 2016, p. 246)).²⁰ The final decision, Petzet concludes, lies in any case with the Afghan government (ICOMOS XXI 2016, p. 140). Yet, even the hypothesis of anastylosis, on which ICOMOS has more or less committed itself,²¹ should not be implemented without issue, because it requires continued investigations regarding the technical possibility (BEWG meeting 2006, recommendations II/10, (ICOMOS XIX 2009, p. 125).²²

In the meantime, the Afghan side insisted on the rapid carrying out of said anastylosis; in 2009, Habiba Sarabi, provincial governor of Bamiyan, in her foreword to the ICOMOS documentation, wrote: “One of the key achievements of ICOMOS has been in terms of raising hope among Afghans for rebuilding the Buddhas, at least one of the statues, by using the remaining original pieces and with external materials to exhibit it as one of the memorial monuments of the historic past and as witness to the cultural journey of glory and of painful suffering, including the destruction of the Buddhas. I strongly support the idea and initiatives to restore this rich cultural heritage” (ICOMOS XIX 2009, p. 11). Again, in 2013, the Afghan Minister of Information and Culture stated in a BEWG meeting: “There is still strong support in Afghanistan for the reconstruction of at least one of the Buddha sculptures destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. This can be a symbol for Afghanistan and the World that the new Afghanistan is ready to stand for peace, democracy and an open society against fanaticism” (ICOMOS XXI 2016, p. 197). The Minister concluded his statement by expressing his bewilderment at the international worrywarts.²³ But even though the Afghan side expressed a desire for some kind of “reconstruction”, it was not clear which form was to be favored, as the ICOMOS experts repeatedly observed (ICOMOS XXI 2016, p. 240).

An ICOMOS meeting in 2014 in Tokyo went a step further. The conservation experts concentrated on the eastern, smaller Buddha niche, which had successfully been stabilized, and was brought into the discussion regarding the possibility of its “reconstruction”, its “partial reconstruction”, its “reassembly”, finding a way around using the term “anastylosis”. However, they came across another obstacle, as it was noted by the Japanese delegates, that the “deliberate destruction” of the Buddha statues was explicitly mentioned in the definition of the Outstanding Universal Value of the site in the UNESCO nomination dossier (criterion VI). This meant that any reassembly of the empty Buddha niches that could affect the site’s Outstanding Universal Value had to first be discussed (ICOMOS XXI 2016, pp. 216f).²⁴

Furthermore, several, purely technical questions had not been unanimously answered in these discussions:

• (1) What is the percentage of original sculpture fragments to be displayed in an anastylosis for each Buddha?

• (2) Which of the two Buddha niches (or both) should be considered for reconstruction?

• (3) Are the rock fragments stable enough to be fixed and displayed in a steel construction?

• (4) Most importantly, what are the estimated costs?

On the question of how much of the original, salvaged material should be displayed in an anastylosis, the scientific community did not reach a consensus. ICOMOS expert Bert Praxenthaler estimated that for the eastern Buddha, roughly 40–45% of its mass had been salvaged, of which 90%, which constitutes approximately 300 stone fragments, could be repositioned in the niche (ICOMOS XXI 2016, pp. 36 and 231f). The ICOMOS experts from RWTH Aachen (Germany), however, estimated the useable material for the eastern Buddha as being just 12% of the original mass of the statue (Toubekis et al. 2017, p. 275 and Han et al. 2018, p. 43). The experts agree, if nothing else, on the fact that the bigger, western Buddha, made up of blocks weighing up to several tons, is better suited than the smaller, eastern one, for a possible “reconstruction”. The reconstruction debate had concentrated on the eastern Buddha simply because its niche had been successfully stabilized, whereas the works on the western niche are not completed even until now (Lawler 2003). Experts also agree that the stone blocks, consisting of fragile conglomerate material, cannot simply be placed in a supportive steel structure, but need previous stabilization through an ether resin treatment in a vacuum chamber which, according to some experts, was only possible in Germany (ICOMOS XXI 2016, p. 76).

