bamiyan buddhas, mes aynak and the new american century's war on culture

Wars are destroyers of cultures. Period !

They destroy in more ways than one cares to think of, or even dares imagine. They do it consciously and they do it unconsciously. Think of the destruction of Iraq's ancient culture after the invasion by  the civilized/civilizing West.  

And it is happening again. In another ancient culture that dared to stand up  to forces of 'civilization'. The commerce of it, actually. 

The blowing up of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban had served to demonise and damn them, Forever. 

I wonder if the the present destruction of an even more valuable cultural site will be allowed    to demonise and damn the  new  iconoclasts. The West and its Love War ways. 

Now, 11 years after the US invasion of Afghanistan and the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, capitalist war and its direct nexus to the loss of culture and history is once again illustrated in Afghanistan.  The pending casualties are again World history and culture, but with several bold twists this time around including: the environment, Afghan landowner’s claims to their lands, and the little, if any, faith that Afghans may have in the notoriously malfeasant US-backed Karzai regime.

The battleground is Mes Aynak, an ancient Buddhist city built about 4600 years ago atop a rich copper deposit in Logar, Afghanistan.  Discovered in the 1960s,  Archaeologists consider it to be “one of the most intriguing ancient mining sites in Central Asia, if not the world“.

Mes Aynak is now scheduled for destruction in December 2012 in order to extract its copper deposits, following an agreement between the Afghan Government and a Chinese mining consortium, comprised of China Metallurgical Group and Jianxi Copper Co.

The current government’s policies on the country’s natural resources are in place not to serve Afghans, but wealthy foreign investors and corrupt officials. Sadly, archaeologically-significant sites are no more safe with the current Western backed regime’s neo-liberal policies than they were under the Taliban.

http://afghansforpeace.org/archives/2938