Word: bamian
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...like the Wakhan Corridor, an elevated, sparsely populated strip of Afghanistan that reaches China between Pakistan and Tajikistan. Others come to witness the nation's raw history of recent conflict. Last March, Blair Kangley, a 56-year-old American, traveled with Afghan Logistics and Tours from Kabul to the Bamian valley, famous as the site of the once-towering Buddhas, blown up by the Taliban in 2001. While tour guide Mubim accompanied Kangley on what was planned to be a two-day tour, he was in continual contact with the head Kabul office, plugged into its own formal and informal...
...meantime, he and Mann continue to organize tours to sites like Bamian and Qala-i-Jangi, a 19th century fortress some 12 miles (20 km) outside Mazar and one of the sites of final resistance by the Taliban against the Northern Alliance and the U.S.-led forces in 2001. Today, the bullet holes along the walls of the fortress remain unplastered. Shoib Najafizada, Afghan Logistics and Tours' man in Mazar, leads visitors around the rusty remnants of tanks and heavy artillery that lie strewn around. Like other guides, Najafizada offers firsthand accounts of some of the key moments...
There were other clashes in widely scattered areas. Afghan rebels claimed to have ambushed and routed a Soviet column in Bamian province northwest of Kabul. Fighting was said to be taking place in Logar province south of the capital, in Badakhshan and Takhar along the northeast frontier with the Soviet Union, in the southern city of Kandahar and in the desert wastes west of Herat and Farah. Concluded a Western observer: "The Soviet plan seems to be to secure the capital and seal the borders. If escape routes to Iran and Pakistan are cut, I am sure they are confident...
Here, rather than in China, Buddha grew to his tallest: a 175-ft.-high statue hewn from a sandstone cliff in the Afghan valley of Bamian-a display of gigantism inherited more from the colossal marble Caesars of Rome than from the subtler Orient. It was also in this Eurasian melting pot that Buddha acquired his characteristic togalike robe, borrowed from Rome. Likewise Hercules (opposite) holds the hero's traditional club, but his head is crowned with Serapis' sacred basket of mysteries, symbolizing the Nile's fertility...
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