ISLAMABAD, AFGHANISTAN, March 15, 2001: The Taliban movement’s Voice of Shariat radio said its supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar had ordered the slaughter of 12 cows in the capital Kabul and at least three each in 29 other Taliban-held provincial capitals to atone for its “delay” in destroying Afghanistan’s historic statues of the Buddha. The radical Islamic movement which seized power in 1996 issued a decree on February 27 for the destruction of all Afghanistan’s mainly Buddhist statues on the grounds that they were heathen idols, and carried out the task despite international protests. Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil told reporters in the Afghan capital Kabul on Wednesday that statues worshiped by the country’s small Hindu minority had been spared.
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