Journeys to the Ends of the Earth

The Lost Buddhas of Afghanistan (Afghanistan)

Afghanistan is not so much a country as a series of shifting borders. A place with no easily definable physical or civil boundaries. A place where war is an everyday fact of life. A place where more children will learn to use a gun than will go to school. About 1.5 million have been killed during the past 20 years of war. Perhaps another 4 million have fled. Every major road has been torn apart by tank treads. Almost every major building left standing has been blown full of holes. This is the most militant Islamic state on Earth but it was once was peace loving and Buddhist. In the Bamian Valley north of Kabul the two largest statues of Buddha on the planet were carved in the third century. David Adams was the last Westerner to exhaustively film them before they were blown up in 2001.