Swiss to return Afghan national treasures kept away from fighting
<- Kabul National Museum
GENEVA: A dog's head gargoyle. A hand-woven carpet defying the Taliban. A foundation stone laid by Alexander the Great. Piece by piece, these and other priceless objects from Afghanistan were painstakingly assembled in Switzerland as civil war raged in Afghanistan.
Distraught at the destruction of precious artifacts during two decades of fighting against Soviet occupation and then each other, warring parties in Afghanistan asked Switzerland in 1998 to provide a "safe deposit" to protect the remaining national treasures.
Even the Taliban — who later were to destroy the gigantic Buddha statues at Bamiyan — joined in the concern about losing the country's national heritage — that ranged from the daily implements of Afghan life to rare masterpieces.
Now, it is time for the treasures to go home. International and Afghan authorities have declared Kabul to be safe enough for their return and they are to be flown back on March 15, said Paul Bucherer, director of the Afghanistan Museum in the northwestern town of Bubendorf.
"It was a joint-request from the Taliban and the Northern Alliance at that time," said Bucherer, an expert in Afghan history and culture who has frequently visited the country and had high-level contact with both sides.
Getting the objects out of Afghanistan was extremely difficult.
A cargo flight that would have brought thousands of artifacts to Switzerland in 2000 had to be canceled because of problems in obtaining international legal authorization to move such objects from their country of origin, according to Bucherer.
The delay resulted in the destruction of those artifacts in fighting the following January, he said.
But individuals had already started bringing artifacts to the Swiss museum. Among them were Afghans on trips to Europe and Europeans who contributed objects they had collected while living in Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s.
The first objects were brought "by Taliban and other Afghans carried in their hand-luggage in 1999," Bucherer said.
Some of the objects had been illegally excavated or ransacked.
"We didn't want to ask questions," said Bucherer. "Anyone who brought something was welcome."
Once donated, the objects were destined to eventually be returned to Afghanistan's national museum.
The showpiece of the collection is a phallic-shaped foundation stone laid by Alexander the Great when starting to build the ancient Greek city of Ai-Khanum in northern Afghanistan in about 300 B.C.
The collection includes a dog's head-shaped stone whose mouth served as shower head for athletes in Ai-Khanum. It had been stolen from Afghanistan's national museum and was later given to the Swiss by a private collector. Among the hand-woven carpets is a particularly outstanding piece depicting animals — a protest by Afghan women against an ultra-restrictive Taliban ban on representing living creatures.
Other objects include an ornamented copper water pipe and a wooden pitchfork — the daily implements of life.
The collection, which consists of around 1,500 objects, is worth millions of Swiss francs (dollars, euros), but Bucherer declined to give an estimate. "We don't really care about the market value," he said.
The museum, which received an estimated 50,000 visitors since its creation in 2000, has already closed its doors for good.
"This is the second biggest repatriation of cultural heritage since (the beginning of) World War II," said Bucherer.
The biggest one he said, was the 1939 return of the most important works of Madrid's Prado museum from Geneva to Spain's capital after the Spanish civil war.
Bucherer, who has been studying Afghan culture and history since the 1960s, also heads the private Swiss-based foundation named Bibliotheca Afghanica, which collects information on the country's history, culture and environment.
The foundation assisted a team of Swiss-based scientists who created a computer model that could be used to rebuild the Buddha statues that were destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban in Bamiyan Valley on the ancient Silk Route linking Europe and Central Asia.
The artifacts in Bubendorf will be shipped to Afghanistan by the German air force, which has direct flights from Germany to Kabul. The repatriation is being funded by the Swiss government.
The security situation in Kabul is considered good enough for the objects to be handed back, said Laurent Levi-Strauss, who heads the section for cultural property and museums at the Paris-based UNESCO.
"Last summer, we received the request (for repatriation) from the Afghan authorities. After consultation with the U.N. in Kabul, we decided that it would be possible to authorize the return," Levi-Strauss told the AP.
Bucherer said he agreed with the repatriation.
"It will help to strengthen the self-confidence of the Afghan people," he said.
Source: The International Herald Tribune