Fallen Treasures May Stand Again

Since September 2004, NZ troops have been stationed in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley to oversee the reconstruction of the area following the US-led war against the Taliban. As well as helping rebuild Bamiyan University, the NZ Army is playing a key role in the attempt to piece back together two enormous and ancient Buddha statues, destroyed as ‘false gods’ by the Taliban in 2001. The reconstruction team’s deputy leader, Lieutenant Colonel Greg Davies, feels a sense of loss whenever he sees the destroyed statues. “You wonder why someone would have wanted to damage them, given they were 1800 years old,” he says in the NZ Herald. “It’s never going to be the same, I guess.”