 Hello, and welcome to the discussion series of Buddha Knights. I'm Munira Hashemi, playwright, actor, and director. In 2005, I co-founded Seymour Film Association of Culture and Art in Herat, west of Afghanistan. March 11, 2013, I co-founded a night with Buddha Festival to commemorate the destruction of world cultural heritage, the Buddha statues in Bamyan. The destruction of Buddha statues in 2001, which carried out in the continuation of decades of ethnic cleansing with the aim of destroying the history of Hazara people, was beyond massacre. It was a cultural genocide. 21 years later after destruction, even the remains, the empty niches of Buddha statues are again in danger in Bamyan. This year, we at Theotardus, with collaboration of Safe Heaven Freedom Talks, arranged a series of discussion to understand the different aspects of destruction of cultural heritage, destroying history, post-forgetting, social discrimination, and genocide against Hazara people. Our guest for these discussions are Ali Karimi and Abdullam Ahmadi. Ali Karimi is a post-doctoral fellow in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He studies the history and politics of technology with a focus on the information and governance. Ali holds a PhD in communication studies from McGill University, a master degree in communication from the University of Ottawa, and bachelor degree in film studies from Kabul University. Ali is currently working on his book project that deals with the history of information in Afghanistan. Abdullam Ahmadi is a researcher contributing to mixed migration center in Asia region. His main research interests are migration culture and forced displacement among Afghans. Beside his research, he has translated many books on Afghanistan society and politics. Abdullah holds a master degree in demography and is studying ethnic and migration studies in Linköping University, Sweden. This discussion will be moderated by Assad Buddha. Assad Buddha is a freelance writer. He studied sociology and Islamic theology and has worked as a lecturer and researcher in Kabul. He is the former ICON guest writer in Kallstad. That Otir Vendan de Oogat, a chapter of his personal memoir, was published in Vamland Writers' Anthology. He has worked with Rick's Theatre and Theatre News on a project called Little History, resulted in publishing a book under the title of Hoppet's Territorium. Souther stars and homo-soccer of Foglan Apollinir Gatam are his last published texts in the Uruk-Bild and Gobet-Britzer-Altgare. He is also involved in visual arch, focusing on the demonization of political enemies and aesthetic aspects of extremist and religion violences. Now, we take one minute silence for the last shocking attacks on Hazari people in Afghanistan. In these attacks, over 300 people were injured and 250 people were killed. 126 of those who were killed were school students. Thank you. Thank you, dear Ali and Abdullah, for being with us. As said, now I leave the platform for you and our honored guests. Thank you, Munir, Meltem, and Chatterdus and Freedom Talk. And welcome to Ali and Abdullah for this discussion today, under the title of Destroying History, Orbiside, and Distraction of Cultural Heritage in Bonyang. In 2001, the Taliban shook war by ballooning of statues of Buddha in Bonyang, Afghanistan. Violence is not new to Bonyang. The Valley of Bonyang has documented its own history. When one enters the city, the first thing I see is the absence of Buddha statues at the heart of Bonyang mountain. The ancient age not only shows the distraction of Buddha statues, but also the cultural genocide against the urban life that has been a part of the history of the valley. The distraction of Bonyang Buddha was one of the most horrific cultural crime in the recent memory. We need to look at the distraction of history and why what's happened in Bonyang is more than a case of violence against the material heritage. In fact, it was a form of violence against the speach of urbanity, civility, against the Hazara people's history, and against the long history of cooperation and coexistence in Bonyang. Today we will talk with Ali and Abdullah. I want to start with Ali Kareem. Ali, let's unpack our title. Can you explain what destroying history means? How do we conceptualize the distraction of cultural heritage in Bonyang? Thank you Asat for the question. I also want to thank Munirah for the introductions and Milton and Sev Haven Freedom Talks for organizing this event. It is an honor to be here. Destroying history is a deliberate act of violence against historical evidence. It is a political act for the purpose of editing the past, erasing some part of the past, creating a new narrative about history in order to create a story that would fit with the narratives of the ruling class, and also a story that would justify the power of the ruling class. So this type of violent distraction of historical sites happens sometimes during warfare, when two nations are in war or there is one nation engaged in civil war. And this type of violence is important because history is important. The stories we tell about ourselves, the stories we