Civilisation, in C P Snow's words, is "hideously fragile." All that separates us from the horrors underneath is, he wrote, just a coat of varnish. In many places and at many times the coat of varnish has worn dangerously thin. The twentieth century witnessed this phenomenon perhaps more frequently and with more devastating results than any other. In Afghanistan at the start of the 21st century there are signs that once again the veneer of civilisation has begun to peel away. The policies of the Taliban may not yet have reached the depths seen in Europe in the last century but their current activities indicate that they are travelling inexorably in that direction. In recent days that organisation has brought out its military hardware, including tanks and rocket launchers, to launch attacks on statues of Buddha throughout the country. Troops from the sinister Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices, which runs the religious police, have committed themselves to obliterate all Buddhist graven images in the country.
They are carrying out an order issued by the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, who has decreed that all images, including statues and pictures, run contrary to Islamic teaching. Two giant statues of Buddha carved into a mountainside 90 miles west of Kabul and listed as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO are among the targets. More than 6,000 art works in the Kabul Museum are also on the list for destruction. Oadratullah Jamal, the Taliban's information minister, has issued a stark statement saying "all statues, all over the country, will be destroyed."
Governments and agencies throughout the world are appalled at the scale of the destruction. Thailand, a strongly Buddhist country, has urged the Islamic world to put pressure on the Taliban to stop the campaign. Germany's foreign minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, has said his government is horrified at the wanton destruction. Mr Koichiro Matsuura, Unesco's director general, has described the action as a "cultural disaster". Even Pakistan, which has been the Taliban's strongest ally, has appealed for measures to protect "historical monuments sites and artifacts which are part of the world's cultural heritage". This plea has been rejected out of hand by the Taliban ambassador in Islamabad, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who has accused Pakistan of being "too concerned about the international point of view." The Taliban regime has in the past seriously curtailed the rights of women in Afghanistan where it controls 95 per cent of the territory. It has even arrested people for wearing unapproved hair styles. Its latest action is motivated by a fanaticism of an intensity that could lead to atrocities of a more horrific nature.