Cultural Autonomy: What Can Be Done to Safeguard Afghanistan’s Heritage?

By Natalie Glitz Grumhaus

What do you do when a group starts to destroy its own country’s heritage and history? Is that culture allowed to dictate what narrative of their history the world receives, or may others step in and intervene on behalf of history and art? Since the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021, this question remains in urgent need of answering.[1]

To understand the current concerns over preservation of cultural heritage in Afghanistan, one must first look to the history of the Taliban. The Taliban is a fundamentalist Islamic religious group, originating in 1994, from the southern Afghan province of Kandahar.[2] Despite its humble beginnings in the hills, the group of “students,” led by religious leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, was backed by Pakistani military intelligence, namely the Inter-Services Intelligence (“ISI”).[3] By 1995, they had taken control of Afghanistan and were quickly implementing a “totalitarian” form of Sharia law.[4] According to Niamatullah Ibrahimi, a resident of Afghanistan during their first rule, “Afghanistan of the Taliban from 1996 to 2001 is [sic] one in which there is [sic] no video, no photograph, no art.”[5] By the end of 2001, the regime had collapsed after the U.S. military invasion — until its resurgence in 2021.[6]

One particularly notable incident in which the Taliban obliterated world history was when the founder of the insurgent group, Mullah Omar, ordered that the Buddhas of Bamiyan be destroyed because they were “false idols.”[7] Mullah Omar made it very clear that the historical significance of these gigantic sixth century figures, at the crossroads of the Indian, Chinese, and European civilizations, had no meaning to the Taliban. Destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan was simply “just a question of breaking stones.”[8] Because the figures lacked religious significance, they had no significance of any kind to the fundamentalist Muslims, despite the Taliban’s original pledge not to harm anything in the Bamiyan area.[9]

Last year, in August 2021, the Taliban blew up another statue in Bamiyan, although this one was much more recently crafted.[10] This statue depicted a Shiite minority leader, Abdul Ali Mazari, whom they had executed in 1996.[11] Although this destruction was certainly more politically motivated rather than part of the Taliban’s iconoclastic movement, it does not bode well for other non-approved art. Furthermore, the Taliban has rigidly prohibited and persecuted current artists and their works in Afghanistan.[12] Many artists have fled from Afghanistan in fear of the Taliban, and the Taliban have removed or defaced as much of the public art as possible.[13] One Afghan artist and advocate who fled to America with his family stated that, “it is not possible for the Taliban to live with art.”[14] Another Afghan citizen, Samiullah Nabipour, who presides as the dean over a Kabul art school, explained that “the Taliban believe art is a path to corruption and vice in society,” which is why it must all be destroyed.[15]

It has been a commonly accepted principle for centuries that objects and sites of cultural heritage and world historical significance ought to be protected.[16] As it currently stands, however, there is little that outsiders can do to protect these sites from destruction at the hands of their own country, other than begging for reconsideration or offering to “buy” the sites or works.[17] The current internationally binding laws in place regarding cultural property protection only mandate protections during a time of open war, and do not make much mention of protection outside that legal area, except for the importation or exportation of cultural antiquities.[18] Unfortunately, even if these conventions cover the protection of cultural heritage sites from destruction by their own peoples, the country must accept and ratify the agreement for it to be legally binding.[19] However, the 1970 UNESCO convention regarding the transfer of cultural property noted that the other parties from the international community had a duty to protect cultural heritage anywhere in the world, although this implicitly requires the cooperation of the country in possession of the antiquities.[20]

Afghan landscape where the Bamiyan Buddhas used to sit. Courtesy UNESCO World Heritage Center.