tell about our origin, about our culture, about our identity matters a lot. And it's very contested, not only in a place like Afghanistan, which is very unstable and doesn't have democratic governance, but also in more stable liberal democracies too. The past is not set out, it is always negotiated, it's always debated. Although not violently, but the debate about the past is an ongoing process, because as social scientists would say, our nation states are tied together mostly based on some shared phenomenon. One of these shared phenomenon is the stories that people tell about themselves. And in authoritarian states, the debate and the contestation about the past is more serious and sometimes more violent. In the Soviet Union, there was a joke that in the Soviet Union, the future is certain, it is the past that is unpredictable. Because with each regime change, a new narrative about the past would emerge that would highlight certain parts of the past and erase the other parts. In Afghanistan, Nile Green, a historian of Afghanistan, says that about the contestation about history, that two figures in Afghanistan have been the most influential in shaping political events. One is Mujahid, the other is Muarrish. Mujahid is the Islamic finals and Muarrish means historians. They have been engaged in this first ideological battle in shaping the identity of Afghanistan and the history of Afghanistan. The distractions that Afghanistan heritage has seen over the past, let's say a century, the biggest one would be the destruction of Buddhas in Bangan have also been a form of orbicide. Orbicide literally means killing of the city. When there is a war, you are trying to kill not only people but also deny the people, the infrastructure, the built environment that sustained them. When it comes to cultural heritage, the distraction of the people's cultural heritage means that you are trying to erase their evidence, the evidence of their existence in history. This form of violence, the concept of orbicide comes from political geography and geographers have talked about the urban warfare in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, in the Balkans and also we can explain the war in Afghanistan, the civil war and the Taliban war. As a form of war against the city, a war against civility and community and this distraction is not only a form of destroying history that deliberate distraction of historical evidence but also part of this larger movement in Afghanistan, this nationalistic movement in Afghanistan to edit the past, to erase the past in order to build new stories in their place. I'm sure that Abdullah is going to discuss this further also and we will come to this question later but in terms of understanding this violence against the cultural heritage sites, one way to look at it is through the concept of orbicide, a form of violence against the built environment. You mean what's happening in Bangan is we need a new concept, a new framework for that and it's maybe not possible to just explain by genocide, so we need the other concept which is orbicide. The same happened in the Syria by Daesh in Iraq and today maybe in Ukraine when they put in order people to leave the city and after they are living so he destroyed. That is a very good point, so a force when they destroy humans they will not hesitate destroying heritage sites. In Syria we saw that there was a genocide going on against the Shia minorities, the Yazidis and also the same group destroyed this world heritage sites from the Roman era. The Taliban distraction of Buddha is part of this form of political violence when they try to kill people they will also kill the heritage of that people so genocide and orbicide sometimes go at least it has gone hand in hand in places that we have seen violent extremism in as you said the Middle East and also in Afghanistan. So it's somehow to destroy the built environment to make an impossible life for the people thank you Ali. And so we are going back maybe to historical background of this discussion because the Buddha statue was one of the important historical phenomena in in the bombing and also part of Gandahara art, which was maybe the first form of Buddha statue because before that the statue of Buddha was in maybe was forbidden somehow and Buddha symbolized by lotus and by other symbols. So in this part we're going to Abdullah, can you tell us about the construction of Buddha statues, who built them, when did they build them, why and how. Thank you asset. Let me get this opportunity and things said heaven to provide this platform to discuss topics, timely topics, like what you are going to discuss today. What about Buddha statues I think it will be relevant to give a very short background about the Bami and city first so the city of Bami and where Buddha statues are located historically was one of the main trade and transit hub along the Silk Road and had a significant place in in the region culturally so. In addition, the city was located on the route where many military campaigns passed through it in different periods. And each of these foreign forces, you know this campaign, this campaign