Editing Taliban (section)

==== Views on the Bamyan Buddhas ====
[[File:Taller Buddha of Bamiyan before and after destruction.jpg|thumb|right|Taller Buddha in 1963 and in 2008 after destruction]]

In 1999, Mullah Omar issued a decree in which he called for the protection of the [[Buddhas of Bamiyan|Buddha statues]] at [[Bamyan]], two 6th-century monumental statues of standing [[buddha]]s which were carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the [[Hazarajat]] region of central Afghanistan. But in March 2001, the Taliban destroyed the statues, following a decree by Mullah Omar, which stated: "All the statues around Afghanistan must be destroyed."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Harding |first=Luke |date=3 March 2001 |title=How the Buddha got his wounds |work=The Guardian |location=London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/Archive/Article/0,4273,4145138,00.html |access-date=27 August 2010}}</ref>

Yahya Massoud, brother of the anti-Taliban and resistance leader [[Ahmad Shah Massoud]], recalls the following incident after the destruction of the Buddha statues at Bamyan:

{{blockquote|It was the spring of 2001. I was in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, together with my brother [[Ahmad Shah Massoud]], the leader of the Afghan resistance against the Taliban, and Bismillah Khan, who currently serves as Afghanistan's interior minister. One of our commanders, Commandant Momin, wanted us to see 30 Taliban fighters who had been taken hostage after a gun battle. My brother agreed to meet them.

I remember that his first question concerned the centuries-old Buddha statues that were dynamited by the Taliban in March of that year, shortly before our encounter. Two Taliban combatants from Kandahar confidently responded that worshiping anything outside of Islam was unacceptable and that therefore these statues had to be destroyed. My brother looked at them and said, this time in Pashto, 'There are still many sun- worshippers in this country. Will you also try to get rid of the sun and drop darkness over the Earth?'<ref>{{Cite news |last=Massoud |first=Yahya |date=July 2010 |title=Afghans Can Win This War |work=Foreign Policy |url=https://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/30/afghans_can_win_this_war |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110110042810/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/30/afghans_can_win_this_war |archive-date=January 10, 2011}}</ref>}}