Cultural Heritage Under Attack: Motives for Deliberate Destruction of Cultural Property in Armed Conflict in Swat

Abstract

This article aims to trace the Taliban’s motives behind the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in Swat while also looking into the local’s reaction and their relationship with cultural heritage after the conflict. The Taliban insurgents deliberately defaced and dynamited the second largest seated statue of Lord Buddha after Bamiyan in Afghanistan and bomb-damaged Swat Museum. The findings are the outcomes of in-depth interviews and FGDs conducted with locals, key informants from the community, local journalists, NGO representatives, archeologists, and Swat Museum officials. This study demonstrates that the Taliban iconoclastic acts were motivated by their “conflict goal” – the introduction and imposition of Sharia Law in the region. The “specific targeting” of the seated statue of Lord Buddha and the bomb-damaged Swat Museum are considered the principal identifiers of differences, and instrumental in “signalling” strength and commitment to the resisting actors. The polarity in explanations among the locals indicates that the Taliban tactfully manipulated the equivocal understanding of idolatry in Islam. After the conflict, apart from the realization of ownership and pride among the locals, the utmost concerns for them are the protection of cultural heritage and the construction of a religious counter-narrative on the status of idols and statues in Islam.