is where, passing through the cities or those who have stayed behind from these campaigns they usually impacted deeply, you know, the deep impacts on the political social and economic life of the city from Alexander's military campaigns to the attacks of nomadic tribes from Central Asia. For what we see in later periods campaigns of Arabs Mongols and not a shop. So this geographical stand along the Silk Road had led to a kind of, we can say unique way of social and political life, which pretty close and constant interaction with other people and cultures in neighboring. Territories or even father. So the authorities of this region dynasties who ruled this region were also very active in terms of political diplomatic religious and artistic relationship with other parts of the world. And through this relationship. These interactions we see that's one of the main features of social life in bombing was the cultural diversity and religious tolerance among peoples of this, the people of the album, something that still can be seen in has our community in the value of So, about who build Buddha statues in bombing on, they were built, they were built in this context by order of cushioning empires, the Buddhas, those who have been in bombing and they have seen that the Buddha fair Buddha space to south of the bombing valley. And they are about 102 meters apart from from each other and between these two statues in the heart of the mountain there is a many cover covers that were once places where months and pilgrims pray and worship. The two statues came, as I said mentioned, came from the heart of Gandhara School of Art and Gandhara sculpture are closely related to the Roman art in terms of artistic affiliation also it seems that they have some links to the Greek or the Roman art. So, in fact, maybe the best description of Gandhara school as some, some scholars say is that Gandhara School of Art is was the most oriental manifestation of the art of the Roman Empire in this part of the world. And I think what's mentioning here is that so many believe that the statues and other form of forms of art in bombing and in the region are influenced largely by the Congress and invaders and they give passive role to local artists. I think we should remember that Bamiyan and Bamiyan statues and the other artistic forms from this region. They only themselves shows the that the fact that artists and craftsman of bombing. Kind of eclectic style and then are affected on the other artistic forms in the region. A very good example of this we can see in Bamiyan painting. The oil painting that were artistically a combination of elements from East Roman art, Sasanian Persian art and Indian subcontinent art. So the skill of Bamiyan artists in combining these elements where they were that they combined them in a such a harmonious way that it's really difficult to say which style is dominant to the to the others. And then we can see the same eclectic style of Bamiyan painting later in other regions, for example, in Mingo in Central Asia where we can see the same exact feature of art from Bamiyan. And this feature actually gives the statue, the Bamiyan statues. It's painting and other historical monuments in the region, cosmopolitan nature. So, I think we can ask now what this statue statues and caverns can tell us about the life of people in Bamiyan. So, one, one thing is, as you mentioned, as I mentioned in the introduction that it was against genocide or maybe violence against the urbanity, against the civility. So if I got from your discussion, so Bamiyan cultural heritage was very multicultural from different people from different parts of the world, Indian, Rumiyan, great people and the local people and also. So, if we go back again and focus on the statue of Buddha, what was the motivation of those people who built the statue. What I can say here is that, you know, what I learned from living in Bamiyan when look at the Buddha statues is that, you know, these statues themselves and they can, you know, better than anything depicting cultural or political and social situation of the city. Bamiyan was at, hey, when the statues were built, you know, the economy was good at the, it was the main hob land, the silt road, it witnessed the presence of various Buddhist and Hindu sets and in terms of cultural and artistic activities, of course, the city was very dynamic. So at the same time it was politically active and had important diplomatic relations with other regions. I think it was after it was almost after this period that gradually the following centuries with the advent of Islam, you know, the Buddhist life in the region began to decline. And the Buddhists who are living there were forced to convert to Islam or flee. But if we look closely at the life of Bamiyan people after converting to Islam, we see that here again people instead of rejecting Islam or abandoning Buddhism altogether to try to preserve elements of the, you know, different elements of the Buddhist religions in their daily life. And in some occasion they even integrated with Islamic values we had, we have its manifestation in the religious tolerance