Seized relics returned to Afghanistan
Precious relics of Afghanistan's ancient past are returning home. A collection of 33 artefacts seized from a New Yorkbased art dealer (one of the world's most prolific smugglers of antiquities) was turned over by the US to Afghanistan this week.
Precious relics of Afghanistan's ancient past are returning home as the nation confronts deepening uncertainty about its future.
A collection of 33 artefacts seized from a New York-based art dealer who authorities say was one of the world's most prolific smugglers of antiquities was turned over by the US to the government of Afghanistan this week.
"The significance of the material is huge," said Roya Rahmani, the country's ambassador to the US.
"Each one of these pieces are priceless depictions of our history."
Ms Rahmani formally took control of the collection in a ceremony on Monday in New York with the Manhattan District Attorney' s office and homeland Security Investigations, which recovered the artefacts as part of a larger investigation into the trafficking of antiquities.
Now, after briefly being displayed at the embassy in Washington, the masks, sculptures and other items, some from the second and third centuries, are en route to Kabul, where they are expected to go on display at the National Museum.
It is the same museum where members of the Taliban destroyed artefacts in 2001 as part of a cultural rampage rooted in a fundamentalist version of Islam.
The Taliban is now out of power, but it controls much of the country outside of Kabul amid stalled talks with the government and the looming withdrawal of US and Na to forces after two decades of war.
Ms Rahmani concedes it is a delicate time. "However, what I know is that our security forces are determined to defend our people ," she said in an interview with the Associated Press.
"The government is committed to do its part for peace and stability in a way that would bring durable peace."
It may get a chance earlier than expected.
Germany's Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that discussions are under way among military planners with then a to led resolute support mission in Kabul for a possible withdrawal of international troops from
Afghanistan as early as July 4.
President Joe Biden has already said the US would remove all its troops by september 11, the 20 th anniversary of the attacks that prompted the American invasion to dislodge the Taliban in 2001 for allowing al Qaida to operate from Afghanistan.
Before the September 11 attacks, the taliban had already become internationally notorious for enforcing a harsh form
of Islamic law that kept women out of public view and for destroying-with rockets, shells and dynamite-the famed giant, 6 th-century sand stone buddha statues built into a cliff in Bamiyan province.
The destruction of the statues was on the ambassador's mind as she prepared to ship the artefacts to her homeland, not only because a mural of the sandstone Buddhas adorns the room at the embassy where visitors
gathered to see the relics.
Ms Rahmani, her country's first female ambassador to the United States, recalls that she wept when she first learned what the Taliban had done to the Buddhas.
It was an important moment, she says, because she had pledged never to let anyone see her cry as away to defy the male dominated culture of her homeland.
"I broke my vow," she said.