February 26, 2001 (Radio Shari?at): On the basis of consultations between the religious leaders of the IEA, religious judgments of the Ulama and rulings of the Supreme Court of the IEA, all statues and non-Islamic shrines located in different parts of the IEA must be destroyed (broken). These statues have been and remain shrines of infidels and these infidels continue to worship and respect these icons (statues). Allah (God) Almighty is the only real shrine and all false shrines (symbols) should be smashed (destroyed).

March 1, 2001 (AP): Using everything from tanks to rocket launchers, Taliban troops fanned out across the country Thursday to destroy all statues, including two 5th-century statues of Buddha carved into a mountainside. Despite international outrage, troops and other officials began demolishing images, which they say are contrary to Islam, in the capital of Kabul as well as in Jalalabad, Herat, Kandahar, Ghazni and Bamiyan, said Qadradullah Jamal, the Taliban's information minister. "The destruction work will be done by any means available to them," he said. "All the statues all over the country will be destroyed."

March 2, 2001 (WP): The United Nations dispatched a representative to Afghanistan to plead with the leaders of the militant Islamic group to call off the demolitions as international outrage escalated over the edict to eliminate the antiquities, some of which have stood sentry over history stretching from the conquests of Genghis Khan to the Great Game of the British and Russian empires to the intrigues of the Cold War.

March 2, 2001 (AP): The head of UNESCO asked other Islamic nations to pressure the Taliban to stop, while the director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York pleaded with Afghan officials to give--or sell--the artifacts to foreign museums. "In Afghanistan, they are destroying statues that the entire world considers to be masterpieces," UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura said. "This iconoclastic determination shocks me."

March 2 (No.2001-31): UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura has sent a special envoy to Afghanistan to deliver a message to the Taliban authorities, urging them to reverse their decision to destroy the ancient statues of Afghanistan?s cultural heritage. The Director-General?s special envoy is Pierre Lafrance, France?s former Ambassador to Pakistan and a founding member of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan?s Cultural Heritage (SPACH).

March 3, 2001 (AP): Lafrance met Saturday with the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, who said the destruction had not begun. But Muttawakil said Zaeef's information was old and that it was the Taliban's ministry of Information and Culture and Vice and Virtue which was given the task of destroying the statues.

March 3, 2001 (AP): On Saturday Quatradullah Jamal, the Taliban's Information and Culture Minister, told the AP that troops had destroyed two-thirds of all the statues in Afghanistan as well as large parts of the two giant statues of Buddha. By Monday, exactly one week after the Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ordered all statues destroyed, the task will be complete, Jamal said.

March 3, 2001 (CNN): Afghanistan's ruling Taleban said Saturday it has blown up most of the massive, ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan despite worldwide pleas to spare them. Taleban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal said Saturday that the fundamentalist Muslim movement's troops used rockets and mortars to destroy the head and legs of the sandstone statues, which are carved into the side of a cliff in central Afghanistan. "Our soldiers are working hard to demolish their remaining parts. They will come down soon," Jamal said.

March 3, 2001 (AP): Muttawakil Taliban?s Foreign Minister, rejected offers from several countries as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "Why should we give them to anyone? They are against our beliefs. We have museums here and we will keep our cultural and historical artifacts there," he said.

March 4, 2001 (AP): Using antiaircraft weapons, tanks and explosives, Taliban soldiers pounded statues, including two towering Buddhas, ridding the nation of reminders of its pre-Islamic past, witnesses said Sunday. Residents of central Bamiyan, where the two ancient statues of Buddha hewn from a cliff face in the third and fifth centuries are located, said Taliban soldiers began attacking the statues at least three days earlier.

March 5, 2001 (AP): A week after ordering the destruction of pre-Islamic relics including two towering statues of Buddha, the Taliban's reclusive leader on Monday called their demolition a tribute to Islam and to "the brave Afghan nation. Mullah Mohammed Omar rebuffed international appeals to rescind his order, calling the outcry "noise." Another religious leader said the ruling Taliban militia would continue the demolition, and not consider offers by other countries to purchase the relics.

March 5, 2001 (AP): A special UNESCO envoy sent from Paris to try to dissuade the Taliban said he met with the same intransigence during discussions with Taliban officials in southern Kandahar, the Taliban's headquarters. "I can't say that my mission was successful. ... I could not get the suspension of the order," Pierre Lafrance told The Associated Press in neighboring Pakistan. But Lafrance said he hasn't given up hope. He plans to return to Afghanistan after the Islamic festival ends.

March 6, 2001 (AP): Taliban troops halted the destruction of two giant stone Buddhas to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. But they will continue demolishing the statues when the holiday ends, a Taliban official said Tuesday.

March 7, 2001 (Reuters): Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has agreed to a UNESCO request that he ask Afghanistan's Taliban movement to halt its destruction of ancient Buddhist statues. Egypt's official MENA news agency said on Wednesday that Koichiro Matsurra, director-general of the United Nations cultural organisation UNESCO, had telephoned Mubarak to make the request and the president had agreed to contact the Taliban.  Matsurra's bid to enlist Mubarak's help was the latest in a series of UNESCO efforts to persuade the Taliban to cease the destruction of pre-Islamic shrines.

March 7, 2001 (Kyodo): Japanese Ambassador to Pakistan Sadaaka Numata met his Afghan Taliban counterpart Wednesday and informed him of the scheduled arrival of a three-member Japanese parliamentary delegation to Pakistan early Thursday morning en route to Kandahar to seek reversal of a Taliban edict to destroy ancient statues in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported Numata told the Taliban ambassador the delegation represented three major parties in the Japanese parliament and want to convey to the Taliban the concern among the Japanese people triggered by reports of damage and destruction to ancient Buddha statues in Bamyan.

