Vishakha Desai, Senior Vice President of the Asia Society and Director of the Museum and Cultural Programs, while introducing the program, said that the destruction of the Buddhas in Afghanistan had raised interesting questions about state sovereignty and the conditions under which the international community should be allowed to intervene in a domestic conflict.

The fact that the international community was completely helpless in the face of the Bamiyan destruction, that they could do nothing at all to prevent it from happening, also shows that the present conventions regarding cultural preservation are insufficient, she said.

Barbara Crossette, former UN correspondent and presently a reporter for the New York Times, moderated the discussion. She began her comments by asking whether it is more difficult to save cultural heritage in a country that has been isolated from the international community, as Afghanistan had been.

She said that moving artifacts outside particular countries is always made more complicated by the colonial history of these countries and concluded by raising the possibility of trying to involve local people in preservation efforts.

Paul Bucherer, Director of the Afghanistan Institute and Museum (Bibliotheca Afghanica) in Switzerland, gave a slide presentation of the Bamiyan Buddhas prior to and following their destruction.

He started his presentation by arguing that Al-Qaeda, and not the Taliban, were responsible for the destruction of the Buddhas, since the destruction was done extremely skillfully and was nothing like what the Taliban had done in 1998 when they had struck the head of the smaller of the two statues. There were no remains at all of the statues, he said, and this showed clearly that the people who destroyed them were professionals.

Read an interview with Paul Bucherer
Bamiyan and Beyond: Paul Bucherer on Afghanistan.

Derek Gillman, President of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, started by saying that an article written by John Merriman in 1986 called, "Two Ways of Thinking about Cultural Property" had made a major contribution to an emerging area of legal discourse regarding cultural preservation issues. Merriman in this article discusses the difference between approaching culture as a national resource (the particular) and approaching it as a cosmopolitan, international one (the universal). Merriman had argued that two international conventions captured these broadly different approaches: the 1954 Hague Convention (for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict), called by UNESCO, and the other the 1970 UNESCO Convention (on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property).

Professor Gillman then discussed the theoretical and legal implications of these different documents (and the perspectives on the ownership of cultural property that they represent) in the present dispensation.

Read Derek Gillman's paper: Heritage and Legal Conventions.

Mounir Bouchenaki, Assistant Director General for Culture at UNESCO, said that the concept of a common heritage (i.e., the idea that the pyramids in Egypt belong not to the nation alone, but to all of humanity) emerged around the 1960s, as a result of a number of events around the world at the time (for instance, the floods in Venice and Florence in 1964). Nevertheless, he said, recognizing that the world has a certain claim on cultural property does not make it easier for the international community to intervene when this property is threatened.

Mr Bouchenaki described the conditions under which the Buddhas in Bamiyan were destroyed and the various UNESCO attempts to salvage them. He said that UNESCO was trying to find a way of establishing this as a crime against cultural heritage and prosecuting it on this basis. Mr Bouchenaki pointed out that Afghanistan had ratified the World Heritage Convention in 1979, and that even if Bamiyan had been inscribed on the World Heritage list, UNESCO would not have been able to do any more than it did to try to save the statues.

James Cuno, Director of the Harvard University Art Museums, talked about the destruction in the Kabul Museum that followed a month after the Bamiyan episode. He discussed the role of the museum as an internationalist, preservationist institution in an age of resurgent nationalism, arguing that museums were meant to collect, preserve, exhibit, and research the world's greatest artifacts forever and for all of humanity.

He warned however that a number of problems arise when the concepts of "archaeological artifacts" and "cultural property" are manipulated for nationalistic purposes. The current political debate about museums collecting antiquities is problematic, he said, because it appears as though museums are intended instead to preserve the integrity of one nation's cultural property over the world's interest in international exchange.

He said that archaeologists should work with museums to change international policy to allow the sharing of excavation finds and the preservation and publication of all ancient objects otherwise acquired. He added that the lesson we learn from the experience at the Kabul Museum is that nationalist cultural policy is a failure: it either exposes the world's treasures to undue risk or it creates an illicit market for antiquities. In Afghanistan, it did both, he concluded.

Satoshi Yamato of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs said that initial attempts at the conservation of cultural property in Japan coincided with various political and social reforms.

The Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, passed in May 1950, defines five categories of cultural properties, he said. The first one is tangible cultural properties, such as individual buildings or individual fine or applied art such as paintings. The second one is intangible cultural property such as artistry and skills employed in drama, or music and so on. The third is folk cultural property, for instance clothing, and implements used in people's daily lives. This also includes certain intangible properties such as manners, customs, and so on. The fourth is archaeological sites or places of scenic beauty. The last is a group of historic buildings.

The most important point about this law is that it recognizes intangible assets, which are closely related to natural heritage and also constitute cultural property.

He said however that Japan only ratified the World Heritage Convention in 1992, making it the the last developed country to do so. Signing the agreement had however provided significant opportunities to step up policy reform and to increase public awareness on the issues of cultural heritage preservation.

Philippe de Montebello, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, started by pointing out that the Metropolitan Museum had never offered to save the Bamiyan Buddhas, nor to purchase them or to bring them to New York.

He clarified that what the Metropolitan Museum had done was work very closely with the Secretary General of the United Nations and then also with UNESCO, and had offered through their offices, to save as many deportable pieces from Afghanistan as possible.

He stressed that the international community needs a truly legal and ethical environment to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again. He also said that we need to make distinctions between different kinds of cultural property and under what conditions some property can be removed from the territory to which it belongs.

Bonnie Burnham, President of the World Monuments Fund, discussed the various suggestions that emerged from meetings having to do with how tragedies like the destruction at Bamiyan can be prevented in the future.

The first was using sanctions as a form of deterrent in the future. The second is having some organization work in the area and engage the community actively in preservation efforts there; this would also serve as a form of protection. Third is the idea of a safe haven, like the one Dr Bucherer offered to provide in his museum in Switzerland.

Ms Burnham then spoke about the Hague Convention and how the United States never ratified it but really ought to. Despite the fact that the Convention may constantly be under revision, and is trying to make itself a more flexible and useful instrument, the value it has, she concluded, is the message that it sends: that culture is as important as anything.