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Expedition
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00:08I'm flying into a war zone, into the crossroads of Eastern and Western culture, into Afghanistan.
00:18After 23 years of conflict, war against the Soviet Union, a bitter civil war, life under
00:25the tyrannical regime of the Taliban, and now the war against Al-Qaeda, no one really knows
00:31what has happened to the art treasures of this country.
00:35I've heard stories of terrible destruction, but also of lost ancient gold and looted treasures
00:41that may still exist, and what is the real story behind the Taliban's destruction of
00:47Afghanistan's giant Buddhas.
00:51I'm on a quest to find out what happened and what survives.
01:04Kabul, 10th of March, 2002.
01:07I meet my translator and guide for the next three weeks, Bilal.
01:16Of course, I'll get a very funny sense about what you expect here in London.
01:22Things are, yeah, it's a good feeling.
01:24Lovely weather, sunny, warm.
01:46I've read reports of Taliban attacks on all aspects of culture throughout the country.
01:52Destruction of buildings and monuments, repression, and persecution of artists and curators.
01:58And I've also heard rumours of untold treasures that still survive, hidden.
02:03I'm tired.
02:05I've just landed in one of the most hostile environments in the world, after a gruelling 16-hour journey.
02:16How much are you willing to put yourself out for the project in terms of your own safety?
02:21I think it would be very tempting to take risks.
02:23And maybe we will.
02:24Maybe we'll have to.
02:27But we've got to try and resist it to a degree.
02:29We want to find out what the implication is for the people of Afghanistan in losing their culture,
02:35having their culture destroyed in front of them by the Taliban.
02:40One does feel that we have a duty now to pursue this, to find out.
02:44And if that means taking a few risks, we have to do it.
02:48Oh, yes, handy.
02:58This city is a ruin.
03:01But its once proud buildings are a symbol of the thriving Kabul of the 1960s and 70s.
03:08This is the Kabul Theatre, the only modern theatre in the land,
03:14home to drama, opera maybe, dance, look over there.
03:23Wrecked during the civil war and, of course, neglected by the Taliban.
03:37Decades of conflict have destroyed what was once a modern metropolis, aspiring to the future.
03:50So what's happened to this building now?
03:52Now it's broken.
03:55Look at these wonderful girls.
03:57What happened to these girls?
03:59You know, there they are, in their 20s.
04:03They're travelling all over Asia, certainly.
04:06They're now in their 50s in burqas somewhere.
04:08I mean, it's, it's pine, it's extraordinary.
04:11It's like just taking Afghanistan's passed away in a box, isn't it, taking these.
04:15It's just so incredible.
04:17This world's so, so, so, so, so recent.
04:21And so, in a way, familiar to us.
04:24Lovely Afghan tour.
04:25Happy days.
04:27Camel tourists coming here.
04:37Six years ago, among the ruins of Kabul, the Taliban Ministry for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of
04:44Virtue planned religious rules for life.
04:53Banned were American hairstyles, gambling, music and kite flying.
04:58Most puritanically, they banned all images of living beings.
05:03Out went photography, painting and sculpture.
05:07For the Taliban, this was sacrilegious.
05:10It was the creation of an idol, strictly forbidden by the Koran.
05:15It's like pictures in the 1890s, extraordinary.
05:22This is the National Gallery of Afghanistan.
05:25Its collection comprising the paintings most important to the nation.
05:30Almost all are now destroyed.
05:32Look at that down there.
05:36That's something.
05:37That's so brutal, isn't it?
05:40This is a painting of an African man.
05:42It was presented to the gallery by an African artist.
05:49This painting shows a man studying.
05:54I'm shocked and outraged to see this.
05:56The director must be much more so.
05:58How does he feel standing over this?
06:03When I came here and saw this, as an Afghan, I had tears in my eyes.
06:08Leave me.
06:11The director of the gallery introduces me to a man who,
06:14heroically, saved hundreds of works by painting over the offending humans and animals.
06:22I covered the living beings in oil paintings with watercolors to disguise them.
06:27That was covered with a watercolour, um, camouflage, so to speak.
06:33Yeah.
06:35Watercolour.
06:36Yeah, watercolour.
06:37Wasn't it, um, a bit...
06:39Wasn't it easy to tell the difference between the oil paint and the watercolour?
06:43Couldn't the Taliban notice what had happened?
07:06It's very effective. I'm amazed how effective a bit of watercolour can be.
07:12If the Taliban had caught me, it would have cost my life.
07:21I'm off to the Carpool Museum.
07:23This is going to be a distressing experience, I know that.
07:27It was one of the great museums of the world, not much known, but fantastic collection.
07:32World famous things, really.
07:35Ooh.
07:37Good gracious, it's much worse. Look, there's no windows. There's no roof.
07:41Yeah.
07:42No roof.
07:43Terrible.
07:46Thank you very much. Wonderful to be here.
07:51This is what happens to a museum during wartime.
07:54All the rooms are like this.
07:58But the damage here was through war. This is not the Taliban here.