of Bamiyan people under the rule of Islam to this day. The Buddha statues were stood in the heart of Bamiyan Valley for centuries and although the people of Bamiyan converted to Islam, not only they never destroyed this statue but they always see them as part of their identity. What destroyed the Buddha statues in 2001 was quite the opposite of the diversity and tolerance of Bamiyan people. It was a force from, you know, coming outside of Bamiyan to destroy this statue. I'm going to stop here because I'm sure Ali has a lot to say when, yes, about the process of destruction or the history of the destruction of the statues. Yeah. So for just a quick question and then we for the sort of destruction we'll ask Ali. So Bamiyan statue was a form of Gandahara art and it's made by Koshanian empire. So, which was the first time maybe the king asked people, I want to see the face of Buddha. Exactly. So one of the interesting point about the School of Arts in Gandahara is that the first time for the first time we see Buddha in a human form in the Gandahara School of Art. So it's said that Kanishka, the great Koshan empire wanted to see, you know, as, you know, he was a, he was very supportive of the goodies, and he wanted to see actually Buddha. So that's, that was when the followers of, you know, the artis and craftsmen under the empire, Koshan empire, you know, they started to come up with statues with the human, you know, with the human form of Buddha in this culture in Gandahara sculpture. Thank you, Abdullah. And it's very, very good answer. And we are going to Ali. So the other coin of this question is the destroying of Buddha, because the destroying of Buddha statue also has a very long history in Bamiyan. There have been other attempts in history to destroy Bamiyan Buddhas almost from the arriving of Islam in Bamiyan. Can you tell us more about this previous attempts? Sure. So the history of Bamiyan Buddhas are somehow tied to the history of Islam. The smaller Buddha was built in 570. That is about 39 years before Muhammad declared his prophecy in Arabia. The bigger Buddha was built in 618. So Muhammad declared his prophecy, the prophet of Islam, in 609. That is at the beginning of the seventh century almost. So they were still building the Buddha statues in Bamiyan when Muhammad declared his prophecy and invited people to join Islam. But Islam did not reach Bamiyan for some time. And for all these histories that followed, all these centuries that followed, several invading armies, Muslim invading armies arrived in Bamiyan in order to convert people to Islam or to conquer this valley. And although some of them they spared the Buddhas, but some of them attempted to destroy this because this was such a huge prominent relic demonstrating the culture and heritage of non-Islamic past of this valley. So the history, the entire history of this statue is the post-Islamic history because as I said they were built right at the beginning of the arrival of Islam in Arabia. And among the many invading armies who arrived in Bamiyan to conquer it or to destroy the Buddhas, one was a ninth century dynasty from Nimru's province in southwest of Afghanistan. They were called the Safarids. They arrived there and the value of Bamiyan was still a very much a Buddhist city. There were monasteries, there were all other forms of religious sites other than the two big Buddhas. So they destroyed these things that were on flat lands. They destroyed the monasteries, they took some of these statues and sent them to Baghdad as a form of souvenir for the caliph. And they didn't have the technology and the know-how to destroy the giant Buddhas and that's how the Buddhas survived. And still after the Safarids in the ninth century Bamiyan started to become Muslim, but it did not become fully Muslim until the 10th century when the Ghaznavid came. The Ghaznavid converted the entire area to Islam and there were no practicing Buddhists left in Bamiyan in the 10th century. And the Ghaznavid did not destroy, of course, the Buddhas, the Buddhas survived. It was later on in the 17th century, almost modern times, that a Mongol emperor from India, Aurangzeb, famously Islamist and very religious ruler who was famous for his intolerance of non-Muslims, who attempted to destroy the Buddha. In addition to being a very extremist person, he was also very good at military. He would build this big cannon, guns, and come up with new strategies for the Indian army. And one of the new guns that he built, he sent that to Bamiyan. At the time, Bamiyan and Kabul was part of the Indian Empire, was a province or suburb of the Indian Mongol Empire. To test it on the Buddha, they wanted to test the guns of the Buddha. So they fired at the Buddha, but they could not destroy it completely. But they destroyed the legs of this time. So if you look at the pictures of Buddha, the legs are gone, at least one of them is gone. Those legs were destroyed by Aurangzeb. So that person was the newest ruler who wanted to destroy this heritage in order first to erase the non-Islamic heritage of this valley and also test his guns. Then, a century later, another Afshar