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“This is the identity of our country,” said Kheyal Mohammad, 44, wearing a camouflage cap as he leaned over a railing at the top of the giant cavity. “It shouldn’t have been bombed.”

As soldiers took a rare day off from training to go examine the site, they all agreed that the people who destroyed the work were at fault, and that it should be rebuilt as soon as possible.

Mohammad Omar declared Buddha’s false gods in 2001 and planned to destroy them.

“ Ignoring pleas from around the world, Taliban fighters detonated explosives and fired anti-aircraft guns to smash the immense sixth-century relics to pieces.”

The Buddhas were officially destroyed in March of 2001.

“Bamian and the Buddhas in particular are of great importance to our government, just as they are to the world,” Atiqullah Azizi, the Taliban’s deputy culture minister, said in an interview.

Some Taliban members, however, find it difficult to embrace artifacts they consider blasphemous.

“We are Muslims,” Sarhadi, who says he was held by the United States at Guantánamo Bay, said in an interview. “We should follow the demands of God.”

He defended the order to destroy the Buddhas as a “good decision.”

From the point of view of archaeologists, Bamian is a test that will determine whether Afghanistan’s rich cultural heritage can survive under the return of the Taliban.

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