Exiled antiquities returned to Afghanistan

[Philosophia]

Exiled antiquities returned to Afghanistan

ONDON. The Afghanistan Museum in Exile, in Switzerland, is closing, and its collection will be sent back to Kabul as Unesco has determined that the situation in the Afghan capital is now safe enough. Items donated for safekeeping are therefore being packed, for their return.

The museum in exile is in the village of Bubendorf, 20 kilometres outside Basel. It was established by Swiss scholar Paul Bucherer-Dietschi in 1999, to house artefacts from war-torn Afghanistan.

But politics quickly intervened, and initial plans to temporarily evacuate the Kabul Museum’s collection were never implemented, because of problems in Afghanistan and a lack of support from Unesco.

From http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=519

[David19]

I think it's good that exiled antiquities are returned to their original homeland, it's theft when things are taken from their original countries.

Hopefully, the Afghan's can find some kind of pride in their history and maybe have a brighter future, other than the BS caused by Bush.

[Of10Rot10]

I'm not so sure its safe enough to send them back just yet but I strongly believe important artefacts belong in their own country.

I can't remember if it was a Frontline or Indepentant Lens however the program was about the lenghts that some people had gone to to protect cultural treasure in Afghanistan.

One segment was a Doctor who was also a painter. He would work out of an empty office there in the Museum painting over paintings in an effort to save them from being destroyed. He would use watercolours over oils and paint out humans or animals turning them into landscapes which was acceptable to the Taliban right under their noses. Had he been caught he could have been put to death and they more than likely would have destoryed all the paintings since they would not have known which ones he changed. They showed one of his paintings being restored to the original. It looked like just an narrow street and some buildings but once they removed his over-painting it was a donkey in a marketplace.

Another was on a group that had been their film ministry pre-Taliban. They had managed to wall off a windowless room at the end of a hallway and rigged the lights to work poorly so the lighting wasn't very good and the new wall couldn't be so easily detected. Behind that wall they stored negatives and film for which their was no longer negatives, anything from full lenght movies to 1 minutes pieces on Afghani farmers. In the archive room where normally negatives would be kept they replaced with cheap easily made copies giving the Taliban something to burn when ever they decreed something else to be against the law. They too would have been put to death had they been caught.

The last segement had been on the site of the Bamiyan Buddhas that were destoryed by the Taliban. I can not remember the name of the archeologist who had to flee ahead of the Taliban I believe he was British but don't hold me to that. Before he left the "treasures" that had been uncovered, including gold, were tucked away in a large safe and hidden. Some have said the reason the Taliban blew up the Standing Buddhas was to try and get somebody to cough up that safe which thankfully didn't happen. They showed the recovery of that safe which nobody was sure it would still be intact until they opened it and it was all still there. They also showed the return of this archeologist to the Bamiyan site, which is a very large site BTW, and while the standing Buddhas are lost forever they have begun to uncover an extremely large reclining Buddha. There was reason to believe one had always been there but it had not been found before the Taliban take over. They had just started to uncover its feet at the end of the dig season when this program was being filmed so they only took the time to peek at its feet then recovered it until the next dig season.

I am hoping they do a followup program.