Restoration work under way on Afghanistan's most famous minaret is the latest indication that the country's Taliban rulers are taking a calculated approach to cultural heritage, in contrast to their statue-smashing predecessors of the 1990s, experts say.
Images of work to safeguard the UNESCO-listed Minaret of Jam emerged in mid September when a Taliban official visited the 12th-century monument, located in an isolated valley of Afghanistan’s Ghor Province, to check on rehabilitation efforts that reportedly began in July.
A spokesperson linked to the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which is working on the landmark in cooperation with several other organizations, told RFE/RL that the project includes “emergency intervention to consolidate a critical section of the inner masonry column at the base of the minaret.” The isolated brick structure was repeatedly damaged by flooding and had long been in danger of collapse.
Jolyon Leslie is a British conservation architect who has lived in Afghanistan since the early 1990s and dealt with the first Taliban that ruled over Afghanistan from 1996-2001.
Leslie told RFE/RL that the country's current rulers appear to be “more worldly about cultural issues, and conscious of their image in being seen to protect their heritage” when compared to the previous Taliban rulers.
The heritage protection expert with the Afghan Cultural Heritage Consulting Organization added that in his organization's experience "since 2021 [the Taliban authorities have] been largely supportive of conservation work and have not interfered in our work, which has included Buddhist and Jewish heritage.”
In February 2001, Afghanistan's first Taliban leaders ordered the destruction of statues and non-Islamic shrines in the country. The edict was followed most infamously by the destruction of the Bamiyan buddhas, and the smashing of thousands of ancient statues in Kabul's National Museum of Afghanistan, months before the Taliban were ousted from power.
Soon after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, Leslie was the only Westerner in attendance at a meeting in the Kabul museum, during which he later recalled a Taliban official hinted at regret over the 2001 destruction, due to the global outrage it caused.
Gil Stein, a professor of archaeology at the University of Chicago who led efforts to restore the smashed museum statues, notes that the current Taliban’s approach to cultural heritage stands in marked contrast to other facets of the hardline group’s rule.
“Like everything about Afghanistan, the situation is complex and contradictory. The most basic principle is that we cannot consider the Taliban government as unitary and monolithic,” Stein told RFE/RL. “That’s a big part of why there are major differences between Taliban policies on women (which are draconian) versus their policies on cultural heritage (which are more nuanced and differing by region and by distance from Kabul).”
The Taliban has severely restricted rights for women and girls, including limiting their ability to work and study, and mandating they be covered from head to toe in public.
The change in rhetoric over cultural heritage preceded the current Taliban's return to power. In February 2021, months before their capture of Kabul, the resurgent militant group issued an edict calling for “all mujahedeen” to “preserve all historic sites like old fortresses, minarets, towers and other similar sites to safeguard them from damage, destruction and decay.”
Many viewed the edict with suspicion and, as the Taliban advanced toward Kabul in 2021, some museum curators urgently relocated cultural treasures to secret storage locations.
But soon after the fall of Kabul in 2021 the National Museum was reopened -- under armed Taliban guard -- and multiple restoration projects have since been greenlit, including a synagogue in Herat Province in western Afghanistan.
"Overall, it looks to me that the Taliban's overall ideology has not changed, but they have become more pragmatic and careful in how they implement their cultural heritage policies in the places where it is most visible to foreigners," Stein said, in answer to questions about the restoration of the Minaret of Jam.
According to the Aga Khan Development Network, research on the minaret is being carried out in partnership with Afghanistan’s Taliban-run Culture Ministry and the ALIPH Foundation, a Geneva-based cultural heritage organization. The research is due to conclude in 2027 and “will result in recommendations to the Afghan authorities on further scientific measures required to secure the site.”
