The FIM-92 Stinger missile is not a subtle weapon. An anti-aircraft rocket, capable of launching a high-explosive ‘fire and forget’ laser-guided warhead at targets up to 5km away, it can be carried and operated by only one man. During the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA provided hundreds of Stingers to the Mujahideen, where they proved terrifyingly lethal, downing scores of helicopter gunships and killing thousands of Soviet troops. But, at times, they’ve been as effective against other, more unusual targets.

In 2001, during the first Taliban administration of Afghanistan, the group’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, ordered the destruction of the monumental Buddha statues in the Bamiyan valley, a historic Silk Road site deep within the Hindu Kush. Over the course of 25 days, Taliban fighters used Stinger missiles, as well as tanks, RPGs, mines and dynamite, to obliterate the statues. These masterworks of Gandharan Buddhism, which stood higher than Nelson’s Column and predated the foundation of Islam, were reduced to rubble, leaving only their massive, empty niches behind.

Now, under the second Taliban administration, one organisation is promoting Bamiyan as an established attraction for Afghanistan’s ‘danger tourists’. One Australian travel influencer captioned a recent Facebook post: ‘At the Buddha’s [sic] of Bamiyan. A truly wonderful spot!’

The recent scale of global cultural desecration has made the Taliban’s efforts in 2001 look a bit half-hearted

The recent scale of global cultural desecration has made the Taliban’s efforts in 2001 look a bit half-hearted

The world reacted with impotent horror to the Taliban’s iconoclasm in 2001. But in theory an organisation exists that might have prevented it: the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). Founded in November 1945, during the post-second world war surge in optimism, it’s best known today for its World Heritage List, which includes historic sites – Stonehenge, Machu Picchu – as well as unique landscapes and biospheres, such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Philippines’s Batad rice terraces. But its original mandate was broader and utopian: to promote global peace through international cooperation, as well as preserving and protecting the world’s heritage.

Yet today, even Unesco’s fiercest champions might admit it has somewhat taken its eyes off the ball. The organisation celebrated its 80th anniversary in fine style last summer. But the scale of global cultural desecration during the past two decades has made the Taliban’s efforts in 2001 look a bit half-hearted. During Isis’s........

© The Spectator