[1] Celestine BOHLEN, 
Salvaging Afghanistan's Ravaged Heritage.

[2] Shortly before the Taliban in Afghanistan issued orders to 
blow up the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, which they destroyed 
in Mardi 2001, a squad of Islamic fundamentalists systematically 
ransacked a storeroom of artwork from the National Museum in Kabul. 

[3] Working from morning to night, they went through 
boxes of ancient Buddhist and Gandharan statuary, smashing anything 
with a human or animal image that they deemed idolatrous.

[4] The rubble - all that is left of an unknown number of priceless
antiquities - remained hidden until January, when Paul Bucherer 
director of a small museum in Switzerland  dedicated to Afghan
culture, was ushered into the room at the Afghan Ministry of
Information and Culture, where, paradoxically, the crates had been sent
for safekeeping in the late 1990's.

[5] The museum custodians were still in shock over the destruction
they had witnessed.

[6] "They said it was like watching members of their own families
being murdered", said Mr- Bucherer who went to Kabul on a mission
for Unesco, the United Nations organization charged with protecting
cultural monuments.

[7] Archaeologists and other specialists, evaluating the damage 
to see what can be salvaged from a centuries-old culture, say the 
destruction by the Taliban and, in particular, their allies in Al 
Qaeda, was even more methodical than previously realized.

[8] Nancy Hatch Dupree, an authority on Afghan culture, said 
that when she was last at the saine ministry storeroom in 
March, the museum's employees had already sorted through 
the shattered remains of stucco and schist. 

[9] "All the fragments have been replaced in the boxes; lovingly 
arranged on beds of cotton wool," said Mrs-  Dupree, "The care the 
staff is taking of these broken bits makes you want to cry".

[10] At the National Museum, now mostly an empty hulk a few 
miles outside Kabul, doors and windows are missing, as are 
parts of the roof and anything else that could be used for firewood. 

[11] Museum workers have painstakingly reassembled 
pieces from other famous statues that had also been destroyed, 
including the Tepe Maranjan bodhisattva and a 
figure of Kanishka, a king of the Kushan people.

[12] "They have a vague hope that pérhaps some sort of a reconstruction
can be done," said Mrs-  Dupree, in an e-mail message from Peshawar, 
Pakistan, where she liues.

[13] Last year Unesco designated Mr- Bucherer's institution in Switzerland, 
the Afghanistan Museum, as a repository in exile that could keep (but not 
buy) artifacts in trust, waiting for the day when they could return 
to Afghanistan. Other collectors - in Japan, for instance, 
where Buddhist art from Afghanistan found a ready market 
- may also eventually return some artifacts.

[14] "It is too early to ask for the return of objects," Ms. Dupree
said, "but certainly not too early to talk about it."

[15] Three teams have been dispatched to Afghanistan by 
Unesco to assess damage to monuments in Kabul, Bamiyan 
and Herat, and at more remote sites, like the 12th-century minaret
at Jam and the ancient City at Balkh. 

[16] Unesco has organized a conference next month in Kabul at which 
specialďsts are to draw up a plan and, more critically, a budget for additional 
work that is likely to come under the Unesco aegis with help from private groups.

[17] Of all the cultural projects under discussion in Afghanistan, 
the most spectacular, ambitious and controversial is the one to 
rebuild the Buddhas of Bamiyan. 

[18] About a week ago, Hamid Karzai, the interim president of Afghanistan, 
visited the remote Bamiyan Valley and repeated his government's support 
of the plan. 

[19] The plan, born on the Internet, was the brainchild of Bernard Weber, 
the Swissborn director of the New Seven Wonders Foundation, which has 
used its Web site, www.new7wonders.org, to solicit nominations for a list 
of the seven wonders of the modern world. 

[20] The Bamiyan Buddhas emerged as a popular favorite, and since their destruction 
Mr- Weber has been marshaling support for their reconstruction.

[21] Meanwhile other projects to rebuild the Buddhas have 
sprung up, mainly in cenntries where Buddha is sacred.

[22] Mr- Weber's plan calls for recreating a three-dimensional image of the statues in 
cyberspace, based on meticulous photographs taken in the 1970's, and later for 
the construction of models about 15 feet tall. 

[23] The final phase calls for the reconstruction of one or both of the statues, 
at a cost of $30 million to $50 million.