Over the door of the Kabul museum today is a Persian quotation: 'A nation stays alive when its culture and history are kept alive'
By Robert Fisk
"More than 30 years after I watched the Soviet army slithering in their great T-72s past their new headquarters at Bagram north of Kabul, more than nine years since the first Americans took over the same airbase, I have gazed at last upon the treasures of Bagram....
And why, I wonder, do we so brazenly destroy the story of our own history and humanity? The Afghan hoard was damaged and pillaged during the country's civil war – the magnificent museum at Hadda, near Jalalabad, was burned after the 1979 Soviet invasion – and the Kabul National Museum was hit by a rocket and burst into flames in 1994 while being used as a military base. In Beirut, the National Museum stood on the front line throughout the 1975-1990 civil war, its Phoenician sarcophagi gashed by shell fragments. The great libraries of Sarajevo were deliberately shelled to ruins in the 1990s. The loss of Iraq's inheritance of civilisation in 2003 remains an American as well as an Iraqi disgrace.
Over the door of the Kabul museum today is a Persian quotation: "A nation stays alive when its culture and history are kept alive." But is it possible to believe that even these golden artefacts from Afghanistan will survive the 21st century in their new Kabul home? The Taliban, courtesy of the Saudis and the Pakistanis, brought deliberate destruction to the physical history of Afghanistan. And to Bagram came first the Soviet army – at their base, they taught the Afghans how to use electricity rather than nail pliers to extract information from prisoners – and to Bagram 21 years later came the Americans to waterboard their victims. From antiquity, Afghanistan obtained the culture of gold and collapsible crowns. From us, they obtained the culture of torture. "
By Robert Fisk
"More than 30 years after I watched the Soviet army slithering in their great T-72s past their new headquarters at Bagram north of Kabul, more than nine years since the first Americans took over the same airbase, I have gazed at last upon the treasures of Bagram....
And why, I wonder, do we so brazenly destroy the story of our own history and humanity? The Afghan hoard was damaged and pillaged during the country's civil war – the magnificent museum at Hadda, near Jalalabad, was burned after the 1979 Soviet invasion – and the Kabul National Museum was hit by a rocket and burst into flames in 1994 while being used as a military base. In Beirut, the National Museum stood on the front line throughout the 1975-1990 civil war, its Phoenician sarcophagi gashed by shell fragments. The great libraries of Sarajevo were deliberately shelled to ruins in the 1990s. The loss of Iraq's inheritance of civilisation in 2003 remains an American as well as an Iraqi disgrace.
Over the door of the Kabul museum today is a Persian quotation: "A nation stays alive when its culture and history are kept alive." But is it possible to believe that even these golden artefacts from Afghanistan will survive the 21st century in their new Kabul home? The Taliban, courtesy of the Saudis and the Pakistanis, brought deliberate destruction to the physical history of Afghanistan. And to Bagram came first the Soviet army – at their base, they taught the Afghans how to use electricity rather than nail pliers to extract information from prisoners – and to Bagram 21 years later came the Americans to waterboard their victims. From antiquity, Afghanistan obtained the culture of gold and collapsible crowns. From us, they obtained the culture of torture. "
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