BAMIYAN, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in early 2001 shocked the world and highlighted their hard-line regime, toppled soon after in a U.S.-led invasion. Now ...

Earlier this month, the visuals at the Delhi press briefing of Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Foreign Minister of Taliban-led Afghanistan, said it all. While the Taliban flag was before him, behind him was a ...

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A video recorded recently in Afghanistan shows Taliban gunmen using the remnants of the Bamiyan Buddhas for target practice. The video is raising serious concerns about a pledge by the Taliban ...

Afghanistan’s 6th C. Bamiyan valley Buddha, before (left) and after (right) its destruction in March 2001. (images via Wikipedia: before & after) (click to enlarge) While it became a worldwide symbol ...

Bamiyan Valley in 2010, with the hole where one of the Buddha statues was demolished (photograph by Afghanistan Matters/Wikimedia) After a reconstruction effort covertly built what appeared to be the ...

"The Nirvana Buddha"—so called because the sleeping Buddha is depicted as he was about to enter the transcendent state of Nirvana—"remains one of archaeology's greatest mysteries," says Kazuya ...

Mirza Hussain, and other prisoners like him, had labored for hours to stack mines, bombs and dynamite beneath the feet of Afghanistan’s most iconic public artwork — a 175-foot standing statue of the ...

The tragic destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in March 2001, which was broadcast across the globe, led to a global recognition of the need to protect cultural heritage at risk. The empty niches of ...