08:04So what happened is the roof was burnt off. I mean, it's incredible destruction.
08:09It was reported on the 13th of May, 1995, that rockets had hit the museum.
08:16And it was on fire. It had a wooden roof, you see.
08:19The display cabinet and the treasures were on fire.
08:23The director shows me into a room that once contained the stupendous Bagram ivories,
08:28before they were looted in the Civil War.
08:31Oh, gosh, the Chinese lacquer bowls over there.
08:35Oh, my goodness me.
08:36Well, this is the moment, yes, of mourning,
08:38but this is one of the greatest treasures in the world.
08:43So this is Buristan?
08:45Yes.
08:50This is really where the barbarism strikes home, isn't it, and come into this room.
08:55Such treasures, nothing, not even a ceiling now.
08:58Can I ask you what the loss of the museum, the loss of the artefacts of the museum,
09:03what that means to the people of Afghanistan?
09:07Without a doubt, this is a sad time for the people of Afghanistan.
09:10They have lost their culture and their history.
09:14If a building is destroyed, you can rebuild it.
09:16But if a national heritage is lost, you can't bring it back.
09:23Looting and destruction during the Civil War
09:25led to the loss of three quarters of the museum's priceless collection.
09:29And what little survived fell into the hands of the Taliban.
09:34They set to work destroying any representations of living beings.
09:38I meet the curator who witnessed this attack.
09:41What happened to this particular figure?
09:46When the Taliban came first, they made us open up this room.
09:49They saw this statue of a man excavated at Kunduz province.
09:53They started hitting it with a hammer, but they could not break it.
09:56It's made of solid marble.
09:58So they came back the next day with a much bigger hammer
10:01and a pickaxe used for breaking stones in the mountains
10:06and smashed away at it all day.
10:08I was made to watch.
10:11Slowly the statue sustained marks and broke into pieces.
10:17Having worked here for so many years and loving the place,
10:20knowing the place well, I can't imagine how you felt
10:24when you saw the axes and hammers falling on these wonderful objects.
10:32I've worked with these objects for years, treated them with care and attention.
10:37I love them like my children.
10:40And then to see them being destroyed with axes,
10:43it was the most tragic day for me.
10:45Every human being would feel the same.
10:50How could anybody bring themselves to smash things like this?
10:55It's beyond comprehension, isn't it?
10:58Just beautiful artistic objects, once worshipped,
11:02but no longer worshipped here.
11:04They weren't a danger to anybody.
11:06They were just part of the world's culture.
11:10These are not mute objects.
11:12They themselves have a voice.
11:14They speak, don't they?
11:15Of their own beauty.
11:16And of the tragic behaviour of human beings.
11:22Oh my God.
11:26Face of suffering.
11:29Patient suffering.
11:31Bit of a lesson there, isn't there?
11:39There's more to this story than the Taliban
11:41and their ideological destruction of history, of culture, of beauty.
11:48Just looking around here is an astonishingly sobering sight.
11:54We're six miles from the centre of Kabul.
11:58This is an area called Darul Laman.
12:01This was laid out in the 1920s to be the new capital of Afghanistan.
12:08A country just recently liberated,
12:11finally won its liberation from the British Empire.
12:14On my left is the great royal palace.
12:20Standing here one does understand with a particular power
12:25the suffering of Afghanistan over the last, well, 20 years really.
12:31This is described in the 1970s as a luxurious park.
12:37To my right, with a palace sitting over it.
12:47Oh my goodness, look.
12:49Yes, excellent.
12:52Ten dollars.
12:53Ten dollars.
12:54Five dollars.
12:55Five.
12:56Five.
12:56Okay.
12:57Three more.
12:58Three more dollars.
13:01You've changed.
13:03Oh, you've got five.
13:04Okay, thank you.
13:06Throw that in.
13:07Okay.
13:09I've been looking for these.
13:11You wouldn't believe it.
13:11Very hard.
13:13Incredibly lucky.
13:13Oh, another guy at the FGAR Museum.
13:17Hang on.
13:18How much is this one?
13:20Five, five.
13:21Five.
13:21Five, five.
13:22Right, so, hang on a moment.
13:23Five for this one, is that right?
13:26I've given you 15 for all of those.
13:29Five more.
13:30Five more.
13:33Hang on, I've got lost now.
13:35This is 20 dollars for all of it.
13:36That's it.
13:38No more.
13:42These books, guides to the museum in Kabul, couldn't get hold of until just now.
13:49And this shows the museum in 1974.
13:52And, um, I'm just seeing the quality, the absolute quality of these things.
13:58This is the, uh, the Buddhist figure that survives in the museum, just, like, just that bit left.
14:07Page after page tells the same story.
14:10There's no provincial backboard of the museum.
14:12This really was a place containing objects, artifacts, of the highest quality.
14:18They've got this extraordinary cultural mix, representing the sort of cultures and civilizations
14:24that have moved through, possessed, Afghanistan from players.
14:27Left their mark with artifacts buried, and there's fragments of buildings.
