Most Afghans have good reason to be celebrating the Taliban's departure from Kabul and Jalalabad last week. Chief among them, of course, are Afghanistan's brutally subjugated women, but there are others, too -- not least those who cherish the country's cultural treasures and have mourned their destruction and dispersal during two decades of war, economic privation and, most recently, Taliban-led vandalism.
Yet for art scholars and preservationists, as for the still-veiled women of Afghanistan, celebration is tempered with anxiety. Understandably, they see this time of crisis as a pivotal moment in the country's modern cultural history. Things can hardly get worse than they were under the Taliban, experts say, but if the right steps are not taken, they might not get better either. Much has been irrecoverably lost; now is the time to coordinate international efforts to recover and preserve what is left, preferably in Kabul, rather than letting it continue to disappear into the black hole of the global art market.
It may seem crass to be worrying about the fate of old statues and bowls and trinkets when war-torn, famine-stricken Afghanistan has so much more to worry about: what to do with its toxic guest, Osama bin Laden; how to feed its starving people through the winter; what kind of government can be cobbled together to fill the sudden vacuum in Kabul; whether the Taliban have really gone or are just licking their wounds in the southern mountains, waiting for a chance to strike back.