Historically, Afghanistan has been a multi-ethnic, multi-faith country. Afghanistan is now a predominantly Muslim Sunni country, where the Taliban have deposed hundreds of families, revered Islam and vandalized the relics of what was once Buddhist.
Afghanistan is located in the west-central part of Asia, bordering Pakistan to the east, Tajikistan to the north, Iran to the south, and Turkmenistan to the west. Afghanistan was once a Buddhist country, Bamiyan was once a Buddhist holy land, and there are many Buddha statues carved in Afghanistan, including the world's largest Bamiyan Buddha.
The world-famous Bamiyan Buddha is enough to illustrate the splendor of the buddhist temples in Afghanistan. The vicissitudes of regime change and foreign interference are like wildfires, wars linger on the Afghan people, and Buddha statues at historic sites have become victims of war and cash cows for thieves.
The Bamiyan Caves are located in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan, more than 2,000 meters above sea level. The Bamiyan Buddha is located in a cliff valley. To the north is mount Waj, a branch of the Hindu Kush Mountains. To the south is Baba Mountain. The grotto is located in the south of Mount Vaj, the Bamiyan Valley in the afghan capital Kabul north of the Bamiyan City Bamiyan Town not far from the cliffs of the size of more than 6,000 Buddha statues, of which there are two large Buddha statues of the world-class also known as the East and West Buddha. Built in the fifth century AD, the Eastern Buddha is 55 meters high and wears a red robe named Selsar. The Western Buddha was built in the first century AD and is dressed in a blue robe named Shammama. Afghanistan has been a place of contention since ancient times, and the fate of the Bamiyan Buddha is the same fate, and the war is fatal to the loss of the Bamiyan Grottoes. The former Bamiyan Grottoes and the Dunhuang Grottoes of the Chinese Civilization, as well as the Ashan Ajanta Grottoes in India, are known as the three major Buddhist relics.
The Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang's "Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty" describes the Western Regions in this way: More than 2,000 miles in the kingdom of Fanyana, there are stone Buddhas in the mountains northeast of Wangcheng, the Standing Buddha is 1450 feet high, golden and yellow, and the treasure decoration is splendid, and in the east there is a statue of the Garan Buddha built by the previous king of the country, and there is a statue of shakya Buddha in the east, which is more than 100 feet high, and it is cast separately and comprehensively established.
Archaeologists have speculated on the mystery of the dating of the Great Buddha: in the third century AD, King Kagyu Sekya built it, when Ashoka sent people to introduce Buddhism to the Brahmanese kingdom, and Garam Buddha also built it at this time. In the fifth century AD, the White Huns established a powerful empire. Bamiyan was once fertile land and fertile water and grass. The White Huns choked on traffic in Central Asia. Gathering a great deal of wealth, Bamiyan was a transit of a large number of goods here that formed a thriving business that provided a strong material guarantee for the construction of the Great Buddha Grottoes through taxes. By the beginning of the seventh century, the Western Turks had also begun to build and whitewash the Great Buddha, and by the eighth century the Arabs were coveting the wealth of Central Asia, conquering the countries of the Western Regions, and bringing Islam to Bamiyan, Buddhism was gradually lost under pressure.
Buddhist relics are inseparable from tall subjects, Afghanistan is a mountainous country, the mountains and rivers here have an exotic atmosphere, even if the land is desertified, the Bamiyan Buddha ruins tell the glory days of that year. Once a dynasty of great wealth, Afghanistan has now become the least developed country in the world, led by tribal chieftains, separated from each other by scattered factions and long affected by war, making life difficult for the people. The Taliban have become enemies of modern civilization. Warlord wars are a common practice in Afghanistan, with factions fighting endlessly, including a Taliban organization that sprang up in Afghanistan in 1994, and the highest member of the leadership is Aomar, who vigorously promotes the Islamization of the country and destroys Buddhism, thinking that the people and the future savior are actually people who have deviated from the national culture.
With such a wealth of materials for such dangerous projects, how did the barren Bamiyan do it? The giant Buddha is carved into three dimensions, the carver first draws the outline, and in the three-dimensional process, the top of the big Buddha's head begins, excavates the actionable foothold and punches a fixed wooden stake on the surface of the mountain, and uses the rope to tie the hanging frame operation. Just like the current Spider-Man, the carving of the Big Buddha was completed from the top up. The stucco plaster on the surface of the Buddha is beautified, and the arms and face are rounded with wooden stakes. The surface of the East and West Buddhas is golden and blue, which fully coincides with the golden and yellow of the Tang Dynasty, and the treasure decoration is brilliant. In 1970, Indian archaeologists sampled the Giant Buddha and found that the golden substance in it had metallic components, and some of it was gold paint.
Who is Omar?
Born in 1959 in uruzgan province to an authentic peasant family, Omar has been honest with his parents since childhood, and he has studied abroad at a young age to become a highly educated university student, and his family believes in Islam.
Afghanistan has been an imperial battlefield since ancient times, and it has been a usurpation of power before the Soviet invasion, and in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in order to fight the road to the Indian Ocean. The United States also intervened in Afghanistan, and the two major imperial camps began a war of separation in Afghanistan. U.S. guerrillas in Afghanistan were fighting east and west to deplete Soviet power. The long swing of the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union was entirely a spoiler for the Americans. The war ended with the defeat of the Soviet Union. Omar is still an ordinary teacher, he has not yet given up his pen, and the departure of foreign troops has indirectly led to the division of Afghanistan and the chaos of the masses. The unsatisfactory Omar could not bear to lead the students to form a fight against the warlords in the country. The Taliban rose to prominence, and they became acquainted with bin Laden, who was rich and wealthy, from Saudi Arabia.