14:33This Greek work here, Roman work, Hindu, Buddhist.
14:41These were looted, probably in the early 90s, during the fighting.
14:44Easy to put in your pocket.
14:48One of the fantastic ivory panels, showing these big, background women.
14:53Fantastic.
14:54Wonderful.
14:57Owned privately, criminally.
14:59It's one of the greatest cultures after this really, certainly in post-war years,
15:02certainly, certainly almost, certainly, oh, I don't know when such a thing happened.
15:07Most of the Second World War, yeah, I suppose, museum was wrecked.
15:10It compared to the wrecking of museums in Russia and Germany during the war.
15:16Absolute disaster.
15:26I'm leaving Kabul for the first time, which is significant.
15:30I'm not quite sure what the roads are like, or meet me along the road.
15:33I'm going to see the Minar Ichakri, which is a monument, nearly 2,000 years old.
15:40Fantastic object.
15:45Until coming to Afghanistan, I believe the Taliban were just attacking images of beings, of animals, living beings.
15:56Because they felt those, you know, offended the Koran.
15:59They felt they were images of idols.
16:02This is a Buddhist monument, but, you know, it had nothing on it.
16:06No carvings of beings or animals, so I imagine it would be safe.
16:10But no, not at all.
16:12Clearly, since the Taliban were wiping out all monuments to the past, this column became a target.
16:20Now, I know it's been damaged, as I say, not entirely sure how badly damaged.
16:31Things are going to be pretty bumpy from here in.
16:33Oh dear.
17:12We're forced to stop at a vehicle checkpoint.
17:14We need the local military commander's permission to proceed.
17:18Getting to the Minar Ichakri will depend entirely on his goodwill.
17:23His guards invite us for tea while we wait.
17:27We're very happy that you're here to tell the story of what happened to our cultural heritage.
17:32It is such a cruel way to treat any historical object.
17:37How do you feel about the future of the country in terms of the children,
17:42growing up in a country that's lacking resources and that had so much of its culture and history destroyed?
17:49What do you feel will their future be?
17:51What a man remembers, he tells his son.
17:55And he, in turn, tells his son.
17:57I'll have to tell my children of the wonders of this country and its history.
18:03They can destroy our buildings and monuments, but they can't destroy our minds.
18:08We all have memories, and our past and history now lives on in them.
18:14After two hours, the military commander arrives.
18:18On behalf of us, welcome to this inn.
18:22Thank you very much.
18:23You know why we're here, to see the remains of Minar Ichakris.
18:27How do we get there? In your vehicle?
18:30In my vehicle, yes. You're welcome.
18:31OK, OK.
18:33What is this?
18:44The military commander who's led us here has now decided that the road ahead,
18:49it's hardly road at all, could be mined.
18:52No problem.
18:53No problem. I believe you. Fine.
18:59Well, the local military commander remembered an urgent meeting in Kabul.
19:04It's gone.
19:05So we are now proceeding minus him and his vehicle,
19:09but with his armed guards over the minefield, as I can see.
19:14Which he thought was here, but no one else thinks is here.
19:17But he's gone, and we are here.
19:19However, we're driving as near as we can get to the ruins of the pillar.
19:25And, um, then walking.
19:33We walk for an hour and a half.
19:35Our guides slightly unsure of where they are heading.
19:39The sun beating down, and the air becoming thin with altitude.
19:47There it is. Fantastic.
19:50This is all that remains of one of the most fabulous, most enigmatic structures, buildings,
19:59wonders of the world.
20:01This is the Muna Ichakuri.
20:10The Muna Ichakuri was built in the 2nd century AD.
20:16It stood dominating the landscape at 85 feet high.
20:242,000 years ago, Buddha wasn't shown in human form.
20:28He was shown simply as a symbol.
20:30And this represented the enlightened one, Buddha, standing on this mountain,
20:35commanding the plain of Kabul.
20:38And round about would have been Buddhist monastery.
20:43It's loss is absolutely staggering, really.
20:46I mean, to consider it survived so long as one of the wonders of the world,
20:51certainly to compare with the Pyramids of Sphinx.
20:55And here it is.
20:57What happened?
20:58Well, I say we're not entirely sure.
21:00People blame the Taliban.
21:01Say they destroyed it because they were destroying history, destroying the past,
21:06destroying, well, Buddhist memorials, or more mundanely looking for treasure.
21:21Mystery surrounds what actually happened to the Muna Ichakuri.
21:24We go to the local village to ask if anyone knows.
21:31At night time we heard an explosion.
21:33The next morning we walked up to the Buddhist pillar.
21:36We found it destroyed.
21:38We don't know who did it, but this was during the Taliban time.
21:42Heard an explosion, suggesting there was a deliberate attack upon it.
21:47So what does he feel about it, about the destruction of this wonderful monument?
21:53We are very sad.
21:54It was such an important thing for us, and so valuable.
21:58Yes, yes.
22:06Back in Kabul, I have a date with Nancy Dupree,
22:10American writer of the 1974 Historical Guide to Afghanistan,
22:14the definitive book on the country's cultural heritage,
22:17now sadly out of date.