The costs for the preliminary work of ordering and sorting the salvaged fragments were estimated in 2002 at 1,5 Mio $ (Lawler 2003). The costs of a possible reconstruction-anastylosis of the statues, of course, enter an entirely different realm. The only estimate to be found in the voluminous ICOMOS documentation was provided by an ICOMOS Mission in 2014, which calculated the costs at about 30 Mio $ per statue (ICOMOS XXI 2016, p. 232). Other authors, not directly involved in this UNESCO debate, indicate even higher amounts.²⁵

In sum, fifteen years of international endeavors in Bamiyan have certainly produced important achievements (the definite stabilization of the eastern niche, the ongoing stabilization of the western niche, the protection of the surviving wall paintings etc.) (Praxenthaler and Beckh 2020). However, the question of a reconstruction, anastylosis, partial anastylosis, reassembly or some other version of physical reconstitution of the Buddha statues has remained open. Important technical issues are still being debated and, most importantly, the question of funding persists. Yet, the question of reconstruction has been the one that the Afghan side and the general public have shown the most interest in, because the stabilization measures and other restauration works remain, in a certain sense, invisible to non-expert eyes.

4 Three Proposals for Reconstruction

Finally, UNESCO called for a special meeting to take place in Tokyo, from the 27th to the 29th of September 2017, with the title The Future of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues: Technical Considerations and Potential Effects on Authenticity and Outstanding Universal Value. This was immediately followed by the 14th meeting of the BEWG (1–2 October). Most of the contributions were published by UNESCO in 2020 under the title The Future of the Bamiyan Buddha Statues. The title of the conference and of the publication refers to both Buddha statues, although, at UNESCO’s request, the technical proposals were focused on the smaller, eastern Buddha niche, which had already been stabilized. Hereby UNESCO followed a request from the Afghan government on the 40th session of the World Heritage Committee in Istanbul (2016) that at least one of the Buddha statues be reconstructed. The bigger, Western niche should, for the time being, be left empty as a lasting memory of its tragic destruction. The conference volume does not, however, include ICOMOS’s plans for anastylosis or partial reconstruction presented at the Tokyo conference by Bert Praxenthaler (ICOMOS Germany), but stages three new ideas, which had not yet appeared in the debate.

The arena for the three new proposals was laid out by J. Okahashi’s essay, showing that Bamiyan’s case fulfills all “exceptional circumstances” in which the UNESCO Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (§ 86) allows for a reconstruction (Okahashi 2020). We will briefly present and assess the three proposals.

(1) The first technical proposal was brought forward by an Italian team consisting of Claudio Margottini, Andrea Bruno e.a. (Margottini et al. 2020). The proposal ultimately aims at a comprehensive revitalization of the entire “southern branch of the Silk Road (Margottini et al. 2020, p. 275, 278), thus including Herat, Minar-e Jam and potentially many more sites. But the Tokyo conference contribution is focused solely on Bamiyan.

The authors criticize the previously dominant hypothesis of anastylosis as “impossible” (Margottini et al. 2020, p. 277, 284) in the case of the eastern Buddha, because the salvaged fragments are too few and too precarious. Furthermore, UNESCO has recognized the destroyed statues as part of the Outstanding Universal Value of the site (Margottini et al. 2020, p. 284) and not the reconstructed ones. Upon briefly considering the possibility of leaving the niches empty or simply putting a photo of the original statues on fiberglass panels inside them (Margottini et al. 2020, pp. 287f),²⁶ the authors then bring up their true proposal which they rightly call “revolutionary” (Margottini et al. 2020, p. 304). Drawing on the famous thesis of the “Technical Reproducibility of the Work of Art” in our times (Margottini et al. 2020, p. 277), the authors broach the possibility of filling the eastern Buddha niche with an exact replica of the statue, produced with digital robotic techniques, in shining white Carrara marble. To reduce the weight, of course, these statues would consist only of a 10–15 cm marble shell, supported by an internal steel structure. Since the marble would be extracted from the same quarry already used by Michelangelo, it would both connect Bamiyan with the renaissance artist while “conveying to Afghanistan a message of optimism. (…) The Buddha’s expressive eyes will find, in this marble material, a new light” (Margottini et al. 2020, pp. 288–290). Indeed, such a proposal respects two fundamental criteria of any modern reconstruction. It is reversible and thus not prone to future terrorist attacks and it is clearly recognizable by its original parts (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Image courtesy of Margottini et al. (2020, p. 291, fig. 17)

