World

First Statues, Now Cows

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 2, 2001 / 6:07 AM EST / CBS

Upset by how long it took to destroy two towering statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, the Taliban's reclusive leader on Friday ordered a sacrifice of 100 cows to atone for the delay.

In a broadcast on the Taliban's official Radio Shariat, Mullah Mohammed Omar was quoted as saying the cows would be killed and the meat distributed to the country's poor and hungry on Monday.

The two giant statues of Buddha, hewn from a cliff face in central Bamiyan in the third and fifth centuries, were demolished last week — almost two weeks after Omar ordered all statues in Afghanistan destroyed, saying they were idolatrous.

The destruction outraged cultural officials in other countries, who sent representatives to ask that the statues be spared.

There were reports that Taliban soldiers tried to destroy the mammoth statues with anti-aircraft weapons, cannons and rockets before eventually stuffing explosives into large holes bored into the rock.

The larger of the two Buddhas, at nearly 170 feet, was believed to be the world's tallest standing Buddha. Local residents believed the smaller statue, almost 120 feet high, showed a female Buddha.

The Taliban have refused to allow anyone into the area, which is also a battle zone between the militia and their northern opponents led by ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The Taliban have ruled most of Afghanistan since 1996, when they took control of the Afghan capital of Kabul.

They follow a harsh brand of Islamic law that has been disputed by other Islamic clerics. The Taliban say it is a mix of tribal tradition and a strict interpretation of the Muslim holy book, the Koran.

Also on Friday, Radio Shariat reminded the faithful that the traditional New Year, which is March 21, would not be celebrated, calling it a pagan ritual. It was banned several years ago.

The New Year celebration was largely a tradition of Afghanistan's minority Shiite Muslims. It is widely celebrated in neighboring Iran, where Shiite Muslims are a majority.

In previous years, the Taliban have patrolled outside Shiite Muslim graveyards to keep people from performing the New Year tradition of placing food on relatives' graves.

Also Friday, a spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), Khaled Mansour, said that a team would visit three opposition-held districts northeastern Afghan province of Badakhshan next week to investigate opposition reports of a large number of deaths from starvation.

"The teams are going to assess the situation and gather more information," he said.

Asim Sohail, a spokesman for Rabbani's alliance, said on Tuesday that about 800,000 people in several districts of Badakhshan were affected by drought.

He said about 400,000 people might die because of the famine in northeastern Afghanistan and that 1,000 people had already died in the last three months.

Aid workers in Islamabad said they had no confirmation of the reports, but one aid worker was cautious about the claim.

"The reports of deaths in Badakhshan are exaggerated," said the aid worker, who did not want to be named.

Drought in Afghanistan, the worst in 30 years, has wiped out livestock and forced hundreds of thousands of Afghans to leave their villages and move to cities for food and shelter.

Neighboring Pakistan says it has received 170,000 Afghan refugees since September, most of them fleeing drought or war.

The United Nations has warned that international aid so far was insufficient to deal with the threat of famine in one of the poorest countries of the world.