22:19Her connection with Afghanistan goes back 50 years.
22:23My question is about the recent events with the Taliban
22:26and what you make of all of that, because I still remain somewhat confused what was going on.
22:33When the Taliban came in 1996, initially they were very, very supportive.
22:39And unfortunately, these hard lines began to take over the cabinet.
22:46No music, that's profane, no flying of kites, no paintings.
22:51That's another element.
22:53They were wrapping things in the mantle of Islam.
22:58But really what they were trying to do is to wipe out this Afghan identity.
23:06They were trying to deny the Afghans an Afghan heritage.
23:12We are all Muslims.
23:15This is the Ummah of Islam.
23:17Take a very, very simple example.
23:20We used to have Radio Afghanistan.
23:24Yes.
23:25All of a sudden, Radio Sharia, no Afghanistan.
23:29Wipe it out.
23:30This was a control mechanism, which had been coming in on various angles.
23:38And this one with the culture was the most important.
23:42And when the world heard that they were going to harm the Buddha,
23:48that was just music to their ears.
23:51So they went up there and they made an example to the world.
23:57Of their will to destroy.
23:58Saying, see, we are in control.
24:02And this goes on, you know, to September 11th, to what's going on now, to all those.
24:08I realized at the time that on one level, the bigger the fast that was made to save the Buddhas,
24:13the more likely they would be destroyed.
24:15Yeah.
24:19Next day, we packed the 12-hour journey westwards into the mountains, to Bamiyan,
24:25site of the Taliban's infamous destruction of the giant Buddhas.
24:30But the day turns out to be a lot longer.
24:38We're halfway between Kabul and Bamiyan.
24:40One of the cars just broken down.
24:42I hope it can be mended.
24:44Otherwise we'll be stranded in the dark on this pass going into Bamiyan.
24:49That would be very unpleasant.
24:57Bigger.
24:59How long now before they're finished?
25:0230 minutes.
25:0230 minutes.
25:06Obviously they can do it.
25:07Yeah, yeah.
25:08Yeah, yeah.
25:08Yeah, yeah.
25:09Yeah, yeah.
25:13In Taliban times, you couldn't have been selling this music.
25:16No.
25:18So, did you have these tapes?
25:20I was a refugee in Iran.
25:23I've just come back with all my tapes.
25:25What's a popular tape now in this village?
25:28What do people like to buy?
25:31Do you have one of her tapes?
25:3340,000.
25:34That sounds all right, isn't it?
25:35Do I have to deal?
25:3640,000 seems good to me.
25:38Yeah?
25:38Good.
25:43I think that we will be there at 8 o'clock.
25:46But it gets dark at 5.36.
25:49I think he's thinking the roads themselves are dangerous driving.
25:52We'll see.
25:53There are mines by the road up there.
25:55So, we might have to sleep by the roadside.
25:59Make a camp for the night.
26:00Because we just can't go along those roads in the dark, can we?
26:31Well, we're still about three hours from Bamiyan.
26:34And night is falling.
26:36We haven't got to the Shabar Pass yet.
26:38And that's a bit of a worry.
26:39We'll have to go through the pass in the dark.
26:42And the roads are very, very narrow.
26:45We've got to go.
26:45The chaps are calling us on.
26:47So, let's see how it goes.
26:55We're going through the pass now.
26:58This is pretty air-raising stuff.
27:01The roads are very rough indeed.
27:03Windy, steep.
27:05There's snow around.
27:06So, it's wet and icy.
27:08And, erm, the edge.
27:10It's only, really, sometimes a few inches away.
27:14And there's a thousand foot trouble or so below.
27:16The advantage of being in the dark is I can't actually see what's down there.
27:22There's a curfew.
27:23About 10 o'clock.
27:24Could be off the roads.
27:26I don't think we're going to get to Bamias by 10 o'clock.
27:29Could be a few rather active vehicle checkpoints along this road.
27:33Which trigger happy chaps.
27:35Who never knows what might happen.
27:45Thankfully, this is the guest house.
27:47So, we'll stay here.
27:48Probably...
27:55We arrive with five minutes to spare before curfew.
28:15Bamiyan.
28:16Over 8,000 feet high in the Hindu Kush mountain range.
28:31The local Hazara people.
28:34Descendants of Genghis Khan's Mongol invaders.
28:37It is known they were much persecuted by the Taliban
28:40for their sheer Muslim beliefs.
28:43It's also known the Taliban destroyed their beloved giant Buddhas.
28:47But I'm here to discover the true extent of the people's suffering
28:50and the untold story of how the Buddhas were destroyed.
29:13Well, it's 6 in the morning.
29:17Feeling pretty good actually.
29:19Didn't sleep too well.
29:20It's pretty cold.
29:21But what a fantastic scene.
29:26And here...
29:28Well, that's the niche...
29:29I guess...
29:29Yes, that's the small Buddha.
29:31And the big Buddha over there.
