Remembering the Bamiyan Buddhas

For the past few days, there have been plenty of news on Afghanistan. The scene at the airport in Kabul had been chaotic as people, both foreigners and locals tried to leave the country. People who failed to board planes, clung to them and some reportedly fell to their death. President Biden said that the U.S. has evacuated thousands of people; priorities given to American citizens who wanted to leave the country as Taliban took control of the country. Taliban refers to a faction formed in the Afghan Civil War which consisted of students educated in traditional Islamic schools from the Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan. There is another faction, the Afghan mujahideen consisting of various armed Islamist rebel groups who are anti-communist and pro-Islam with Western backers; but it was the Taliban who ruled about three-quarters of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 before being overthrown by the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. Even though Taliban has been in existence as early as 1994, I first heard of them in 2001 when they blew up the 6th-century Bamiyan Buddhas carved out of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of central Afghanistan. In 2015, the empty cavities left by the bombing were filled with the holographic image of Buddha using 3D laser light projection technology; thanks to a Chinese couple, Xinyu Zhang and Hong Liang who donated a $120,000 projector for the installation :

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