Directly in front of the Buddha niche, a museum should be constructed underground, with a loophole on top, through which to observe the Buddha statue above (Margottini et al. 2020, p. 284). This museum should be situated underground in order not to disturb the landscape. Such a museum might infringe, however, on the protected archeological area, especially in front of the eastern Buddha where no archeological survey has ever been conducted. The rock fragments of the original statue temporarily contained in a shack in front of the niches, on their side, do disturb the landscape (in the opinion of the authors) and should be placed elsewhere; the question of where and how remains unresolved.

On the Bamiyan Valley’s southern fringe, opposite the Buddha Cliff, the proposal outlines a plan for a museum equipped with all refinements of Virtual and Augmented Reality (Margottini et al. 2020, p. 282). The authors do not take into account that exactly in this place the Bamiyan Cultural Centre stands, which was inaugurated in 2020, and whose construction began in 2016. Instead, the proposal resubmits the project by architect Andrea Bruno, which was not considered in UNESCO’s international bidding in 2015 (Margottini et al. 2020, p. 280). Finally, the proposal does not contain any expense budgeting.

(2) The second technical proposal was put forward by Michael Jansen, Georgios Toubekis and Matthias Jarke from the Technical University (RWTH) of Aachen/Germany (Toubekis et al. 2020). The authors cater to an “authentic remodeling of the Eastern Buddha with the integration of fragments”, which should be “community-based” and follow the “traditional building techniques with the intention of retaining tangible and intangible values” (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 307). Such an “authentic reconstruction”, using for a moment this oxymoron, should be part of a “necessary reconciliatory process”,²⁷ “save the spirit of the place” (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 308 and 313) with an “authentic piece of artwork” (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 322) and, furthermore, contribute to “forge a national identity” for Afghanistan (Toubekis et al. 2020, 312 and 326).

Whereas the fragments of the bigger, western Buddha should be spread out horizontally in front of the empty niche (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 311), the eastern Buddha should be reconstructed by the local people themselves (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 310) using the most authentic local building material available, sun-dried clay. “Mud has been used as raw material on the figures in previous times, and it originates from the Cultural Landscape. Thus it can be considered an authentic material, with respect to the Outstanding Universal Value of the property” (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 322). Into this statue of mud, the salvaged original fragments, about 12% of the total mass according to the authors (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 316), should be embedded. In order to sustain a sculpture of 38 m, the mud has to be reinforced somehow. In fact, the authors ultimately discourage a precise copy of the original stone statue being made, because protruding parts like arms cannot be modeled using mud (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 317).

In addition to this reconstruction, the authors envision Augmented Reality applications via smartphones that accompany visitors on the site. The Bamiyan Cultural Centre in front of the Buddha Cliff should host “an interpretation and mediation section that is able to explain the history of the Bamiyan site and of its research and documentation over time” (Toubekis et al. 2020, p. 310). How the mediation and interpretation of the site might be achieved, is not further explained. The authors abstain from providing an estimate of cost. They also do not furnish a rendering of the reconstructed Buddha statue.

(3) The third technical proposal was presented at the Tokyo conference by a team of nine Japanese experts (Maeda et al. 2020). This project relies fundamentally on the idea of leaving the site of the empty Buddha niche itself untouched. The authors repeatedly warn against any “premature reproduction” (Maeda et al. 2020, p. 333) and opt for keeping to the status quo, a principle of prudence which probably owes something to the prominence of archeologists in the Japanese team, who recognize that “the tragic destruction in 2001 itself is considered invaluable to The Property as a World Cultural Heritage” (Maeda et al. 2020, p. 335).