29:34What, of course, is immediately apparent
29:37is that even with the Buddha villainously destroyed,
29:43the niche is still have power.
29:51Bamiyan's two Buddha statues,
29:52in their scale unique in the world,
29:55stood a quarter of a mile apart,
29:57the larger at 180 feet high.
30:00Carved in the 3rd and 4th centuries,
30:02they survived for 1,600 years,
30:05until March 2001.
30:13Wow, this is the niche in which the big Buddha stood.
30:18There you see it.
30:19My God, this is an incredible moment.
30:21I mean, the pictures one saw of this.
30:24At the time, this was destroyed,
30:26exactly, almost exactly a year ago.
30:28The world's reaction was fascinating, of course.
30:31The great works of art like this belong to the world,
30:34and that's particularly appropriate here, of course,
30:36because we're standing on the salt route,
30:38this great ancient road of commerce, culture, religion,
30:42linking all the civilizations of the 1st, 2nd century AD,
30:46China over there, Rome, the pure Rome, India,
30:50goods coming up and down.
30:52The whole of this complex is a product of that movement of cultures.
30:56Religion came along this road, from India, from Nepal,
31:00Buddhism arrived here.
31:01The Buddhist complex was built here,
31:031st, 2nd century AD.
31:06Later, the Buddhists cut these great majestic statues.
31:11They're the product of world culture.
31:14Of course, I'm standing on a large amount of the Buddha.
31:19The core, this is it.
31:24There we have it, the sacred stone,
31:26the sacred image, reduced to rubble.
31:28Anyway, let's try over here.
31:33I think there's nothing, nothing carved on this at all.
31:35I mean, there's no, this is simply part of the core.
31:38Christ, there's a hand grenade on, isn't there?
31:41Why is it being blooby-trapped?
31:45Well, I won't look at the other ones.
31:48You know, it's a dangerous place still.
31:50People keep telling me that.
31:51I forget it. It is.
31:53I asked the people of Bamiyan
31:54how the Taliban went about destroying the Buddhas.
31:59As soon as they entered Aniazara home, they asked us to leave.
32:03They asked us to put our shoes on, saying we had no right to live here.
32:08Then they put all our belongings in lorries and everything went.
32:12I know it all, I saw it all.
32:15People's belonging, animals and money.
32:17All they were allowed to wear was their own shoes.
32:22It seems most of the town was moved out before the explosion started.
32:27Some people have a brutal way.
32:37We were forced out at gunpoint.
32:39They took my child from me and threw him underground, hurting his leg and breaking it.
32:46The Taliban crippled the boy.
32:49They threw him onto the ground.
32:51We thought he had been crippled.
32:53We didn't know what to do.
32:55Wherever we went for treatment, we didn't have enough money to pay.
32:59When we finally came back here, we took him to hospital.
33:02But now, he can't move his leg at all.
33:08At last, I meet a man who was present as a Taliban destroyed the Buddhas,
33:12who even, against his will, helped them.
33:17First, the Taliban decided to remove the people from this area.
33:21Most people went away.
33:22The Taliban then could do what they wanted to do.
33:25The first thing they did was to fire rockets and bombs at the statues,
33:29very high explosive ones.
33:31But it didn't work.
33:33Later, they brought six lorries of explosives.
33:36They forced me and some others to go with them as prisoners.
33:39They made us carry the explosives up and down,
33:42setting them in various bits of the Buddhas.
33:45They were Arabs and Pakistani engineers to plant the explosives
33:49and blow up the statues.
33:55This procedure took 25 days to one month from the first explosion.
33:59When it exploded, the whole region was on fire.
34:02The explosion was that strong.
34:03The whole of Bamyan was on fire with the strength of this explosion.
34:08What happened to the fragments of the Buddhas?
34:13All of them were sold.
34:15The pieces were sold.
34:16They took everything away, put them in vehicles and sold them.
34:20Tell me just what he felt at the time by being forced to do this.
34:26I was very angry.
34:27We all were.
34:28But we were not able to say anything.
34:30What could we say?
34:31There was no one except them, the Taliban.
34:34They terrorized people, put them in prisons.
34:37Even if we were angry, there was nothing we could do about it.
34:40They made the decisions, they brought the engineers from Pakistan.
34:44We couldn't do anything.
34:45Not only me, but everyone was angry.
34:47It was a symbol for Bamyan, for Afghanistan, even for the world.
34:52This was a barbaric act.
35:01What we are seeing here, what we are documenting here,
35:05is a cultural and human tragedy of the first order.
35:18The smaller Buddha stood at 125 feet high.
35:23Pilgrims would walk the sacred route
35:25up through staircases carved in the cliff around its head.
35:29Before the 25 days of sustained rocketing and blasting,
35:33the Buddha survived,
35:35with many original frescoes in adjoining rooms still intact.
35:41Oh, look!
35:42A moving amount survived of the drapery
35:45just over the right-hand shoulder of the Buddha on the left-hand side there.
35:51And that was painted blue originally.
35:53The statue was gilded and painted.
