Silverback Gorillas

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00:00
George Gavrilis
This episode was recorded some weeks before the Taliban entered Kabul.

00:09
Laura Tedesco
In the scale of what's happening in terms of these daily skirmishes and districts falling to the Taliban, and then the Afghan government retaking these districts, this little three-car garage of a site is so seemingly insignificant in the larger calculus of the political decay of Afghanistan.

00:33
Laura Tedesco
But from a standpoint of what will be remembered 50 years from now, 100 years from now, the destruction of this site will be a lasting legacy of these daily military and political machinations that are happening right now. And that is an aspect of heritage preservation that is often lost to most people. And I don't say that as a criticism. The significance isn't felt until it's too late.

01:05
George Gavrilis
This is Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. Today we are continuing on Laura's journey into Afghanistan. If you are new to this podcast, we recommend going back to start with Episode 1. For everyone else, welcome back. Let's jump in.

01:23
George Gavrilis
When you told me that there is so much Bronze Age stuff lying underground in the north, I was just blown away by that, particularly because they were discovered at some point, as you were saying, and then they were kind of quietly forgotten about. Pretty miraculous that a lot of those are still around and have survived.

01:41
Laura Tedesco
Long before even Alexander, this kind of crossroads of nomads moving across Central Asia— and they're bringing ideas and influences and technologies and great displays of wealth.

01:55
Laura Tedesco
There was a very well-known, in the realm of celebrity archaeologists in the 1970s, very exclusive club, George. And there was this Russian archaeologist named Viktor Sarianidi, who was internationally known. He had this shock of white hair and a barrel chest and he seemed so dynamic. My nickname for men archaeologists like this is Silverbacks, like big silverback gorillas. So Sarianidi was definitely a silverback gorilla. He has a Greek name, but he was trained and brought up in Russia.

02:30
Laura Tedesco
In 1978, he started excavating adjacent to Balkh, where Noh Gumbad is. He discovered tumuli, which are underground tombs. And in them, he found the most amazing— I'm talking about individuals decked out head to toe in gold, with gem-encrusted jewelry, and swords and belts and— I mean, this was the mother lode.

03:02
George Gavrilis
How old was that stuff?

03:04
Laura Tedesco
Late first millennium BC.

03:07
George Gavrilis
Wow. Okay.

03:09
Laura Tedesco
In his excavation season in 1978— I mention the year because that's significant. When was it that the Russians invaded Afghanistan, George? Do you know the month, by chance, off the top of your head?

03:20
George Gavrilis
It was 1979, right?

03:23
Laura Tedesco
I think it was.

03:24
George Gavrilis
Right. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan December 1979.

03:28
Laura Tedesco
December 1979?

03:29
George Gavrilis
And Victor would have been digging this shit up the year before.

03:33
Laura Tedesco
Yeah. Those remaining tombs— he never had a chance to go back. They've long been looted. Whatever was yanked from those tombs has been lost to the international art market. We'll probably never see it again.

03:47
Laura Tedesco
So, what Sarianidi and his team found is now what is known as the Bactrian Treasure. And the story is actually fascinating. So it's worth recounting.

04:01
Laura Tedesco
These artifacts— they went to Kabul, where it stayed in the National Museum. And then sometime in the 1990s, as the Afghan Civil War was really terrible, and the National Museum was being looted, the Bactrian Treasure was very carefully packed up and stealthily hidden in Kabul. And only three people knew where it was and what had happened to it.

04:27
Laura Tedesco
And then intervening years of chaos and total social breakdown. After the Taliban were ousted and the U.S. had already invaded and the NATO was all present— And as the dust started to settle, people started to make inquiries.

04:41
Laura Tedesco
Where's the Bactrian treasure? And there were accusations, oh, it was stolen, it was melted, it was sold, or it's in Pakistan, or— Take your pick for conspiracy theory of the day in Afghanistan at that time.

04:55
Laura Tedesco
Quietly, the three individuals who knew where it was, they spoke up. It had been stored in a bank vault in central Kabul. There was a day selected, an appointed day where that bank vault would be opened, and present for the opening were some very key Afghans working in the culture sector, and Viktor Sarianidi, the original archaeologist. They opened that bank vault, and he went through with his excavation inventory. Not one object was missing.

05:32
George Gavrilis
Wow.

