Posted: 05/20/2015 Brent E.
Huffman Brent
E. Huffman is the director, producer, cinematographer and editor of
Saving Mes Aynak Huff Post
25 miles southeast of Kabul, Afghanistan near the
border with modern-day Pakistan rests an ancient Buddhist city.
This ancient city named Mes Aynak, or little copper well in Dari,
was once at the heart of the bustling Silk Road, the revolutionary
trade route that tied together China, India, the Middle East and
the Mediterranean. Buddhists from all over Asia made pilgrimages to
worship at Mes Aynak, and for thousands of years, it flourished as
one of the most important cities in the region. As its importance
waned through the centuries, it was slowly abandoned and
eventually, this once mighty city was forgotten, its history lost
to the sands of time.
After being re-discovered in the 1960's, it took
decades for archeologists to make their way to the site, and
sporadic rescue excavation of the ancient city did not begin until
2009. Since then, what they've unearthed is truly astounding:
dozens of unique and never-before-seen stupas and temples, enormous
monastic complexes, vivid murals, thousands of precious artifacts,
and around 600 large Buddha statues -- similar in style to those
destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 at Bamiyan. Archaeologists have
also begun to find written material -- bitch bark manuscripts
representing some of the oldests Buddhist writing ever
discovered.
Archaeologists have also found evidence of an older
Bronze age site beneath the Buddhist city, meaning there is at
least 5,000 years of civilization at Mes Aynak. Although only 10
percent of the site has been excavated, what they are finding is
already rewriting the history of Buddhism, Afghanistan and the
world.
Tragically, this ancient civilization is in dire
peril. Mes Aynak sits on the second largest copper deposit in the
world, and in 2007 it was sold by the Afghan government to a
Chinese State-owned mining company, who plan to harvest that
estimated $100 billion dollars worth of copper. MCC, or China
Metallurgical Group Corporation, plans to open-pit mine at Mes
Aynak. What does that mean? It means blowing up Mes Aynak and
reducing it - and an entire mountain range -- to rubble. It means
the forced evacuation and relocation of countless native Afghans
from the area, who will never be able to return to their villages
due to permanent toxicity from the mining. It means leaving a giant
crater where there once was a sprawling 500,000 sq meter city. It
means erasing from the face of the Earth all of the culture and
history that Mes Aynak contains.
I first read about Mes Aynak in
the New York
Times in 2010. The story focused on
the potential economic development in the war-torn region -- the
Chinese project represents the largest private investment in
Afghanistan's history setting up in volatile Logar province --
Taliban country. The Buddhist archaeological site was barely a
footnote in this story.
I later learned that the archaeological ruins were
massive, comparable in size to sites like Pompeii and Machu Picchu.
At any moment the entire ancient city would be completely
destroyed. I needed to see Mes Aynak for myself before this
demolition. I first traveled to Mes Aynak in 2011, and over the
next four years I have been documenting the archaeological effort,
the race against time by specialists to save small movable
artifacts before the bulldozers come in.
It seemed that the Afghan government and MCC thought
no one would mind if some old dusty statues and buildings vanished
overnight. Maybe they felt no one would ever know? As lone witness
to this impending international tragedy, I felt it was my duty to
expose this story to the international community. To me this was a
story of corporate greed and corruption versus the most significant
archaeological discovery of our time.
Every day that I rode to Mes Aynak from Kabul, the
threat of death by roadside IED or landmine was always on my mind.
The archeologists at the site worked under a continuous death
threats from the Taliban. Death loomed large, but it was a risk we
were all willing to take.
My first impulse was to document all the incredible
discoveries at Mes Aynak so that after the site was destroyed there
would at least be some visual record of its existence. But the more
time I spent at Mes Aynak and saw its epic beauty and importance,
the more I realized that I couldn't just film the site; I had to do
something to permanently stop its destruction. The desire to save
Mes Aynak wasn't shared by me and the archeologists alone, however.
In 2012, in response to the media coverage of China's proposed
actions at Mes Aynak, there was an outcry from Buddhist communities
around the world. In Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Budapest, India,
China, Malaysia, and even China, the reaction was strong. In
Thailand, the Dhammaykaya Temple's Dhamma Media Channel spread the
word about Mes Aynak's impending destruction. The Temple's monks
distributed two official petitions in schools and universities
throughout the country, one appealing to Afghan president Harmid
Karzai (see References below) and the other to UNESCO. Both
petitions gathered over 60,000 signatures each.
During this time, I took to social media to spread
the word about Mes Aynak, and decided to turn my footage into a
documentary first called The Buddhas of Mes Aynak, then ultimately
Saving Mes Aynak. Awareness on Facebook and Twitter grew by the
thousands... and then the tens of thousands. Due to public outcry
and the attention my film received, MCC and the Afghan government
delayed the destruction until the end of 2013. When that deadline
approached, I took to social media to raise even more awareness,
and again due to mounting pressure, MCC delayed the destruction.
But time is quickly running out. Despite the delays, the Chinese
State-owned mining company still has immediate plans to demolish
Mes Aynak at any moment.
Afghanistan is trading its history (also
humankind's) for a quick buck, one that will fail to benefit its
citizens economically, since China's proposed three billion-dollar
payment will most certainly be lost to corruption within the Afghan
government. The destruction of Mes Aynak will only benefit China
and temporarily at that. It will permanently erase this important
piece of Afghanistan's history and leave enormous toxic craters in
its stead.
We as a global society must do something about it.
The only way that Mes Aynak can be saved is if the Afghan
government intervenes to stop demolition, and petitions UNESCO to
make Mes Aynak a World Heritage Site. Only the Afghan government
can petition UNESCO. My film Saving Mes Aynak is ready to screen
worldwide, and I am mounting a global campaign through the film to
raise awareness about the impending demolition, thus creating an
international movement to put pressure on the mining company, the
Afghanistan government, and UNESCO to make Mes Aynak a World
Heritage Site. This is how we ensure that this irreplaceable
ancient Buddhist city can be fully excavated by professional staff,
and preserved for future generations.
We need help, however. As a filmmaker, I believe in
the power of documentary to provoke empathy and move people to
action. So I've recently launched a campaign for #SaveMesAynak Day
on July 1st, a global event where supporters everywhere will stand
in unity together to save this precious history. The more people
who see and talk about our film and know the beauty and importance
of Mes Aynak, the greater the chance of Mes Aynak being saved. All
our funding and efforts are aimed towards this mission. Through
social media, we plan to use this #SaveMesAynak day to spark
worldwide protest, conversation, and action. I also aim to return
to Afghanistan for the local premiere and present the Afghanistan
President Ghani with a copy of a petition with 100,000 names on it.
We currently have 76,000! We hope that united, our voices of
protest will be too loud to ignore... and not even he can ignore
100,000 (or more) synchronous voices.
The idea that corporate profit can erase 2,000 years
of Buddhist history and 5,000 of human history is unfathomable, yet
it could happen. And we cannot let this senseless act occur. I
believe that my film and subsequent awareness campaign give us the
best chance at saving this beautiful, historic and important
cultural heritage.
We need your help, so I please ask you to join the
global movement to #SaveMesAynak. Together we can make history by
saving history.
Campaign:
igg.me/at/SaveMesAynak
Website: www.savingmesaynak.com
Facebook: Facebook.com/SavingMesAynak
Twitter: Twitter.com/SavingMesAynak
Follow Brent E. Huffman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Brent_Huffman