Islamabad (AFP)

The Bamiyan Cultural Center in Afghanistan was to be completed at the end of August and then inaugurated with great fanfare in early October.

But the red carpet and the festivities will have to wait: since the Taliban returned to power on August 15, everything has been put on hold.

"It will not be possible to inaugurate it on the scheduled date", confirms to AFP Philippe Delanghe, in charge of the culture program of the Unesco office in Kabul, temporarily withdrawn to Almaty (Kazakhstan).

Even if the work continues on the spot, "everything is suspended" while awaiting the decisions of the new government, he adds.

The choice of the place and the date of the inauguration had everything of a symbol: to erect a cultural center in the same province where, in March 2001, two giant Buddhas carved in the heart of a cliff had been dynamited by order of the Taliban.

The destruction of these statues had propelled the radical ideology of the Taliban to the forefront of the planetary scene a few months before the attacks of September 11 and remains considered one of the worst archaeological crimes in history.

Twenty years later, the return of the Islamist movement arouses the fears of heritage defenders, forced to navigate on sight.

In February, the movement affirmed its desire to "protect, monitor and preserve" the historical Afghan heritage which, in addition to the Bamiyan valley (center), includes the minaret and the archaeological remains of Jam, further west, or even the Buddhist shrine of Mes Aynak, near Kabul.

But since taking power, the Taliban have not given more details to definitively allay the concerns of the world of heritage.

And in mid-August, residents accused them of being behind the partial destruction in Bamiyan of the statue of a former leader of the Hazara ethnic group, whom they persecuted in the 1990s, without their participation being however. confirmed.

- Partial inventory -

"We are all a bit suspicious," said Philippe Marquis, director of the French archaeological delegation in Afghanistan (Dafa).

The February declarations "are declarations of intent which are worth what they are worth but it is rather a good sign. We have no declarations saying: + We are going to destroy everything or erase everything from the non-Islamic past of this. country + ", he adds.

Same caution at Unesco.

"We judge by history and 20 years ago there were terrible results," notes Ernesto Ottone, Deputy Director General for Culture.

Things have changed compared to 2001, he wants to believe, recalling in particular that Afghanistan has signed several conventions and that since 2016 the destruction of heritage is considered a war crime.

A dreaded time, an Iraqi scenario - when tens of thousands of parts were stolen in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 - does not seem to have happened in Kabul.

For now at least.

A police officer patrols on March 3, 2021 in front of the Bamiyan site in Afghanistan where two giant Buddhas carved into the cliff were dynamited by the Taliban in March 2001 WAKIL KOHSAR AFP / Archives

Since the fall of the first Taliban regime in 2001, inventory work has been undertaken, specifies Ernesto Ottone, but "it is a very long process".

At this stage, only a third of the thousands of art objects in the National Museum in Kabul have been listed.

On the ground, a sign of the fear still provoked by the Taliban, Afghans working in the field of heritage prefer not to speak out for fear of reprisals.

Some have left the country when others live in hiding at home.

On August 20, the director of the national museum - which had been looted and deliberately ransacked during the civil war (1992-1996) and under the Taliban regime (1996-2001), told the New York Times that he had received the promise of the new regime that it would protect the establishment.

“But we are still very concerned about the safety of our team and the collection,” added Mohammad Fahim Rahimi.

- 'Reduced to pieces' -

Now a refugee in Germany with his family, Mustafa, a former Unesco employee in Bamiyan, has no illusions about the intentions of the country's new masters.

"The Taliban do not believe in international conventions (on heritage), especially because they were signed by the previous government," he notes.

And "as they are illiterate and extremists, they are proud to destroy non-Muslim monuments."

Terré in the capital after being interrogated twice by the Taliban, Abdul, provincial employee of Bamiyan, recounts for his part the “broken musical instruments” and the “art objects stolen or reduced to pieces” at the beginning of August.

On March 9, 2021, people witness the 3D projection of one of the two giant Buddhas carved into a cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, twenty years after their destruction by the Taliban WAKIL KOHSAR AFP / Archives

“I was sad but I couldn't protest,” he says.

"I had no guarantee that they weren't going to accuse me (...) of idolatry and turn their guns on me and kill me."

Weakened by this brain drain, the Afghan heritage sector must also deal with a major unknown, that of the date of resumption of international aid, for the time being largely suspended.

"We are holding our breath", summarizes Philippe Marquis.

"But I hope that soon we will be able to breathe a little lighter".

© 2021 AFP