Twenty years after the Taliban blew up two famous Buddha statues, Afghans commemorated the tragic loss of their historical and cultural heritage on March 9 at a ceremony in the central Bamiyan valley.

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan — The Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in early 2001 shocked the world and highlighted their hard-line regime, toppled soon after in a U.S.-led invasion. Now ...

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan — They stand like missing hearts carved out of the mountain's chest, abandoned chambers where ancient wonders of the world once gazed placidly. It's been nearly 10 years since the ...

Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas were symbols of the country’s rich cultural history. When extremists destroyed them, the world mourned a cultural and historical loss. Historians emphasize the global ...

Bamiyan Valley in 2010, with the hole where one of the Buddha statues was demolished (photograph by Afghanistan Matters/Wikimedia) After a reconstruction effort covertly built what appeared to be the ...

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan -- The world mourned last year when the hard-line Taliban regime, decrying false idols, blew up the priceless, 15-centuries-old Buddha statues hewn into a cliff here. But for the ...

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan -- Here is a reminder to someone with the initials A.B., who on March 8 climbed inside the cliff out of which Bamiyan's two giant Buddhas were carved 1,500 years ago. In a domed ...

Colossal statues of Buddah carved into sandstone cliffs of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, were recently demolished by the Taleban, the fundamentalist Islamic militia that has governed most of Afghanistan since ...

Amid the ongoing unrest in Afghanistan following the Taliban's latest takeover of the country, UNESCO has called for the preservation of Afghanistan's cultural heritage, including its two UNESCO World ...

For an aspiring tourist mecca, the Oriental Buddha Kingdom Theme Park in the lush mountains of Leshan is doing a pretty woeful job. Its main attraction, a 37-meter replica of one of the famed Bamiyan ...