The Japanese ruling coalition decided Tuesday to send representatives to Afghanistan to ask Taliban authorities not to destroy the two towering Buddha statues in Bamyan.

The mission plans to meet Taliban Foreign Minister Abdul Wakil Mutwakkal and hopefully Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, while conducting an on-the-spot inspection, if possible, to see if the statues have already been destroyed.

March 8, 2001 (AFP): Sri Lanka Wednesday offered to finance a possible international operation to save the priceless Buddha statues threatened with destruction by the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan. Sri Lanka President Chandrika Kumaratunga wrote United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan making the offer to join in any collective drive to save the statues, her secretary Kusumsiri Balapatabendi said.

March 8, 2001 (AFP): The special representative to UNESCO, the UN's culture and education branch, told the BBC that the fundamentalist Islamic militia had shown little interest in reversing their order to destroy priceless Buddhist figures. But he cited "very reliable" sources as saying the famous Buddha figures in central Bamiyan province had not been damaged to the extent the militia has publicly claimed.

March 9, 2001: An international diplomatic campaign will not succeed in saving Afghanistan's ancient Buddhist statues, Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil said on Thursday.

His statement came as Japan launched a new bid to save the statues and a day after a UNESCO envoy said the irreplaceable relics had not yet been badly damaged, holding out hope they may yet win a reprieve.

A three-member Japanese delegation arrived in Islamabad Thursday en route to Afghanistan in the latest bid to persuade the Taliban not to demolish the statues in the central Afghan city of Bamiyan.UNESCO special envoy Pierre Lafrance said on Wednesday he would return to Afghanistan this week in a second bid to persuade the Taliban to spare the statues.

March 10 (AFP): Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider failed to persuade Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia to stop destroying ancient Buddha statues during talks in Kandahar Saturday, officials said.

Haider met Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in the Islamic militia's southern stronghold in a last-minute bid to save the country's historic statues from iconoclasm, they said.

March 10, 2001 (Reuters): Egypt dispatched its top authority on Islam to Afghanistan on Saturday to attempt to persuade the country's Taliban movement to halt its destruction of ancient Buddhist statues.

``These monuments represent human history...and from the perspective of (Islamic) jurisprudence, (their presence) does not affect theology,'' Egypt's top Muslim authority, the Mufti Nasr Farid Wassel said before leaving Cairo airport.

March 11, 2001 (Reuters): U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Sunday Afghanistan's ruling Taliban had told him they had destroyed virtually all Afghanistan's historic statues in what he termed a disservice to themselves and Islam. "I did discuss the statues with the foreign minister and I walked away from the meeting not very encouraged," Annan told a news conference after meeting Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil.

"Basically he confirmed that all movable statues have been destroyed and the destruction of the two statues (of Buddha in Bamiyan) had begun but he could not tell me the status of the demolition," Annan said. "I had hoped for much better news."

March 12, 2001 (Reuters): Afghanistan's Taliban rulers on Monday rejected the arguments of leading Islamic scholars and protests from around the world and said they were obliterating the last traces of the country's ancient Buddhist statues.

A delegation from the 55-nation Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) flew out of the southern Afghan town of Kandahar after two days of talks with the Taliban failed to produce any result, a Pakistan-based Afghan news service said.

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted a Taliban spokesman, Mullah Abdul Hayee Mutmaen, as saying in Kandahar that the Afghan ulema, or scholars, had rejected the call by the OIC's Islamic scholars to halt the campaign to destroy all the country's statues on the grounds they are un-Islamic.

The OIC delegation, led by Qatar Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Ahmed bin Abdullah Zaid al-Mahmoud, included Egypt's top cleric, the Mufti Nasr Farid Wassel, and other widely respected Muslim clerics and scholars.

Mutmaen said the OIC scholars could give no religious justification for preserving the statues and had argued only that the time was not right for such a course of action.

March 13, 2001 (CNN): CNN obtained exclusive photos of the destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan, taken by an Afghani free-lance photographer at the scene

The international community is reacting with sadness and anger over the destruction of priceless pre-Islamic statues in Afghanistan. Museums and governments around the world had hoped to save two Buddhas that had been carved into the stone cliffs of Bamiyan. But UNESCO's special envoy to Afghanistan has confirmed that the statues have been completely destroyed.

March 16, 2001 (Kyodo): More than 4,000 Taliban soldiers from around the country took part in the demolition of the two giant Buddha statues in Bamyan Province earlier this month, a Taliban soldier who took part in the demolition told Kyodo News on Friday. The soldier, who gave his name as Nohr, said the two fifth-century statues, located about 100 kilometers northwest of Kabul were partly destroyed when he left the scene six days ago.

The soldier said Taliban troops initially tried to blow up the rock-carved statues, one standing 55 meters high and the other 38 meters, with artillery fire and tanks and later turned to explosives and landmines. ''When I left the scene, the upper body of the big statue and its feet had been destroyed. Only part of the torso was left intact,'' he said.

March 16, 2001 (AP): The Taliban's reclusive leader, upset by how long it took to destroy two towering statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, on Friday ordered a sacrifice of 100 cows to atone for the delay. In a broadcast on the Taliban's official Radio Shariat, Mullah Mohammed Omar was quoted as saying the cows would be killed and the meat distributed to the country's poor and hungry on Monday. The two giant statues of Buddha, hewn from a cliff face in central Bamiyan in the third and fifth centuries, were demolished last week - almost two weeks after Omar ordered all statues in Afghanistan destroyed, saying they were idolatrous

Copy from Afghanistan studies institute, site