arrived, and also it is noted that he tried to destroy the Buddha, but he failed. And after that, the Buddha remained in Bamiyan, almost intact. It was not destroyed, it was a site of wonder tourists. The British would come to Bamiyan and paint it and make drawings of it and report about it. Orientalists, everyone was fascinated by this site. So there were several attempts by previous rulers of Bamiyan and Afghanistan who came to destroy it, but they did not have the technical capacity to destroy completely these two giant Buddhas. And it was, of course, the Taliban who finally managed to destroy it. So the Taliban, too, they started in the 1990s towards, I think, 1999, they started to blow up the head of the Buddha. So the head of the Buddha is a bit controversial because its face is erased. The ears and the chin and the lips were visible, but the eyes and the forehead and the nose were gone. Some local historians would speculate that probably because the Buddhas looked like a hazard, somebody came and they didn't like hazards, they just erased the face. But archaeologists, they believed that no, it is part of the design of the Buddha, it's part of the original feature. They did not build the face, they just leave it just blank. I don't know, I cannot take sides on this because this is not my area of specialty. I think ancient historians or archaeologists should have better explanation for this. But what Taliban did, they tried to blow up the face and the head, sorry, they actually blew up some part of the head, but not all of it. But they did not continue, they left it unfinished until 2001. So one thing about the head of the Buddha, I would say that all this Islamic extremists that they are against these un-Islamic icons, they have this rigid view that building a statue or even painting, a living being is un-Islamic, it is challenging the authority of God that, yeah, I can also make a living being. So in order to destroy this, what they do is they behead the artistic object. If it is a painting, they just cut the head where it is a statue, they would destroy the head. So destroying the head signifies that we have killed this art object. So it not only in Afghanistan, in India, in the Middle East, many times being this extremist, they want to destroy artistic objects like paintings or status, they start with the head. But of course in 2001, the Taliban in an act of extreme violence against the history of not only this region, but also the history and heritage of the world, they blew up the entire thing and they finished something that previous generations of extremists failed to accomplish. And thank you, as you told, the beheading is a very strong tradition, Islam, when they captured the enemy, so they beheaded, when they even killed the enemy, so they beheaded, it was a symbol of to be wean or defeated of enemy. So as you mentioned, Abdullah, before that, there is a very, very close relationship between Bamiyan people and this cultural heritage and somehow the statue of Buddha and the Bamiyan mountains are the mirror of these people and they show the rising and collapsing of these people and the humiliating of them and maybe to construct them or reconstruct them. So there is a mainstream narrative, if you can in today that they believe the Buddha statue destroyed in Bamiyan, it was just because of religious interpretation of that statue. So the question is, what's the political meaning of destruction, destroying of Buddha statue by Taliban, is it just the religious interpretation of that or maybe there is other reason also. The question, yes, whenever there is a discussion about destruction of Buddha statues, usually the first reason behind the destruction mentioned is the religious fundamentalism that it was the result of Taliban religious ideology or that the Taliban saw it as a symbol of ideology, ideology or politics, but I think reducing this act of this distraction to a religious motive is a kind of simplification of the issue. Yeah, so as Ali said, if we look at the history of this region, there have been people who tried to destroy these statues and all of these people movements kind of came from outside of the region, outside of Bamiyan, whether it be Nader Shah, as Navid or Aurangzeb, so they all have their own motives, there was a religious motive in all of them. However, for the Taliban, I think there is another aspect that has a few, you know, it didn't receive much attention yet. And it's the ethnic nationalism which goes hand to hand with religious fundamentalism here in Afghanistan. If we ignore this link without looking at the context in the Afghanistan contemporary history, it will mislead us. I mean, the act of destructing Bamiyan statues is one of a series of measures that have been going on in Afghanistan for more than two centuries in order to reshape the history of this country as Ali mentioned. And reshaping this history means destroying the past and anything that has any relation to it and anything that can confront with the newly forged history, whether it's a text, it's a book, it's a monument, it's a story, an archaeological site, or even people themselves. So