Taliban destroys Kanishka statue

TOKYO, MARCH 22. Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have smashed one of a pair of world-renowned statues of King Kanishka, a Taliban Minister said in an interview with a Japanese daily published today.

The Taliban Minister of Information and Culture, Mawlawi Qudratullah Jamal, told Mainichi Shimbun that the statue of the King of the I century Kushan dynasty had been completely smashed.

The destruction began the day after Taliban's supreme leader, Mulla Mohammad Omar, issued a decree on February 26, ordering destruction of all statues in Afghanistan including ancient pre- Islamic figures.

Stones and hammers were used to smash the statue, Jamal said.

The statue was found in the country's Surkh Kotal ruins. The man- sized piece is thought to form a pair with another Kanishka statue discovered near Mathura in India.

Mr. Haruki Yasuda, a curator at Tokyo's Nezu Museum specialising in Afghan art history said, ``it is a very precious piece symbolising the portrait art of the Kushan dynasty era.''

Kabul museum opened

Meanwhile, the Taliban authorities threw open the doors to the National Museum in Kabul to show they had destroyed all the statues that once formed the heart of the collection.

Museum staff said about 40 statues had been destroyed following an order last month by the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. All had been smashed inside the closed museum.

An hour-long opening of the museum to reporters revealed an empty space where a life-size statue from the country's Buddhist period of 1,500 years ago had stood when the museum was opened for 24 hours last August.

A screen in another room showed small birds - the nearest thing to a violation of the Taliban's ban on portrayal of animate objects - but the head of each bird had been carefully chiselled away.

The Taliban agreed to open the museum after refusing requests by journalists to visit Bamiyan. The Taliban want to destroy all non-Islamic objects or customs in Afghanistan.

- Reuters

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