35:55I can't resist just touching the part of the fabric that survives.
36:05Again, making sure there's no ordnance lying around.
36:09But here we have the drapery from the Buddha's body.
36:16And you see the fold still.
36:19Still enough to understand this was inspired by Greece and Rome.
36:23This is a great thing, this fusion.
36:24So you have the Grecian-style drapery over the body of the Buddha.
36:29And this was painted blue.
36:32And fantastic to see this ornamentation scooped out of the surface.
36:37How these holes, obviously at this colossal scale,
36:40would have given life and movement to the great statue up there.
36:45A colossal work of art.
36:47Now, let me try getting inside here.
36:51So half the doors buried are now following the route of the Buddha's pilgrim as he would have walked the
36:59staircase.
37:00It should take me up to a room behind the Buddha.
37:05Yes, I'm now on the side of the Buddha here.
37:11Bit of a drop here.
37:13But be a bit careful as we go along.
37:18I'm at the highest level now.
37:21The highest terrace.
37:22Three or four storeys, I suppose.
37:25Above where I started.
37:27The last of the sanctuaries or chambers.
37:30And a hole in the...
37:32Ah!
37:32My God.
37:34Well, there's more.
37:36But, of course, sadly, right.
37:38But there's colour and the remains of decorative scheme.
37:41What has happened here?
37:44We're talking a little 4th or 5th century decoration.
37:47Fantastic.
37:49Dome.
37:52Wow.
37:53Figures.
37:54What are they?
37:55It's hard to tell.
37:56I mean, people...
37:56I mean, it's been recorded.
37:58It's Buddhism.
37:58The kingly figures.
37:59Donors.
38:00And so on.
38:03You get some sense in here of the glories of below.
38:06The lost glories of Bamiyan here.
38:09And you consider the whole cliff face painting colours like this.
38:12With architectural elements painted on.
38:15Timber frame.
38:16Archways.
38:17Cornices.
38:18What a sight.
38:19And this gives you some, some inkling of the colours.
38:22And these colours, if you consider, they may be over 1500 years old.
38:29It's incredible.
38:33Oh.
38:35And here, at last, some larger elements, seated Buddha's faces hacked off.
38:40Oh, there's a charming one.
38:41And here, just fragment what's left behind.
38:44You see the original paint onto, claster onto hay and mud.
38:53Again, we go up here.
38:55Staircases.
38:59Cracks in the wall.
39:01Again, I assume from, from blasting.
39:05I'm now behind the Buddha.
39:09This is scary now.
39:10I should stop.
39:12Because that's about as far as one can go with safety.
39:18So, the passage went round.
39:20The Buddha, the Buddha's head, was just there on my right.
39:23It's, it's really very, very over exciting.
39:28And the thin air makes one very light headed.
39:34How's it feel to be up here?
39:39It feels very odd to be up here, you know.
39:45The sense of loss is just ghastly.
39:47I mean, I've got to keep reminding myself.
39:50Just, you know, over a year ago.
39:52It's one of the great sacred sites.
39:56Sacred images of the world was here.
39:59The sight is still sacred.
40:00The image is gone.
40:02The presence, though, remains.
40:07It's one of the most moving moments ever for me.
40:12What's to be done?
40:14A moment I don't know.
40:16A mixture of anger and regret.
40:21But mostly regret at the moment.
40:24Poor, benighted fools, really, is all one can say.
40:42The road from Bamiyan was very dusty and the facilities limited, to put it mildly, so a bit of cleansing
40:49process now in order.
40:52Incredibly, during Taliban times, what I'm about to do now was a crime, punishable, with a good flogging.
40:59What is this wicked thing?
41:01A shave.
41:02Now there's a trap somewhere.
41:04Oh, I think it's here.
41:17If the Taliban had caught a shaving customer, we would have been jailed for a month and a half.
41:22Really?
41:28Feels good.
41:38Put it ticky.
41:39Just a little bit there.
41:40Come, come, come.
41:42Oh, that'd be a miracle if I got that.
41:47Enough's enough.
41:49Thanks.
41:54I really appreciate it.
41:56It's lovely.
41:57It's very good.
41:59Lovely.
42:00Lovely.
42:01Very good.
42:01Feel much better.
42:03Younger, fresher.
42:07Shining jackets.
42:08Takes back to the 60s.
42:09I've got about those.
42:10God.
42:10That is fantastic.
42:13My God.
42:14Traditional carpet, but with Russian weapons on over it.
42:18Tanks.
42:20Big, sort of Russian, 50 caliber kind of machine guns, rocket launchers.
42:23Good God above.
42:25Can I have a look at the other ones?
42:26Yes, sir.
42:27Can I have a look at the other ones?
42:28Can I have a look at the other ones?
42:29Yes, sir.
42:31My God.
42:33Let's see.
42:34That's a rocket.
42:35Yeah.
42:36Bell grenade, AK-47, Russian tanks, armored personnel.
42:39I've seen all these by the side of the road.
42:41Yeah.
42:41I can see them on a carpet.
