The Taliban’s rule threatens what’s left of Afghanistan’s dazzlingly diverse cultural history

The Tailban destroyed this Buddha statue dating to the 6th century AD in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in March 2001. The photo on the left was taken in 1977.
AP Photo/Etsuro Kondo, (left photo) and Osamu Semba, both Asahi

Julian Droogan, Macquarie University and Malcolm Choat, Macquarie UniversityDespite cliched talk of a “graveyard of empires”, what we now call Afghanistan has for thousands of years been an important part of many sophisticated cultures.

Situated along the Silk Road — a tangle of Eurasian trade routes stretching back to the days of the Roman Empire — Afghanistan and its people have long served as a place of connection between Mediterranean, Persian, Indian and Chinese civilisations.

It has been home to Hellenistic cities populated by the successors of Alexander the Great, glittering Buddhist monasteries that served to transmit early Buddhism from India to far away China and Japan, and a series of Medieval Islamic kingdoms at the forefront of the literature and science of their day.

This dazzlingly diverse heritage is preserved in over 2,600 archaeological sites scattered across its rugged terrain, numerous regional museums and galleries, and, most famously, the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. Refurbished in 2007, the museum holds a collection of over 80,000 artefacts from throughout the region.

All of this is now under renewed threat by Taliban forces, whose fanatical interpretation of Islam forbids representative imagery, and is particularly dismissive of anything it considers to be non-Islamic.

While remaining focused on the plight of the Afghan people, countries such as the US, UK, and Australia need to also start planning how they can reduce the coming assault on Afghanistan’s art, history and material culture.

A history of destruction

Afghanistan’s archaeological sites were previously systematically looted and destroyed during the period of Soviet occupation and warlordism that followed.

In the 1980s, whole ancient sites were illegally excavated with artifacts sold off under cover of war. The Hellenistic Greek city of Ai-Khanoum, dating from the 4th century BCE to the mid-2nd century CE and discovered in the 1830s, was destroyed, including its Greek theatre, gymnasium and temple to Zeus.

This plate, dating from the 3rd century BCE, depicts the Greek gods Cybele and Nike. It was found in Ai-Khanoum, an ancient city in what is modern-day Takhar Province in Afghanistan.
National Museum of Afghanistan, Kabul

During Afghanistan’s civil war in the early 1990s, items from the 12th century palace of Mas’ud III were looted and distributed through international black markets.

The National Museum in Kabul, established in 1919, was extensively damaged and looted in the period immediately following the end of communist rule in 1992.

The “Dead Seas Scrolls of Buddhism” — thousands of scrolls and fragments written on leaves, bark, parchment and copper containing Buddhist sermons and treatises from as early as the 2nd century AD — were smuggled out of Afghanistan and dispersed among various manuscript collections from 1994 to 2001. Some were looted from the Kabul museum, but most were found in caves in the region of Bamiyan in the 1990s.

From 1996 to 2001, the Taliban outlawed almost all forms of art while systematically looting and destroying libraries and museums, and persecuting anyone considered to be an expert or academic.

A museum employee stands in front of a destroyed statue in the basement of the Kabul Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2001.
AP Photo/Marco Di Lauro

The Taliban were ruthless in their destruction, but also strategic. They saw Afghanistan’s pre-Islamic art and culture as a resource to be used and abused where possible to aid their international objectives.

Most infamously, during their final year in power they glorified in the demolition of the 6th century Bamiyan Buddhas while also decimating the already weakened collections of the National Museum.

Just two years earlier, in 1999, the Taliban Minister of Culture had assured the international community Afghanistan’s Buddhist heritage would be safe under his custodianship. In 2001, the Bayiman Buddhas were held hostage — and ultimately destroyed — while the Taliban demanded international recognition.

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What does this mean for Afghanistan today?

The Taliban are again claiming Afghanistan’s heritage will be safe under their rule.

Statements have been released instructing fighters to protect and preserve historical sites, halt the plundering of archaeological digs, and forbid the selling of antiquities on the black market. Guards have been posted at the National Museum to prevent looting.

However, this initial charm offensive could just be the opening move in a longer strategy in which Afghanistan’s history and heritage will be once again held hostage. Priceless cultural treasures may be threatened with destruction.

Archaeologists and curators responsible for preserving Afghanistan’s national heritage were caught off-guard by the Taliban’s rapid advance. Many are now seeking to flee the country or are going into hiding.

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The loss of these experts and custodians of Afghanistan’s rich heritage will mean there is nobody to protect its material past from neglect or looting. Nor will future generations of young Afghans be able to learn about their past from fellow citizens who have dedicated their lives to preserving it.

Australia’s part to play in stopping illegal trade

Looted antiquities make up a lucrative international black market. There is a proven connection between these back markets and international terrorist groups such as the Islamic State.

A 1st century Clasp from the collection of the National Museum of Kabul.
(AAP Image/National Museum of Afghanistan, Thierry Ollivier

As has been seen in Iraq and Syria, the looting and sale of the archaeological heritage of Afghanistan could be used to fund international terrorism.