Preventative measures typically must be taken by the country itself for the protection to be at all effective. For instance, the United States passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, and under that law prosecuted a storeowner for attempting to sell Navajo cultural patrimony items.[21] However, although Afghanistan ratified the 1970 UNESCO convention in 1979 and later passed their own cultural property protection laws in 2004, neither of these laws were achieved under Taliban rule.[22] The Taliban insurgents have shown no indication of anything other than fully supplanting the previous, U.S.-assisted Afghan government and substituting their own “jurisprudence . . . drawn from the Pashtuns’ pre-Islamic tribal code and interpretations of sharia colored by the austere Wahhabi doctrines of the madrassas’ Saudi benefactors.”[23] For these reasons, the Taliban could not be prosecuted for the destruction of cultural heritage property, just as the extremists who seized power in Mali could not be, because in neither instance were the insurgent parties recognized “State Parties” nor had they signed on to the Hague Convention.[24]

As international practice stands now, other countries, the United Nations, and UNESCO have very little power to prevent any damage or destruction of Afghanistan’s cultural heritage property. In August 2021, the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, along with other UNESCO officials issued various statements begging for protection of the antiquities in Afghanistan and stating that the organization was “committed to exercising all possible efforts to safeguard the invaluable cultural heritage of Afghanistan.”[25] Given the self-policing nature of the conventions discussed above, pleading with the Taliban and offering advice seems to be the only available course of action.[26]

On the other hand, the autonomy of the culture must be given its due share of consideration. Should the dominant culture be able to contribute to or reshape what the world sees as the common culture of that country?[27] “Shared cultural heritage from the past” and “contemporary cultural life” are both important factors in cultural identity, and if a particular people may have control over the latter, then control over the former is also a valid question.[28] This concept is sometimes termed “traditionalism” or “nationalism,” while the concept of preserving for the sake of the whole world, regardless of the wishes of the origin culture is termed “globalism.”[29]

While traditionalism and cultural autonomy certainly have their place in the discussion of cultural heritage preservation, and may often be the correct analysis, the problem remains the discussion does not surround the provenance or display rights of a few items, or even a small collection. The Taliban have gained full control over an entire country of antiquities and artifacts the Minaret of Jam and the 80,000 pieces at Afghanistan’s National Museum. Additionally, it includes their past performance in Bamiyan and strict beliefs regarding art do not leave much hope that Afghanistan’s cultural heritage might be spared.[30]

The only apparent alternative to watching in horror as this potential destruction unfolds, begging the Taliban to respect the cultures that came before them in Afghanistan, is to use force to protect the antiquities — a kind of modern-day “Monuments Men” initiative.[31] One solution proposed by Joris Kila and Christopher Herndon “is the establishment of an international military and civilian cultural emergency response team.”[32] While this is still a reactive, rather than proactive, defense mechanism, it remains a more viable option than relying on international goodwill or hoping for a country’s cooperation in prosecuting its own leading faction.[33] However, the practical result of establishing an ever-present, international police force to guard museums and cultural heritage sites from internal destruction would likely be an outbreak into open war.

In conclusion, there appears to be no viable way of preventing the kinds of cultural heritage destruction in Afghanistan that the Taliban have levied in the past. Ultimately, those with both military defense and historical expertise must work together to protect cultural heritage property, like that in Afghanistan.[34] For “a nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking being done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”[35]

[1] Yaroslav Trofimov & Dion Nissenbaum, Who Are the Taliban and What’s Next for Afghanistan?, Wall St. J. (Sept. 27, 2021), https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-are-the-taliban-11628629642 (providing a short history of the Taliban as a group, and of their 2021 Summer offensive against Afghanistan’s government).

[2] The Conversation, A Brief History of the Taliban by an Afghan Scholar Who Lived Through It, Youtube (Aug. 29, 2021), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykv6CrUrCEM.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Id. at 3:43.

[6] Id.

[7] Pierre Centlivres, The Death of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Middle E. Inst. (Apr. 18, 2012), https://www.mei.edu/publications/death-buddhas-bamiyan.

[8] Id.

[9] Id.

