3. The Destruction of The Buddhas of Bamiyan, 2001
A true reflection of hatred is destruction; in this case, an extreme act of cultural vandalism, being an extremely depressing and sad reflection of extreme times that we live in. The Buddhas of Bamiyan were dynamited in March 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar after the Taliban government declared that they were idols. An envoy visiting the United States in the following weeks explained that they were destroyed to protest international aid exclusively reserved for statue maintenance while Afghanistan was experiencing famine, while the Afghan Foreign Minister claimed that the destruction was merely about carrying out Islamic religious iconoclasm. International opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas, but in recent times we’ve seen this trend repeated throughout the Middle East with cultural treasures lost forever to subjective and ignorant acts of destruction.