Sir, - With regard to your Editorial of March 2nd, I think the motives of the Taliban in attempting to destroy these statues can be better explained and understood when placed in the context of the recent history of that troubled region.
In 1980 Soviet military forces invaded Afghanistan and installed a puppet regime in Kabul sympathetic to the wishes of Moscow. There then followed a bitter 27-year war as Afghani mujihadeen fought to liberate their country from Russian occupation. Throughout their struggle, the Islamic resistance were supplied with financial and material aid from the West, chiefly the US.
We in the West were happy enough to see our proxy Cold Warriors take on the Evil Empire. In much the same way, it should be remembered, we once supplied Iraq and its leader with weapons and encouragement in its particularly brutal war with Iran.
It is only when former allies start deviating from the script and have the temerity to think and behave independently that we in the West suddenly become agitated about such things as democracy, human rights and freedom. And indeed, for that matter, statues.
From being plucky freedom-fighters, the Taliban soon found themselves inexplicably cast as fanatical extremists bent on intolerance and the oppression of women, once they began the process of restoring their country to the rule of Islamic law. Western liberal opinion was deeply outraged.
Ten years of UN sanctions have brought misery and death to thousands of Iraqi people, mainly children, but Saddam Hussein's bloody tyranny remains unchallenged, if not actually strengthened. Large parts of Afghanistan are already in the grip of drought and sanctions enacted by the UN can only make things worse. Already innocent people are dying, punished for the sins of their leaders.
If years of footage from Baghdad of hospitals filled with the sick and dying failed to shock Western minds into reconsidering, then maybe some shattered statues might. - Yours, etc.,
Philip Donnelly, Newtown Court, Maynooth, Co Kildare.