BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Ancient Afghan Monastery Under Threat

Bible and archaeology news

A nearly 2,000-year-old Buddhist monastery with fresco-decorated corridors and more than 150 painted statues of standing and reclining Buddhas is under threat from a planned copper mining operation. An international team of archaeologists is working frantically to salvage as much of the monastery as possible before the site is completely razed and turned over to a Chinese state-owned mining company. The site, called Mes Aynak, sits atop the world’s second largest copper reserve, and the Chinese recently paid the Afghan government $3 billion for extraction rights. “It is very shameful for the Afghan government to let the Chinese come here and destroy our history,” said Abdul Khalid, one of the Afghan archaeologists leading the salvage project. “People around the world only hear of the war in Afghanistan but they do not know that we have the best of things from our forefathers.”

A nearly 2,000-year-old Buddhist monastery with fresco-decorated corridors and more than 150 painted statues of standing and reclining Buddhas is under threat from a planned copper mining operation.