the Taliban reason for destroying the Buddha must be understood in line with the efforts of the late passion dominated government in Afghanistan who tried to rewrite the country's history and come up with a fake Afghan identity. If we look at the history closely, we see that after Ahmad Chow became a king, if I'm not mistaken, in 1747, and with the formation of the, you know, so called Afghanistan, we witnessed that the attempts to create this new distorted history or all the time accompanied by the destruction of history and the demolition of anything that relate this land to the indigenous people, including the destruction of the Buddhist heritage in Bamiyan. It was in 16th century that Pashtuns came from India to the areas which is now Pakistan and Afghanistan border areas and they took power in the context of conflict between India, Mughal empire and the Safavid in Iraq. This region, this borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan was the main Afghanistan before the colonial intervention and later in the context of the great game between Britain and Russia, the Pashtun managed to extend their power over most part of the country and to control of central and northern Afghanistan by physically eliminating and killing different ethnic groups and since these new rulers of the regions were not originally from there. They were alien, they were unfamiliar with the culture of this region, the culture of Baal, the culture of Bamiyan, the culture of Herod and therefore they took a hostile approach to them. And it was here that they were forced to, you know, intensify to change, you know, to destroy the past and history to the history of these areas by any means possible. For example, they began to change the names of historical and ancient sites and replace them with the replaced many dairy and other local names with Pashtun names. The forced displacement also began in a scale that the demographic composition of the region changed significantly and many Hazara, Tajik and Uzbek residents in south, north and east of the country were forcibly displaced. At the same time, institutions with the full support of the government were formed to formally begin to create a nationalist narrative. Like Anjuman Tari or Academy of Science. They also started to create this false maze and stories to give legitimacy to their national narratives and the result was nothing but absolute chaos in the current Afghanistan historiography that we witness today. For example, according to this nationalist, just to give an example, this national narrative. So it claims a five year, 5000 year history for Pashtuns and by this claim they are trying not only to destroy, and of course this distort history but to confiscate the history of other ethnic groups Unfortunately, this situation still continues even more than before. For example, as Dr. Karibi already pointed out in one of his interviews, the government of Ashraf Ghani selectively reconstructs the past and historical monuments in the last 10 years. We saw that large sums of money were spent on the reconstruction of Dora-Lamon Palace, Sarajeh and other works that were made by recent Pashtun rulers in the 90s and 20th century. But the cultural heritage of other people like Manarjian, the historical sites in Herat, in Bamiyan, in Dasni, they were intentionally ignored by the government. They, I mean, the government, they selectively choose which part of the history should be bought and highlighted. And which part should be ignored and left to be forgotten. In one word, the distraction of Buddha statues as a historical and cultural heritage of Hazara people must be understood in the context of a kind of wider process of cultural, social and political exclusion of Hazara people from the society. Now that the Taliban are back in power, the situation will become worse for Hazara even worse than before, as we can see these days. And it's because the Taliban is not just a religious ideology but an ethnic process in its nature and religion is just a political tool for them to cover this fact. Thank you, Abdullah, as we talked to the distraction of Buddha statues is a part of maybe a reconstruction of ethnic knowledge in history. So it was not just, it doesn't have just a religious message, it is a kind of distortion of collective memory, distortion of history. And now we come back again to Ali Karimi, I think we don't have so much time. So Ali, as Abdullah mentioned, there is an understanding that there is a relationship between people who are living in Bonyon and this cultural heritage and this history. So as you know that this two statues were located in Bonyon, which is somehow the Hazara cultural center. So what is the relationship of Bonyon people with this cultural heritage in today? So what do you think about that? The relationship between people and their free Islamic heritage is always complicated. We see that in Egypt, we see that in Iran, other Muslim countries, there are first debates and also mixed feelings about these sites. They are not sure that should we be proud of this un-Islamic past or we should forget them. So I think a few years ago in