Over the years it had not just been the Buddhist idols and other non-Islamic icons that they had been determined to destroy, but pretty much everything that made up the long, rich history of Afghanistan. It once again all had to with the Taliban’s take on the Islamic belief that images were not allowed to be portrayed, and so, not only the statues, but paintings that depicted people or animals were to be destroyed, as well as all film, including about 40 years worth of filmed history of Afghanistan. Although, sadly, only a tiny fraction of the museums contents remain today, a millennia of history and objects destroyed by the brief reign of the Taliban, what survived the purges have either been shipped to other countries or bring hidden in places that are hoped to be safe. But as of late, and since the Taliban lost their power, much of these once hidden away items can come out once more to be seen and enjoyed by others. Two of the most amazing examples of people’s determination to preserve their culture no matter what the risk was would have to be the examples of the Afghan Film Library and the paintings in a museum. Both of these stories would have ended in a total decimation of these precious historical items had a bunch or curators, artists and owners of the establishments not stepped up and done something. Both these acts of preservation also had some form of luck as well, because both had forewarning of the upcoming purge of their artefacts, the museum had some days while the film library only had overnight to do what they had to do, because any slip up would involve both the death of the people attempting to save the artefacts as well as well as the destruction they had been trying to prevent.
The first example of these efforts would have to be the curators and custodians of the film archives. They had very little warning, only a single night, to do what they did, and although it was an exceedingly risky thing to do, all of them claimed that they would have it no other way. They would save the film or die trying. It was a race as they hid the old reels in secret storage bins and stashed most behind a door, hastily plastering a false wall over the top of it, and just for extra precaution, even hung a Taliban supporting banner over the top of it. To trick the Taliban into thinking they were actually burning the film, they replaced the negative reels with empty ones, that were merely replaceable prints, or were blank, but unless the Taliban actually watched them all, they would have no way of knowing these were merely prints. All they could do now was stand by and wait for the Taliban to arrive. The only true advantage they had in all this was their warning the day before, and the Taliban would not have known that they had received such a warning and would thus have less of a reason to do a huge search of the place.
The morning they arrived was described as being very tense, but the custodians knew they had to act as normal as possible, as though nothing out of the ordinary was going on. In the end, after a while of expected searching, the Taliban departed with what they believed to be all the film they had come for, and tossed all of it into a bonfire. While the custodians of the archives knew that the film was safe for now, the rest of Afghanistan and people who knew about this, most likely the UN and other world agencies would have watched this much like the Buddha’s, with disbelief and horror as what they believed to be 40 years of filmed history was consumed by the flames. However, a few years later, by 2001 when the Taliban lost their power, these films were able to be brought back out into the light and re-stacked back onto the shelves where they belonged. The eight men who risked everything to save these pieces of history were regarded as heroes, as not a single film from their library was lost, although over 1000 from other libraries were not so lucky.
Mohammad Yousof Asefi is a name that most people would not recognize but in the world of art, he is another hero. Like the men at the libraries, he too braved the prospect of torture or death to save paintings that would otherwise have been destroyed due to the fact that had life depicted in them, such as animals and people. He is a renowned artist and doctor in Afghanistan and had several of his own paintings on display in the museum, so when a tip off of an upcoming raid came to his attention, he and a couple other artists immediately got to work. It was Mohammad Yousof Asefi’s idea to paint watercolour over the original scene, and thus erasing the people clad in bright colors to become chameleons and become part of the background or turn into trees. Animals became pots and grass, and so precise was the coloring and so talented were the artists that when finished one would never have been able to tell that the painting had been doctored at all, yet alone that there could possibly have been anything other then what was seen before. So when the Taliban did come on the day of what would be many inspections over the course of many months, more than 80 paintings were saved that year thanks to the painstaking and efficient work of the few artists, although many more were lost, there is no doubt that these would have been as well. Just as with the film and other artefacts, when the Taliban lost their power, all these artists had to do was take a sponge and wipe away their water colors off the original scene, and life, once more was restored to the painting.
Although there could not have been much anyone could do to hide or conceal the Buddha’s, today there is a pending effort to perhaps re-create the Buddha’s exactly as they were before the explosions, and although it will never be the same as it once was, for its ancient status was a part of what made it famous, it will still be a grand effort and perhaps assist Afghanistan in regaining some of its lost culture the Taliban seemed so determined to destroy, and sadly, were all too successful in. Te efforts of the people show how averse they were to all this, and blame cannot be laid upon them. For one thousand years these artefacts survived on the Silk Road, and in a few short years thanks to one group of people, they vanished forever.