[10] Associated Press, Taliban blow up statue depicting Shiite foe from 1990s civil war (Aug. 18, 2021), https://www.dailysabah.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-blow-up-statue-depicting-shiite-foe-from-1990s-civil-war.

[11] Id.

[12] Sharif Hassan, Afghan Art Flourished for 20 Years. Can It Survive the New Taliban Regime? (last updated Nov. 17, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-artists.html.

[13] Id.

[14] Id.

[15] Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

[16] See, e.g., Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (Knud Haackonssen et al. eds., 2012), at https://muse.jhu.edu/book/19316 (Hugo Grotius established principles in the seventeenth century stating that, as works of art were not useful to the military effort, they should be protected); Polybius, Histories, (Evelyn Shuckburgh, translator, 1889), at http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0543.tlg001.perseus-eng1:9.10 (Polybius harshly criticizes the Roman plunder of Syracuse in the second century BCE); Cicero, Against Verres (Albert Clark & William Peterson, translators, 1917) at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Cic.+Ver.+1.1  (Cicero, prosecuted the Roman governor of Sicily, Gaius Verres, around 80 BCE, for excessive looting in the Greek East).

[17] Hadani Ditmars, With Taliban Forces in Control, Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage Faces Renewed Threats (Aug. 21, 2021), https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/taliban-afghan-heritage.

[18] See Hague Convention with Respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land, July 29, 1899, 32 Stat. 1803.  Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, May 14, 1954, 249 U.N.T.S. 216; UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, Nov. 17, 1970, 823 U.N.T.S. 231; General Order No. 100, Apr. 14, 1863, in 3 U.S. Dept. of War, the War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (ser. III) 148 (1902) (Lieber Code).

[19] Kavita Oza, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Limits of International Cultural Property Law (May 29, 2019), https://itsartlaw.org/2019/05/29/afghanistan-and-iraq-a-comparative-analysis-of-the-failure-of-international-cultural-property-law.

[20] UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, Nov. 17, 1970, 823 U.N.T.S. 231; see also James Cuno, The Responsibility to Protect the World’s Cultural Heritage, 23.1 Brown J. World Aff. 97, 98 (2016).

[21] See United States v. Corrow, 119 F.3d 796 (10th Cir. 1997).

[22] UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, Nov. 17, 1970, 823 U.N.T.S. 231; see also Helle Porsdam, The Transforming Power of Cultural Rights 33 (2019).

[23] Lindsay Maizland, The Taliban in Afghanistan (last updated Aug. 17, 2022), https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/taliban-afghanistan.

[24] Joris Kila & Christopher Herndon, Military Involvement in Cultural Property Protection, 74 Joint Force Q. 116, 117 (2014), https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-74/jfq-74_116-123_Kila-Herndon.pdf (discussing failed attempts to hold Mali extremists accountable internationally for war crimes committed against cultural heritage property).

[25] Datani, supra note 17.

[26] Supra note 18.

[27] Porsdam, supra note 22, at 33.

[28] Id.

[29] See generally Theodore Petrus, Cultures and the Global(ist) Future: Globalism, Heritage and Cultural Revitalisation, 31 J. Soc. Dev. Afr. 97 (2016).

[30] Andrew Lawler, The Taliban Destroyed Afghanistan’s Ancient Treasures. Will History Repeat Itself?, Nat’L Geographic (Aug. 13, 2021), https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/taliban-destroyed-afghanistan-ancient-treasures-will-history-repeat-itself.

[31] Tom Christopher, Protecting Art in War, Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Arts (2015), https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/marchapril/statement/protecting-art-in-war.

[32] Kila & Herndon, supra note 24, at 117. Current groups already “active in these endeavors include the Combatant Command Cultural Heritage Action Group (CCHAG), International Military Cultural Resources Working Group (IMCuRWG), which is now coordinated with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Joint Analysis Lessons Learned Center, and U.S. Africa Command, among others.” Id. at 118.

[33] Id. at 117.

[34] Id.

[35] Attributed to Thucydides.