Afghanistan has been at war for nearly 40 years, and the Country's National Museum has not been spared. The cultural relics here have been looted and destroyed many times, and the museum itself has been hit by missiles and once set on fire. The loss and destruction of cultural relics has become an eternal pain in the hearts of Afghans.
Founded in 1919, the National Museum of Afghanistan is the largest museum in Afghanistan and was home to as many as 100,000 valuable artifacts in the late 1970s. However, since the 1970s, Afghanistan has been mired in wars and turmoil, and the cultural relics of Afghanistan have also been destroyed many times.
Shrazuddin, Conservator of The National Museum of Afghanistan: One day, 160 rockets came from the west side of the museum, and both the museum and the surrounding area were attacked, and many people were killed. After that day we decided that the treasures should be moved to a safe place.
70% of the exhibits of the National Museum of Afghanistan were stolen
At the end of the 1980s, the National Museum of Afghanistan negotiated with the Ministry of Information and Culture and the security forces to store the artifacts in the underground vaults of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, the Ministry of Information and Culture of Afghanistan and the National Museum of Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the National Museum was attacked and looted during the Afghan civil war from 1992 to 1996, with 70 per cent of the exhibits stolen and many documents burned to the ground. After the end of the civil war, Afghanistan entered the Taliban rule, and the National Museum of Afghanistan suffered another disaster.
Shrazuddin, Conservator of The National Museum of Afghanistan: It was right here that I saw militants smash locked cabinets and take them out and destroy them. You see downstairs, and here, there are a lot of destroyed artifacts.
Some artifacts of the National Museum of Afghanistan have been restored
Fortunately, some of the artifacts have been preserved intact. After the fall of the Taliban, the National Museum of Afghanistan reopened to the public. Lasimi, director of the National Museum of Afghanistan, said they are working on restorations, and about 30 percent of the artifacts have been restored so far.
Archaeological excavations in Afghanistan have also been underway in recent years. Since 2003, about 35,000 newly unearthed artifacts have been sent to the National Museum of Afghanistan. 15,000 lost artifacts were returned to Afghanistan from abroad. The National Museum of Afghanistan is slowly regaining its former glory.
A large number of Afghan treasures are exhibited in many countries around the world
Beginning in 2006, a large number of Afghan treasures have been exhibited in many countries around the world, including my own, to show the world that these treasures, which are thousands of years old, have been preserved by generations of Afghans who have risked their lives.
Since the 1980s, the security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated, and the area around the National Museum of Afghanistan has been frequently attacked by rockets. In order to prevent looting, the National Museum of Afghanistan plans to transfer some of its artifacts to a safe location.
Srazudin, Conservator of The National Museum of Afghanistan: Together, several of our colleagues proposed to the Presidential Office that the artifacts should be transferred. They accepted the suggestion and asked us to find a safe place. We thought the central bank was the safest place, and they accepted it, so some of the treasure was transferred to the central bank.
In the late 1980s, one of the most precious artifacts in the National Museum of Afghanistan was transferred to six safe deposit boxes in the underground vault of the Central Bank of Afghanistan. These include gold and silverware from the Bronze Age, which is 4,000 years old, more than 20,000 pieces of gold jewelry left by nobles more than 2,000 years ago, and exotic goods on the ancient Silk Road.
Because the insiders at that time kept secrets, they never revealed the location of the cultural relics to outsiders. These artifacts were protected from war, looting, and the smoke of civil war and the destruction of the Taliban.
It was not until May 2004 that the safes of the Central Bank of Afghanistan were opened one by one, and the artifacts were finally revealed, and people were surprised to find that they were preserved intact. The conservator, Asadi, witnessed this historic moment at the scene.
Assadi, Conservator of Antiquities at the National Museum of Afghanistan: About 20 people came to the underground vault. At that time, the same group of people put the safe into the underground vault, and under the witness of everyone, we opened the vault.
Since 2006, a number of Afghan treasures have been exhibited in many countries around the world, and in 2017, they have been exhibited in China, and many of them come from this vault.
Lasimi, director of the National Museum of Afghanistan: The reason why these cultural relics were sent abroad for exhibition is to show the real Afghanistan and show the real history of Afghanistan. Letting the world see how rich our culture is is the goodwill of the Afghan people to the people of the world.
The guardians of national treasures do not abandon
After nearly 40 years of war and turmoil, the National Museum of Afghanistan can reopen again and again, and the precious cultural relics in the collection can be preserved to this day, and the world has been amazed again through the touring exhibition, all of which is inseparable from the efforts of a group of cultural relics restorers who have silently stuck to their posts and have not abandoned them for decades. Next, let's follow the reporter's lens and get to know such a guardian of Afghanistan's national treasure.
After graduating from high school at the age of 18, Abdullah, who is nearly half a hundred years old this year, had the privilege of finding a handyman job at the museum. With his own efforts, Abdullah learned from scratch with the museum's predecessors, gradually mastered the expertise and technology of restoring cultural relics, and fell in love with this work that was boring in the eyes of outsiders and required great concentration and patience. Over the decades, Abdullah and his colleagues have restored thousands of artifacts excavated from across Afghanistan and carefully displayed them in separate categories. But the war was relentless, and abdullah suffered one of the museum's worst destructions in the civil war within a few years of working.
Abdullah, conservator of the National Museum of Afghanistan: At that time, the museum building was burned, rockets were fired here, and the entire building was destroyed. During the Civil War from 1992 to 1994, when the exchange of fire was at its height, it was occupied by various military forces. Different factions are on one side and one side is in the palace over there. The two sides exchanged fierce fire, bullets came and many parts of the place were severely damaged.
In a critical moment, in order to protect the safety of precious cultural relics, Abdullah and his colleagues made a decisive decision, risking their lives overnight to transfer the museum's collections in several batches to different places for preservation.
Abdullah, Restorer of the National Museum of Afghanistan: No one came to help us at that time, and then only a few military trucks were brought from the Ministry of Defense and transferred the museum's collection to the Kabul Hotel first. There was a lot of fighting outside, there were rockets everywhere, and everyone was thinking about how to get the artifacts protected.
Among these artifacts are Afghanistan's most exquisite national treasures that were transported to the central bank's underground vaults and kept in six safe deposit boxes that would later shock the world. For the next ten years, Abdullah and his colleagues, in order to keep the artifacts safe, never mentioned the whereabouts of the artifacts to the outside world. After the Civil War, Abdullah and his colleagues returned to the museum, which had almost no roof, and watched as it was rebuilt again from a ashes. When they thought everything was gradually getting back on track, the arrival of the Taliban regime once again dealt a heavy blow to the museum. The militants destroyed almost all of the statues of Buddha and human figures from different periods in the museum.
Abdullah, Restorer of the National Museum of Afghanistan: I am very sad inside, this place has always been like my home, and when you watch your home being destroyed again and again, what kind of feeling will you feel?
After that, Abdullah and his colleagues picked up hundreds of fragments of cultural relics again and began a long and tedious restoration work day and night. Like the brightly colored Buddha statue still faintly visible in the window, Abdullah and his colleagues spent nearly four months from the initial identification of the fragments to the time the restoration was completed. To this day, the restoration of destroyed artifacts is still underway.
Abdullah, Conservator at the National Museum of Afghanistan: If culture doesn't exist, it's hard for the country to gain a foothold. If we lose the country, we really have nothing. I think it is the love for the people and the country in my heart, and the education of my family since I was a child, which is such a deep emotion that I have persevered.
(CCTV reporter Gu Yuting Gong Ming)