Egypt, they organized this parade with ancient pharaohs and kings on the street. But the Egyptians who are a large portion of the society are very conservative. They said, no, don't bring them back. We are Egyptians or Muslims and we are only proud of our Islamic heritage. In Iran, this debate is going on, but even though the Iranian regime is very much a conservative Islamic government, they are trying to bring back some of the pre-Islamic Iranian heritage. The show was more proactive. He was trying to reinvent the contemporary Iran in the image of this ancient Persian past, even changing the calendar of the country to the ancient calendar. So when it comes to Afghanistan, this complicated history is there. People, not only the Hazaras but other ethnic groups too, they have a very strange feeling and ideas about their own pre-Islamic past. Because of this long history of suppression, they don't remember much about the past. Our only evidence is this material heritage, the remnants of this pre-Islamic era. But we don't know much about them because the Islamic culture and Arab culture has been very overwhelming. It washed out the previous memories and cultures and identities of people. But when it comes to the Hazaras in Bamiyan, they have a very interesting relationship with these two giant Buddhas. Although Buddhist beliefs no longer exist in Bamiyan, but people are not stranger to these two sides. They are not antagonistic against these two sides. They appreciate them, they make up stories about them. Among the locals, this smaller Buddha is called Shammaman, the larger one is called Salson, the smaller one is perceived as a female figure and the larger one as male. They have built up these stories, folkloric tales, poetry about these two giant Buddhas, and they have this intimate relationship with them, but not in a religious way. They are still Muslims. They still believe in Shia or Sunni Islam, but they have no desire, I think, to return to Buddhist beliefs, but they see these sides as their own. They don't see them as some stranger things that they have nothing to do with. So that's different from, let's say, the Persian rulers who are originally from northern Pakistan, from the Suleyman Mountain range area, when they colonized Afghanistan and settled there, the entire region of Kursam was a stranger to them. The Persian language was a stranger, the heritage, the Buddhist heritage, the other physical and material sites that existed in this region was a stranger to them. So they tried either to destroy them or to neglect them and let them be destroyed. So in the case of the Hazaras, so there is a myth going on for at least the 19th century would be poor, but the Hazaras are Mongols. They are the remnants of the Chi Changi Khan's army in the Bamiyan region, but that is not true. There is no evidence suggesting that Chiangis left a portion of his army in a very remote mountainous area like Bamiyan. And in my view and according to historical evidence that there's not a lot of research going on about this, but the Hazaras are indigenous to this region, to the region of Khorasan. And because of their faith, they have been pushed further and further into the highlands in the central Afghanistan. So if we don't have Hazaras today in Kandahar, that's because in the 19th century, their lands were confiscated, they were pushed into the mountains. We don't have Hazaras in some parts of, for example, between Kabul and Ghazni and Kandahar district in Herab. Because of all this mass depopulation and displacement going on in the history. So the Hazaras are indigenous to the area and they have a very intimate relationship with the Buddhist sites. Although they do not view them as religious sites as sacred symbols, they view them as more of folkloric and cultural sites as part of their own history. So they don't have antagonistic relationship with the pre-Islamic past of their valley. The same that's going on with, let's say, Muslim extremists in some parts of the Middle East that they don't want anything to do with the pre-Islamic heritage of their nations. Thank you, Adi, as you told. So the Bahamian people always try to reconstruct themselves in this cultural heritage and find a way to see themselves and find themselves even in the place of Buddha statue in Bahamian. And we have very few time and I want to ask the last question from Abdullah. It was Heinrich Heine told that the people who burn the book, so they will burn the people. So we can have the same question. The people who kill the cultural heritage can kill the people. So what is the relationship between this cultural genocide and genocide in Afghanistan? Well, I'm not an expert in law or international law and I can define genocide and cultural genocide in their strict legal terms, but the general definition of genocide, so it's a systematic attempt to destroy a group whether for political ties, religious ethnic background or other. But cultural genocide is one of the concepts when it comes to Afghanistan, I rarely heard it to use it, you know, about what happened in Afghanistan. Look at the 18th century, we see the genocide of Azaras under