Markets for illegally looted artefacts only exist while international collectors — including museums and galleries — continue to acquire stolen antiquities.

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Afghanistan remains, first and foremost, a humanitarian tragedy and we must do what we can to assist the Afghan people.

But now is also the time for Australia and other liberal democracies to put in place stronger legal safeguards to prevent the trafficking of antiquities, in particular much stronger border security and customs measures for the detection and ending of this illicit trade.

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A brief history of the Taliban by an Afghan scholar who lived through it.

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Julian Droogan, Senior Lecturer, Macquarie University and Malcolm Choat, Professor of History, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

New research shows WA’s first governor condoned killing of Noongar people despite proclaiming all equal under law

Portrait of Sir James Stirling, ca. 1833.
Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales ML 15 Ref: 897230’

Jeremy Martens, The University of Western AustraliaIn June, councillors in Perth’s City of Stirling decided not to change the name of their municipality, despite former Western Australian governor James Stirling’s leading role in the 1834 Pinjarra massacre.

That massacre, in which troops and colonists killed between 15 and 80 Noongar people, is widely known. Less recognised is Stirling’s encouragement of soldiers and settlers to flout the law and employ violence, including murder, against Noongar communities resisting colonial dispossession elsewhere in WA.

Stirling was WA’s first governor from 1829-39. My new research on the early history of pastoralism highlights how this industry’s success was built on the violent conquest of the Avon valley in the 1830s, during which Stirling condoned the unlawful killing of Noongar people by soldiers and settlers.

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In one case, for instance, he refused to prosecute a farm worker who killed an Indigenous man in cold blood.

This was despite his proclamation that all the settlement’s inhabitants, Indigenous and European, would be protected equally by British law.

He also argued authorities needed to deliver a decisive blow to “tranquilize” the district. Any balanced assessment of his career in WA should take these actions into account.

‘Liable to be prosecuted’

The proclamation declaring the establishment of Swan River in June 1829 explicitly extended the British legal system to the new settlement.

Indeed Stirling gave notice that if any person was “convicted of behaving in a fraudilent [sic], cruel or felonious Manner towards the Aboriginees of the Country” they would be “liable to be prosecuted and tried for the Offence, as if the same had been committed against any other of His Majesty’s Subjects”.

Yet his commitment to abide by the laws he had proclaimed was frequently tested, especially when colonists began to explore and occupy the Avon valley, 60 miles east of Perth. This area became the centre of the colony’s nascent pastoral industry.

Map of WA from the 1830s.
Author provided

The conquest and settlement of the Avon district by pastoralists and farmers in the 1830s was especially bloody. The Noongar people of the Ballardong region, who owned this well-watered and fertile country, bravely resisted the settler incursion.

In 1836, Stirling dispatched ten soldiers to the town of York under the command of Lieutenant Henry Bunbury. This young officer (for whom the city of Bunbury south of Perth is named) was instructed by the governor “to take the most decisive measures”. Bunbury took this to mean he had been “ordered over here with a detachment to make war upon the Natives”.

A portrait of Bunbury.
Author provided

During 1836 and 1837, Bunbury committed several atrocities, freely admitted to in letters and journals. People sleeping at night were killed without warning. A Noongar man running away from his mounted party was killed, also at night.

Bunbury knew his actions were illegal, but claimed in a letter to Stirling that “severe measures” were necessary. Stirling expressed his satisfaction with Bunbury’s “promptitude”.

In a public notice he explained “a decisive blow” at York was necessary “to tranquilize that District”.

The “boldness” of the Ballardong Noongar resistance meant that nothing would suffice, wrote Stirling, except

an early exhibition of force, or […] such acts of decisive severity, as will appal them as a people for a time, and reduce their tribe to weakness.

Settler killings

Stirling actively condoned the killing of Noongar people by Avon settlers. One particularly egregious atrocity occurred in September 1836 when the pioneering pastoralist Arthur Trimmer ordered a worker to murder a Noongar man “in cool blood”.

The employee, Edward Gallop, was instructed to hide in a barn loft with a gun. The doors of the barn, which contained flour, were intentionally left open and as soon as three men entered to take some, Gallop shot one of them in the head.

Stirling made no public statement condemning this premeditated murder. In a letter to his bosses at the Colonial Office in London, he openly defended settlers’ use of extrajudicial violence.

While expressing his “displeasure and regret at the loss of the Native’s life”, Stirling decided not to prosecute Gallop. He believed that

in cases where the law is necessarily ineffectual for the protection of life and property the right of self protection cannot with justice be circumscribed within very narrow limits.

On several other occasions colonists murdered Noongar people without cause, and in some cases mutilated their bodies. For example, another of Trimmer’s employees named Souper boasted of shooting a woman while hunting in the forest; soldiers under Bunbury’s command later mutilated her body.

When Stirling was asked to investigate and prosecute these crimes by the missionary Louis Giustiniani, he ignored them.

The perpetrators never faced justice.

Jeremy Martens, Senior Lecturer, History, The University of Western Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.