Swiss scientists hoping to rebuild Buddha statues blown up by Taliban

SWISS-BASED scientists have created an exact computer image of the huge statue of Buddha destroyed by the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan and hope it will be used to rebuild the ancient figure.

“We have produced a precise and complete three-dimensional model which can be used for physical reconstruction,” Professor Armin Gruen said.

The team, based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, used 30-year-old photographs to map out the statue, which was blown up amid an international outcry in March 2001.

Two huge standing Buddhas were chiselled into the cliff more than 1,500 years ago in the central Bamiyan Valley on the ancient Silk Route linking Europe and Central Asia.

The fundamentalist Taliban considered them idolatrous and against the tenets of Islam, and in March 2001 it dynamited them.

The larger of the two Buddhas stood 174-feet high. The second one about half a mile away at the other end of the rock face was about 125 fee high.

The team is now working on mapping the second statue, Gruen said.

Gruen’s team based their work on three photographs taken of the larger Buddha in 1970 by an Austrian scientist.

They also used pictures found on the internet and photographs taken by a tourist, as well as satellite images.

Using the detail from the three pictures they produced a three-dimensional computer image and the information was then used to programme a milling machine to produce a 1:200 scale model of the statue in polyurethane.

Gruen is working with a company in Auckland, New Zealand, to produce a one-tenth replica of the Buddha by the same process. That model should be completed by next spring. It will be displayed at Kabul Museum.

Gruen said it would be difficult or even impossible to rebuild the statues with their original materials.

His team estimates that the smaller Buddha is in about 4,000 pieces. He said experts estimate that rebuilding the big Buddha at its original location would cost around 28 million, and the cost for the second statue would be similar.

“We believe there are enough private people in the world that have strong ties to Buddhism who would be prepared to donate the money if they had the approval of UNESCO,” he said.