Afghanistan .. Taliban .. Bamian Buddhas .. The Destruction.

The cliff carvings of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan. A Buddhist centre of learning for some five centuries prior to the birth of the Mohammedan, Abrahamic religion, known as Islam. In misconception of the precepts of Buddhism, a then emerging Muslim faction (Taliban) denounced the enormous cliff carvings as idolatrous. This sciolism led to the destruction of the one and a half thousand year old UNESCO heritage figures upon the behest of a 40 year old Taliban commander, Mohammed Omar, in March 2001. Mohammed Omar was born into a poor Kandahar regional family. Afghanistan had been enveloped in war and tribal power struggles all of his life. He had very little education or understanding of the world outside of his region. Persuaded to attend the Saudi financed, Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa in north west Pakistan. Omar emerged the seminary, with many of his contemporary pupils, a radicalised jihadist Muslim. He died of tuberculosis in the same country in 2013.