The suggested reconstruction of the Buddha statue should, therefore, take place outside the protected area of the UNESCO property, precisely on the southern slope of the valley, opposite the empty Buddha niche. The authors propose a reduced, 13 m replica of the Eastern Buddha, made of fiberglass reinforced concrete (Maeda et al. 2020, p. 345). It should be accessible through a stairway which would also lead to newly hewn caves, and which would host a museum. Only the rock fragments of the original statues should be stored near their niches (Maeda et al. 2020, p. 337). The cost of the entire endeavor is estimated at 13,34 Mio $. (Maeda et al. 2020, p. 346).²⁸

The authors do not mention that the site of the reduced new Buddha and the attached museum would be exactly where the Bamiyan Cultural Centre was under construction at that time. Nor do they integrate it into their proposal. They only refer to a long-abandoned Japanese project for the Cultural Centre, presented at the 12th meeting of the BEWG in 2013 (Maeda et al. 2020, pp. 336f).

All three Tokyo proposals seem problematic, aside from possible objections on aesthetic grounds, because they do not sufficiently take into account the local context. The proposals put forward by Margottini and Bruno as well as that of the Japanese, fail to acknowledge the existence of the Bamiyan Cultural Centre. Furthermore, the Margottini and Bruno project does not indicate how best to manage the salvaged rock fragments of the sculptures. The Japanese proposal, on the other hand, underlines the safeguarding of the archeological areas, which has been more or less ignored in the proposals by both Aachen and Margottini/Bruno. Lastly, the Aachen proposal does not consider the weight of an entire Buddha statue made entirely out of mud, which would greatly burden the ground under the niche.

However, no decision regarding the three proposals was made at the Tokyo meeting in 2017. Instead, the subsequent BEWG meeting “recommended that the Afghan authorities establish a committee to review and discuss the submitted proposals, and any further proposals, to identify the future action to be taken for the Buddha niches (V.3). Thus, the meeting ended with a further deferral. Given the political turmoil in Afghanistan, this committee was never established, and the issue of Bamiyan’s giant Buddha statues remains unresolved.

5 Some Conclusions

The events of August 2021 interrupted the long debate surrounding how a reconstruction of Bamiyan’s Buddha statues might eventually take place. In this new scenario of the Islamic Emirate, any attempt at reconstruction, revivification, reassembly, virtual or physical, is out of question. This is not merely due to the new government’s presumed opposition to it, but also for the all-too-evident economic hardships faced by the population, to which such a costly endeavor would stand in unsustainable contrast. However, this does not unburden us from the task of trying to find a reasonable solution to settle this two-decade-long debate.

The proceedings of the 2017 Tokyo conference also contain a contribution by Jukka Jokilehto, head of ICCROM, another of UNESCO’s advisory institutions, which, in our opinion, could serve as a stimulus for further consideration. Jukilehto speaks out against anastylosis, because the rock fragments that have to be relocated in the empty niche “are just material without form” (Jokilehto 2020, p. 212). But Jokilehto also reintroduces an argument that had already been made in the UNESCO debates: any form of reconstruction would necessarily render invisible and obfuscate some part of what has remained. It would introduce a new and overwhelmingly prominent element into Bamiyan’s cultural landscape, whose Outstanding Universal Value was recognized in 2003 with the empty niches as part of it. Jokilehto concludes: “It is not advisable to propose any reconstruction or anastylosis in the ancient niches. The present remains are the most efficient memorial to the 2001 destruction, and they are the most authentic and prestigious monument for the history of the Bamiyan Valley and its community” (Jokilehto 2020, p. 213).²⁹

Following the highly publicized destruction of the Buddha statues in 2001, any form of physical reconstruction appears gratuitous today, since the image of the Buddha statues, as well as the image of their destruction, are virtually omnipresent in the media. Every visitor in front of the empty Buddha niche already has the image of the Buddha impressed in his or her mind. A material replica would thus simply be redundant.³⁰

In the Tokyo conference volume, James Janowski argued in favor of reconstruction, on philosophical grounds.³¹ The original Buddha statues are a testament to mankind’s achievements and should not be lightheartedly be given up, but which can be revived by the new achievement of reconstruction (Janowski 2020, pp. 257–273).³² This might be true, but in our view, more importantly, the destruction of Bamiyan’s Buddha statues was a historical disaster and historical disasters cannot be redeemed nor repaired. They must be remembered and taken into account.