What is lost in terrorist attacks is much more than life. Driven by single-minded hatred towards all things they either don't know of, understand, or those that don't fit into the Pashto-centric world view, terrorists have destroyed chunks of history and today are dangerously threatening more. After the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas in central Afghanistan because boss Mullah Omar had decreed all depiction in stone or paper of human and animal forms un-Islamic, the phrase archaeological terrorism was coined by scholars who had watched the carnage unfold.
The world watched with horror as the Taliban destroyed ancient sculptures in Afghanistan. The response was a helpless, collective gasp as explosives, tanks and anti-aircraft weapons blew apart two colossal images of the Buddha in Bamiyan, 230 km from the Afghan capital Kabul. Today, the same danger looms over Pakistan, which contains sites from the Indus Valley civilisation.
Last Friday's suicide attack that killed well-known Lahore cleric Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi in the seminary's office is a gruesome calling card by the Taliban that says no idea, thought or philosophy barring their own has any space.
Baitullah Mehsud's Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan has only hatred and disdain for the golden relics of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, the first of the urban civilisations built on syncretic ideas, which are anathema to the Kalashnikov-wielding Taliban. Imagine the damage caused in any attack on sites that have only in recent years started yielding pointers to the journey our modern society has traversed. Visualise the Taliban plundering the ancient site of Taxila, a few hours north of Islamabad, not far from where the Pakistan army is now fighting them.
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