42:43This is absolutely brilliant.
42:46But, so this has now become, this has now become like a traditional Afghan kind of carpet.
42:53This is absolutely amazing, isn't it?
42:55This is sort of, I don't know, modern politics and, well, military technology.
43:02Sort of, uh, combined with this traditional craft.
43:07Because these are beautifully made.
43:08This is the point.
43:09Beautifully made.
43:10Traditionally made.
43:11But, of course, in the past, images shown on these traditional carpets were images important
43:15to people at the time.
43:16Sufi symbolism, Islamic abstract forms.
43:20And now the important thing is victory over the Russians and the means by which that victory
43:24was achieved.
43:25This is the original one, which is they make 20 years before.
43:30This is the original one.
43:33This is telling a story, isn't it?
43:34They're reduced to sort of traditional abstract images almost, aren't they?
43:37So the helicopter, and, and, uh, what else have you got?
43:41Helicopter.
43:41Here's tanks, here.
43:42Here's tanks.
43:43Armored personnel carriers.
43:44Um, and, and, and, and there's trucks.
43:47This means this is a Muslim country.
43:49It's a mosque.
43:49Well, okay, how, how much is this one?
43:52What?
43:52This is 350, my friend.
43:54350.
43:55This is a big one.
43:56This is an unusual piece.
43:58You will not get something everywhere such a thing.
44:00I could probably, if you went through all the bars and get it for about 250.
44:05I'm on my knees.
44:11We travel south, through the desert, to Ghazni.
44:14We are journeying into the Taliban heartland, towards the battlefront.
44:22The usual warm nature of the Afghans has changed.
44:25We are met with an icy, hostile reception.
44:34To our dismay, we find Ghazni's 11th and 12th century minarets,
44:39surrounded by an ex-Taliban military camp.
44:46It's hard to know who is in control here,
44:48whether these men are friends or foe.
44:53Just days before, a US helicopter was shot down in a battle in neighbouring Gardez.
45:03These minarets are pioneering structures, built in the 11th and 12th centuries.
45:08They are amongst the world's first giant minarets.
45:12They really are of world importance.
45:17They stand here, in what was once a great capital city.
45:23The capital of the Ghaznavid Empire.
45:27This city was eventually leveled, destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1221.
45:32They were in terrible condition.
45:34They were damaged during the fighting with the Russians.
45:39The shells went through the minarets on the sea.
45:42Bits knocked out of them.
45:44And indeed, the battle is like it was yesterday.
45:46There were burnt out tanks, hulks everywhere.
45:49Extraordinary. The battlefield still, really.
45:53And I understand that the last threat to their very existence,
45:58only a few months ago, because there was a Taliban camp just down there,
46:02and the Americans bombed this very site to hit the Taliban.
46:05So these are incredibly lucky to survive that last onslaught.
46:12Exposed to the weather, there was a sandstorm over there.
46:14On carbon measurements, buildings can last much longer.
46:18With no help.
46:21What a strange place.
46:40Gosh.
46:41This is absolutely beautiful.
46:44You know, it's much as it would have been
46:46when Alexander the Great went through here over 2,000 years ago.
46:52But standing here,
46:54one really can see why this is a country worth fighting for,
46:57and why many people have felt it worth dying for.
47:10And the birds.
47:13Huh.
47:15It's hard to reconcile this with the savagery, the war,
47:20the desperation.
47:23That's beset this country and still does.
47:32Of all the mysteries surrounding Afghanistan's art treasures,
47:36the most perplexing is that of the Bactrian gold.
47:41Excavated in the late 1970s,
47:43the hoard of some 26,000 gold artefacts,
47:46dating from the 1st century AD,
47:48is one of the greatest archaeological finds the world has ever known,
47:52comparable with the great treasure of Tutankhamen.
47:56All we have to go on is photographs.
47:59Caught up in the fighting of the past 20 years,
48:01the treasure has completely vanished.
48:04But sources claim it is still safe somewhere in Kabul.
48:09Is hiding place a closely guarded secret?
48:14Do you know much about the Bactrian gold?
48:16Is it here?
48:18It was last seen during the Taliban regime in 1999
48:22by a delegation of archaeologists.
48:24They saw it, it was intact.
48:26But since then, no one I know has seen it,
48:29or been able to check it survives.
48:32Where is the gold now?
48:34I've been told, the Ministry of Finance,
48:37the Ministry of Culture particularly,
48:38or the vaults below the Presidential Palace,
48:41do you believe it's one of those?
48:43It is one of those places,
48:45but we cannot reveal exactly where
48:47because of the tense security situation in the country at the moment.
48:50There is no way I can tell you.
48:53Got it.
48:54And I'm not surprised,
48:56it just means that my quest goes on.
49:02I feel that it's still intact, that it's still there.
49:09I've heard that several governments tried to blow up the vault.
49:16Thick concrete.
49:17They couldn't gain access.
49:20This is the Ministry of...
49:22This is the Presidential Palace.
49:24In the Presidential Palace, the Royal Palace now.