Abdulrahman rule, along with other systematic efforts to remove these people from the social and political life of Afghanistan. And the point here to keep in mind is that genocide in its, I don't know if I'm using the right sense or not in physical sense. We cannot separate it from cultural genocide. From cultural genocide here, I mean the destruction of the identity of a group, because the identity of each group is generally defined by the culture of the, of that group and cultural genocide which which make a different stage sometimes before the genocide itself and something along with it. So the oppressor's attempts are made to violently target the culture that holds the group together like a glue. And in order to break, to break up the group. Once it's done people don't see, you know, my choices ahead of them so other than to either be to be assimilated in the other in the dominant culture, which is very painful process. You get surrender and in some occasions even physically eliminated. This is why the distraction of cultural and historical symbols for me is in itself a kind of genocide. And we cannot separate these two from each other. And in the destruction of the Buddha statues is, in fact, deliberate destruction or destruction of the identity of has ours. And I think it's not fair to justify this act simply by idolatry because these statues belong to past centuries, and they're not empty of their religious meaning and they're only silent kind of silence signs of an ancient civilization. Calling this act destruction of Buddha statues as a war crime by the international community is a kind of ignoring and turning a blind eye to the, to the fact that this act is a kind of destruction of culture and the identities of has ours. We have seen this process. This process, of course, in other parts of the world in in 70s 90s 70s. The Khmer Rouge Communist regime in Cambodia massacre people and then at the same time destroy temples Muslim mosque church and Buddhist statues. And two decades later in Serbia destroyed all libraries mosque and other religious and cultural science or belonging to Bosnian Muslims. So, or what ISIS did in Iraq and Syria. So these are all examples of a cultural genocide and the distraction of this cultural heritage is not just a distraction of stone or wooden or other material works of art but these structures are the proof of proof of existence for people and their distractions means to deliberately make a group of people to disappear from history. And the code that as I mentioned from the Heinrich China. Yeah, the same is true here those who destroy a people's cultural heritage won't have any fear to kill and massacre those people. We have witnessed this so many times in human story that we can say that the destruction of bombing with us is an act of the act of cultural heritage and ignoring it or reducing it to something like a criminal act will make Taliban and other group with the same mindset to become more aggressive in their nationalist agendas. Thank you, Ali and thank you, Abdullah it was a very nice discussion. Do you want Ali to add a few sentences because we don't have so much time. I just want to stress the fact that Afghanistan as a whole as a very diverse country it is not one country with one people the world afghan alone is not enough to cover the entire population. To understand Afghanistan to understand the conflict in Afghanistan. We need to look at the cultural diversity of this country and to understand different people's different histories and identities. And when it comes to the hazardous the experience of the hazardous throughout the modern history of Afghanistan is a very good way to understand the two politics the culture of this country. And especially it is true now that the Taliban is ruling back the country we sometimes hear from foreign reporters to do Afghanistan war is ended now it is so peaceful you can travel everywhere. There is security everywhere, but that is false. If you want to assess the situation the security in Afghanistan as the hazardous, the war against the hazardous is still going on. Last week, hundreds of school kids were blown up in a suicide attack. From 30 to 60, the numbers are not known 60 worshipers in just the day after the bomb on the schools. So that this brutal war, the mass killing of the hazardous is still going on while foreign reporters go to Taliban and talk to them and just have tea with them and then write that Afghanistan is so peaceful. There's no war going on. Yes, the war against the fashion is going on because the Taliban were doing the war. But the war against the hazardous is still going on the same as it went on for 20 years and also before that throughout the modern history of this country. So, acknowledging that Afghan is not the right way to describe this country, there is diversity of people is one way to understand this country and possibly have a more constructive dialogue about its history about its politics and possibly about its future. Thank you very much Ali and thank you very much. I will do you want to add some sentence. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.