The domestic warlords began to fire and led the team to a clear banner that won the hearts of the people, known as: "Eliminate the warlords, build the country" slogan, for a time the people's hearts were invincible, at that time the Afghan people really needed such a team, Omar proposed to eliminate corruption for the people, eliminate the warlords and maintain social stability. Soon the Taliban occupied most of the country and formed a government in Kabul. Omar is a military talent, guarding the country is a bit talented, the state management dogma copied the original teachings of Islam: women should be veiled, not allowed to go out, can not watch TV and use modern technology such as mobile phones, men with beards and turbans, amputation of thieves... Bringing the rejuvenated country back to where it was before liberation was not as good as it was before liberation.
At the beginning of its establishment, the Taliban was still very strong in the liberation of the domestic warlords, and its men were fierce in battle, and they were hit in the right eye by a bullet in a charge. After two or three years of struggle, the siege and plunder into the capital guerrilla army turned into a public institution, the grassroots counterattack became a hundred response leaders, and Omar's life was triumphant. Even with his position elevated, Omar himself was still haunted by the lack of pavement. In general, Omar's path to success in leading the Taliban is like familiarizing himself with the means used by the Three Kingdoms in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, which shows that this person still learned a lot about Cao Cao's oriental culture of "blackmailing the son of heaven to order the princes"!
Taliban leader Omar
It is said that in the eighth century AD, the Arabs burned the war to Bamiyan and conquered the people here to turn Bamiyan into Arab territory. In 1226 AD, during the Cold Weapons Age, the Mongol Iron Horse army attacked Central Asia, and was resisted by the Khwaraz tribe in the Bamiyan region, and Genghis Khan ordered the destruction of the city of Fanyana to raz it, and the simple set of fire was enough to destroy the buildings and temples around Bamiyan. From 1747 to 1927, the British colonists ruled Afghanistan for two hundred years, and in 1840 Bamiyan was also a battlefield for Afghans to resist the British army, so the British army bombarded the Giant Buddha with modern times, and the Giant Buddha was bombed into ruins and walls beyond recognition. To say that the more rampant belonged to the Taliban, the ancient civilization in the eyes of the Taliban they regarded the Great Buddha as an enemy. The Taliban conquered the capital Kabul in 1996 to establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The Taliban's Islamic footsteps reached into the Bamiyan Buddha, and the Buddha's misfortune opened Pandora's box. Although the Bamiyan Buddhas are a valuable historical culture in Afghanistan, the Taliban do not think so. In 1998, the Afghan Taliban destroyed all the Bamiyan Buddhas with artillery explosives and weapons, despite the objections of the United Nations. After the 911 incident of the rich second generation bin Laden in 2001, the United States destroyed the Taliban forces on the pretext of fighting the Taliban, and even if the United States acted as a messenger of justice, the Bamiyan Buddha could not escape the history of being destroyed.
The Taliban are Muslims, and after the destruction of the Buddha, the spokesman of the Taliban's highest hair, Omar, said: Blowing up the Buddha statue is the glory of Islam, and in the eyes of the Muslims in Afghanistan, these Buddhas are just stones, and these Buddhas are a humiliation of Islam. The reason why these buddhas were not destroyed was because of the tolerance of the people at that time.
After recovering from being blown up by the Taliban
In fact, those who understand the Taliban's faith know that the destruction of the Buddha was part of the Taliban's dream of establishing the Islamic State.
Earlier in 1998, the Taliban threatened to take action against the Bamiyan Buddha, the Taliban let the captives plant explosives in holes all over the Buddha, and with a rumble, the Buddha disappeared, the rubble smoke billowed into the loess, and after the Buddha was destroyed, the fanatical Taliban fired guns into the air, danced and slaughtered nine cows to celebrate. In March 2021, in front of the crisscrossing of the ruins of the Bamiyan Buddha, the new Afghan government held a Giant Buddha commemoration event to recreate the past glory of the Buddha through light and shadow technology. Although the Bamiyan Buddha is a world-class treasure, after its destruction, Japan and Germany donated money for repairs. But now that the Taliban have swept in, the hatred of the Great Buddha cannot be separated from it, and repair is impossible. Some experts estimate that the cost of repair will cost $20 million and take 5 years, but some people think that it is not necessary. Indeed, the Taliban have said that the Buddha is a stone, and the form of unrest in Afghanistan, even if it can be repaired, will be destroyed into cannon fodder.
In the last Dharma era, human nature changed, and the Taliban regime blew up the Great Buddha, which is now the Bamiyan Buddha, leaving the world with only a pile of rubble and loess. The silhouette of the huge Buddha statue is vividly remembered. Now we can see the Great Buddha, and we can only enjoy such a magnificent landscape from photos and previous images. Ten years later, on August 19, 2021, the Taliban announced that they had regained control of Afghanistan and established the regime of the Taliban's old days. It is said that the fate of the Bamiyan Buddha will also be in the Taliban's sphere of influence.