49:26In the Bank Vault of the Treasury,
49:28within the compound of the Presidential Palace.
49:31Which was a former Royal Palace, right, yeah.
49:37Again, I've heard that somebody did succeed.
49:42Then I heard that the key system,
49:47there were seven, eight keys necessary to get into the vault.
49:52Each held by a different person, presumably.
49:54And each key in the hands of somebody else,
49:57dispersed through the world now.
49:59You've handled these, you've seen these, haven't you?
50:01In 78, 79.
50:03What's it like to... I mean, to have...
50:05What's it like to handle the wonderful people?
50:07The perfection of some of these small, small...
50:14applicants.
50:15Even the Afghans were handling these things.
50:18Everyone was very close to...
50:23Weeping of...
50:24In the presence of something so...
50:28Superb.
50:28He said it shows that Afghanistan is a civilized country.
50:32If we came from something like this,
50:36as part of our heritage.
50:41The Presidential Palace is over there.
50:43That's, of course, where the Bactrian gold is most likely to be in the vault.
50:47You might see the gold.
50:50I can't believe we will, but we might.
50:53Good luck, good luck, good luck. Who knows? Who knows?
50:56We are led to meet the civil servant
50:58in charge of interim administration affairs.
51:03Well, um...
51:04Shall I explain? Yes, sir.
51:06Thank you, sir.
51:06Thank you, sir.
51:08Thank you, sir.
51:24We are told to wait as Prime Minister Karzai is consulted regarding our request.
51:31Excellent.
51:35That's a good sign.
51:48Another hour goes by.
52:00well we've got permission to enter the presidential palace driving a few hundred
52:06yards from the ministry where we were waiting to the palace which is over there
52:10ah so back entrance be sure it's over there god this is incredible our security man from the
52:23ministry is being tricked out um no i don't think so no maybe knife no money knife no no knife
52:39we're in incredible
52:48wow how absolutely splendid glorious classical palace at last we are shown a palace known as
52:58a palace of the heart's desire but it's not the building containing the voles
53:05we persuade our guide to show us the main presidential palace
53:08in an attempt to get to see the vaults now can i get inside this building
53:18oh golly look at that okay
53:25as we enter an argument breaks out between our afghan entourage something is wrong
53:34left on our own
53:36to look for the vaults we should go they want us to go with them
53:49i was very lucky we were not meant to be there don't know why
53:55that's about as near as i get i guess to go back from gold
54:03if it survives as a collection again it was undoubtedly involves below the building we've just been in or
54:09involves below the bank over there the authorities in control here well they will admit its existence let alone show
54:17it to me i understand that things are not stable in the country of may
54:24and a criminal element, if they know the gold exists,
54:30could indeed have a go at getting it.
54:33And, of course, elections, when they're held this summer,
54:37well, this could be chaos.
54:41I think we're being ushered out.
54:47Fears for security mean it's difficult to see
54:50any of this country's surviving treasures.
54:53This is the Ministry of Information and Culture.
54:57It's somewhat decrepit in place.
55:01Ah, ladies.
55:07The authorities grant me permission to see one heroically safe item.
55:14Hidden since the Taliban began its historical and cultural purge.
55:20It looks terribly Roman, this to me, a Bacchananian scene.
55:24Not a font, but it's a wine bowl.
55:26Here you see lovely dancing girl naked.
55:31And he seems to be handing out drinks, being handed drinks,
55:35but he's been by these chaps here.
55:38I can't quite make out the face.
55:39He's back as himself.
55:41Another naked person up to something over there.
55:44And you saved it by putting plaster or something over these feet.
55:51We covered images with cotton wool, paper and sellotape,
55:55and diverted the Taliban's attention to the bottom of the ball,
55:59claiming there were no images of living beings on it.
56:03Had the Taliban noticed the erotic imagery,
56:05they would have smashed it instantly.
56:10And here more and more troops of dancing girls,
56:13all naked, full of wine, levelling people, music.
56:19Gosh, the Taliban would have been crawling up the wall with this,
56:21wouldn't they?
56:22This is absolutely fantastic.
56:26It is wonderful, wonderful thing.
56:29The whole world must thank you for this.
56:31This is wonderful.
56:37It's the eve of Islamic New Year.
56:41For the first time since the end of the rule of the Taliban,
56:45traditional festivals and celebrations can be performed once more.
57:17DONATIC MUSIC
57:27It has been five years since we had been able to celebrate this night in our own way, free
57:32from threat of oppression.
57:34This is a special evening for us.
57:36It's the start of a new year of life, a new page of paper for the Afghans.
57:42They're hoping that there will be peace, that there will be stability.
57:46Men and women will be free to be educated.
57:49It's just the start of something we've been hoping for, for a long time.
58:27MUSIC
58:39On BBC Sounds, Greg Jenner dives into the BBC archives, stumbling across random dates,
58:44and listens to recordings to explore what they say about who we are now.
58:49Passed forward a century of sounds.
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58:59MUSIC
58:59MUSIC
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