00:00I had painted my paintings with a lot of delicacy and now they were torn up or
00:07destroyed beyond repair. How could this happen?
00:16With the paintings of the National Gallery at stake, Assefi devised a plan that could have gotten him killed.
00:23He volunteered for a job restoring paintings that had been damaged during the wars.
00:34Once inside the gallery, Assefi needed an accomplice.
00:39He found one in Inayat, a member of the National Gallery staff who shared Assefi's contempt for the Taliban.
00:46Risking their lives, Inayat and other staff members brought endangered paintings to the room where Assefi worked.
00:56I worked in this room, but back then there was no furniture, desk or chair.
01:04There was nothing here, only a rug. I would place the paintings in a corner and work on them.
01:10It was here that the real sleight of hand took place.
01:17The Taliban condemned paintings that portrayed living things.
01:22Dr. Assefi made the offensive elements disappear.
01:27I suddenly came up with the thought of using watercolors on top of oil paintings to hide the unacceptable parts.
01:35My trick worked.
01:41The paintings did not show that they had been retouched or converted.
01:56Month after month, Assefi and his accomplices ran an art rescue factory right under the noses of Taliban religious police.
02:04The penalty for such organized treason?
02:09Probably death.
02:11Whenever they would come, I would lock the door.
02:15The doctor was inside.
02:17He would stop his work, having understood that somebody was here.
02:23Naturally, I was afraid, because the Taliban were everywhere.
02:29Ultimately, Assefi's team put about 80 retouched paintings back on display.
02:40The Taliban inspectors never noticed their subterfuge.
02:43After the Taliban's fall, Assefi simply wiped off his handiwork.
02:59Despite all the suffering and hard work, our goal was to change something.
03:15And we did it.
03:16Besides art, the Taliban regime seemed to declare war on fun.
03:32Bird fights, dancing, even kite flying were banned.
03:38Today, Afghans show they haven't missed a step.
03:41For Dr. Victor Sarianidi, the main show is just ahead.
03:56This afternoon at the Presidential Palace, the Russian archaeologist hopes to witness the opening of a treasure he has not seen for more than 20 years.
04:07Only he can verify if it is real.
04:10And that's where Victor's friend and National Geographic fellow, Dr. Fred Hebert, comes in.
04:20He will be in charge of scientifically cataloging the gold to promote research and exhibition of the rare objects.
04:28If they're there.
04:34Oh!
04:35Finally, the wait is over.
04:39The destination, the Presidential Palace.
04:43The mission, to determine if the Bactrian Horde still exists.
04:48We're gonna go through a series of checkpoints.
04:50And we're going to then proceed through the front gate of the Presidential Palace.
04:54Deep within the innermost chamber of the Presidential Palace, tensions are high.
05:09Could the Bactrian gold have survived the Civil War and outlasted the Taliban?
05:15Will the safes, said to contain it, be empty?
05:25Bad news.
05:27The key to the safe is nowhere to be found.
05:30It was probably lost years ago.
05:32If the delicate treasure is inside, will it be damaged by the saw's intense heat?
05:47My heart was just trembling.
05:50I was worried about the gold.
05:51I was worried about the artifacts.
05:52I was worried about everything.
05:54Over 20 years of waiting finally comes to an end.
06:00The first object emerges from decades of mystery.
06:06This is the first piece.
06:11A golden, floret hairpin, Dr. Sarianidi pulled from the Earth a lifetime ago.
06:18It's like seeing an old friend again after 25 years.
06:32You didn't even know if he is still alive.
06:35And now you realize he is right here, waiting for you.
06:38On a winter's day in 1978, Sarianidi first laid eyes on the object.
06:53About 2,000 years before, it had belonged to a nomad woman.
06:58Perhaps a princess.
06:59She had been buried in secret, her grave unmarked.
07:07This would prevent thieves from looting the royal cemetery.
07:14We think that the royal family probably buried their dead in this old ruins.
07:19Because the ruins had ghosts that would keep people away.
07:25So the burials were saved for 2,000 years.
07:29The princess was between 25 and 30 years old.
07:34Adorning her were layers of dazzling gold jewelry.
07:38No one knows how she died, and little is known about how she lived.
07:45Her people, Bactrian nomad warriors, had once been little more than illiterate bandits.
07:52But by the princess's time, they had learned the ways of commerce
07:57and grown rich as middlemen on the Silk Road.
08:03The Silk Road trade would enrich her region for 1,000 years more.
08:08And within 400 years, it would fuel an artistic golden age at its great oasis, Bamiyan.
08:26In Bamiyan, Nadia and Dr. Tarzi clean Buddhist sculpture created during that golden age,
08:33around 500 A.D.
08:35They come from an excavation Tarzi believes is the monastery that will reveal his personal holy grail,
08:43Bamiyan's sleeping Buddha.
08:46To Dr. Tarzi, it's unsurprising that the monastery is rich with Buddha's sculptures.
08:52This region was one of the first in which Buddha was represented in human form.
08:57Before that time in India, Buddha had been represented by symbols, footprints, a tree.
09:08It's because of Greek influence that Buddha is represented as a human,
09:14because the Greeks were already attributing male or female traits to Zeus, Aphrodite, Venus and Athena.
09:21In Afghanistan, this Greek influence dates from Alexander the Great's invasion around 330 BC.
09:32The conqueror established cities and left behind garrisons of soldiers in what's now Afghanistan and Pakistan.
09:39When Buddhism spread westward from India in the centuries that followed,
09:46it was met here by descendants of Alexander's armies.
09:50They had a taste for depicting their gods in human form.
09:54The hair imitates the hair that you find on Greek statues.
09:59The hair imitates the hair that you find on Greek statues.
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