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The Knightsbridge team now reaches Bamiyan, where the ancient statues of Buddha were demolished by the Taliban in the spring of 2001. They find a painful empty hole in the mountain, and in the lives of the people of the area as they struggle to survive and rebuild.
Click here for more details of the Bamiyan Buddhas, including images of the original statues, their destruction, 3D animations of the works, and international efforts at reconstruction.
From: TRCWalt@aol.com July 25, 2002 Kabul, Afghanistan We left our Kabul camp at 5:00 this morning for the trip to Bamiyan. Except for the first hour, we are on windy dirt roads all the way.  When we arrived in Bamiyan proper, we first saw the hillside where the Buddha statues were destroyed not long ago by the Taliban. It remains a hugely impressive site even without the actual statues. We located our host in Bamiyan and were directed to the guest house where we would camp out. It only has electricity for a few hours in the evening, so we immediately set up our solar gear and satellite communication system on the roof, wired down into the room where we are staying. After a co-ordination meeting, we were shown where our supplies were stored earlier this morning. All 870 or so boxes are in a dry store room, well secured. We showed the leaders here samples of what is in the boxes.  They led us up to the top of a hill where there is small refugee camp of 75 families. These are a combination of refugees from nearby areas, as well as families from Bamiyan who had their homes destroyed by the Taliban recently. All of the homes and commercial buildings in the area of what were the Buddha statues, are completely destroyed now. Ed remembers the people that lived in these homes when he and Stephen Huang were here last. We will distribute clothing and blankets to these 75 families tomorrow and will then survey other more remote refugee camps in the area to make a determination as to how these might be addressed. A key participant in this project was the Tzu Chi Foundation, a five-million member Buddhist organization from Taiwan, with offices in the United States and 39 other countries. See www.tzuchi.org
From: TRCWalt@aol.com July 26, 2002 Greetings again: We spent the day here in Bamiyan City, near the famous Buddhist Statue Locations. 
We were shown a group of 75 refugees living on a hillside within a mile of the statues. They have been overlooked by the normal aid agencies. This morning, we went the camp to hand out our cards: This is our method of identifying the recipients of the aid. In this camp, we gave the same package of aid to every family living there, but the cards are still needed to make sure we have covered every family, and have included one member from each "household." After handing out the cards, we knew the quantity of families, and loaded the truck with the appropriate clothing.  For each family, we loaded a large blanket, 1 adult coat, 1 child's coat, 1 adult pair of shoes, 1 child's pair of shoes, 1 T-Shirt, and 1-Sweatshirt. Then we returned to the camp, split into two areas, and set out the family unit piles of clothing. After calling the people with cards to come to the area (all within about 100 yards), we distributed the supplies. We were told that the next camp to distribute to had about 100 people and was about 40 km away. So we thought we would go there, distribute cards, get a census, return to camp, load the truck, and make it back to distribute the clothes.  We got all but the last part done. The sun was setting on us as we were finishing loading the truck. We found out that the ride to the camp was via a long and winding switchbacked road up to about a 10,000 foot elevation, and it was very slow going. When we got there, we learned that this camp was different. The people from this camp had fled here to escape the Taliban. This camp is actually a village under reconstruction. It had been destroyed by the Taliban, and these folks have all recently returned to their village. There are 350 families, with 100 of them too poor to buy food, or supplies to rebuild their homes.  They told us of stories of their neighboring village -- one that did not see a need to flee -- thinking that the Taliban might not be so bad. Our villagers found mass graves of over 1000 adults, in 3 graves. The children had been wrapped in rugs and blankets and stabbed to death with bayonets. We identified the poorest 100 families (the village leaders did most of this) and we headed back to camp to load the truck. We discussed the plight of these villagers and decided to take the bulk of the remainder of the clothes to these folks, who are already not sure if they can get adequately prepared for winter. This area, at its elevation, gets very cold and a lot of snow.   It took the rest of the evening to sort and load the truck to be ready to leave as soon as there is light tomorrow. We expect this village to take the bulk of the day tomorrow. This village is another that fits the mold of a Knightsbridge project. It is very difficult to get to. They are not huge, so are not receiving a lot of attention from other NGO's, and it is within our capacity to help them in a big way. 
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