The Afghan regime desperately needs cash. It cannot show the Bamiyan Buddhas for the good reason it blew them up. But it would take tourists to the site for a fee.
by Massimo Introvigne


My wife and I like to visit unusual places connected with religion, which for us is work in addition to pleasure. In most cases, we self-organize our travels. In others, we acknowledge that in certain places there may be risks in addition to inconveniences unless we seek the help of a specialized travel agent. There are now several whose specialty is precisely to seek the unusual, which is often connected with religion.
A week ago, I received from one of these agents an email telling me that the Taliban have now opened Afghanistan to European Union tourists. Would I be interested in an itinerary? The proposal was interesting, but what puzzled me is that a visit was offered to the Buddhas of Bamiyan, if we were willing to pay to the Taliban government the price of a special and not inexpensive ticket.
There was only one problem. There are no Buddhas of Bamiyan. Believing them to represent a “pagan” and “demonic” religion offensive to their ultra-fundamentalist idea of Islam, the Taliban smashed the sixth century CE giant statues in 2001 with artillery fire and by detonating anti-tank mines.
True, you can still see the empty niches where these masterpieces of Buddhist sculpture once stood, and meditate there on the evil nature of the Taliban regime. The Taliban would now allow you to do this—but not for free. You can go and see the site by paying money to the regime.
I was willing to pay a fee to see the Nuremberg propaganda headquarters of the Nazi Party and the location of the Khmer Rouge mass graves in Cambodia. But that was different. The ticket was not sold by Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot, but by governments who keep these sites open to visitors to expose the evil nature of the regimes that perpetrated the crimes. In the case of the Buddhas, we would pay to the same criminals who destroyed the statues. Some of those who gave the order are part of the government today.


It would be like paying Xi Jinping to see one of the dreaded Xinjiang “transformation through education camps” where Uyghurs are tortured and killed—I mean a real one, not the fake “vocational training centers” where useful idiots from the West and Islamic countries are taken. They then report that if Uyghurs there do not contact their relatives abroad is just because they are too busy in singing, dancing, and learning how to be productive workers and play table tennis Chinese style. Or, if you prefer, paying Putin to visit one of the villages in occupied Ukraine where men, women, and children have been tortured, raped, and killed.
The travel agent cheerfully reported that the Taliban already made good money in Bamiyan with visitors from nearby countries, and now expect to cash on Westerners.
I understand the empty niches of the destroyed statues do have their own melancholic beauty. But I do not want to support the Taliban with my ticket. I would rather not go.