05:33
Laura Tedesco
Not one little bauble, or button, or gem-encrusted belt buckle was missing.

05:40
George Gavrilis
Why? How?

05:41
Laura Tedesco
Because of the care and attention of those individuals who worked at the National Museum and knew the value of those objects. I don't mean the bank value or the market value, I mean, the historic cultural value. And one of those individuals was Omara Khan Massoudi, who remains a very dear and historic Afghan who's still alive, but he will remain historic. One of my goals is to write a memoir for him or record his oral history— George, that's a job for you, Mr. Oral Historian—

06:17
George Gavrilis
Get it done.

06:18
Laura Tedesco
Yeah, let's get that done.

06:19
Laura Tedesco
Anyway. So, that Bactrian treasure is an example of how the north of Afghanistan is this fascinating and wildly important archaeologically rich area, not just for the region— for the world. And you know who's in control for the most part right now?

06:41
George Gavrilis
Sure, it's Taliban and warlord militias—

06:44
Laura Tedesco
Yeah.

06:45
George Gavrilis
—kids with machine guns, young adults with machine guns.

06:48
Laura Tedesco
Young adults with plastic sandals and rocket launchers.

06:55
Laura Tedesco
Yesterday morning, I had an early morning phone call with the organization who has been working at Noh Gumbad since 2009. We had to discuss, okay, shit—what do we do now that the Taliban have control, not just of this area, but of the site Noh Gumbad. They're deeply insightful, this organization and these individuals who I'm not going to name because that's not the purpose of our conversation, but they are the experts— the world experts.

07:24
George Gavrilis
You're not going to name them mostly for security reasons?

07:27
Laura Tedesco
Yeah, I didn't ask their permission to talk to you about this.

07:30
George Gavrilis
Okay.

07:31
Laura Tedesco
But I'm going to talk about it in general terms.

07:33
George Gavrilis
Right.

07:34
Laura Tedesco
And I want to respect their privacy.

07:36
George Gavrilis
Yeah.

07:36
Laura Tedesco
If someone was really deeply interested, they could Google and find out themselves, or go to the library. Here is what the discussion was: What do we do now? The U.S. still has about a million dollars on the table for work yet to be done, give or take. How do we plan for that? So we're running through sort of scenarios and unknowns and contingency plans.

07:57
Laura Tedesco
And then the question of these experts was raised: if the site is still occupied by the Taliban, say, in three to five months, will they be allowed to negotiate directly with the Taliban for access to the site?

08:13
Laura Tedesco
That's a new ethical question. The United States is funding to restore this early Islamic site in Afghanistan. We've done that in partnership with the democratically elected Afghan government, who's cracking at the seams. And we're having to game out scenarios of, well, do we then switch this to be a partnership with the Taliban and the organization that's carrying out the work?

08:42
Laura Tedesco
We don't have an answer yet, because this is a new question on the table. I very glibly said to my colleagues in the State Department: So, the United States government has been negotiating with the Taliban in Doha for a couple of years. And we're going to tell our implementing partner they're not allowed to negotiate with the Taliban to do their work?

09:04
Laura Tedesco
I take a sort of a different approach: let's do everything we can to keep the heritage work going. Even if it means you've got to bring the forces of darkness to the table to make sure it can keep going.

09:17
George Gavrilis
Well, but I'm sorry, how do people think that cell phone towers wound up in every square kilometer of Afghanistan, including areas controlled or taken over by the Taliban? Who do they think had to be paid off to let those cell phone towers be built so that, you know, people can have cell phone reception all over the place?

09:35
Laura Tedesco
George, who paid for the cell phone towers to be built in the first place?

09:38
George Gavrilis
We paid, and the international community paid. And that's what makes this whole thing ridiculous that they're having this conversation about a million dollars when billions went out the door and a lot of it ultimately did wind up in the pockets of insurgents.

09:50
Laura Tedesco
Of course it did, and it will continue to do so.

09:53
George Gavrilis
It will and it always has. But, you let some of it trickle down into the hands of anti-government groups because most of it doesn't. And you tell yourself that you're doing a good job and that vast majority of money will be put to good use.

10:06
Laura Tedesco
Right. It's that the ends justify the means. That's sort of the overarching—

10:10
George Gavrilis
Yeah.

10:10
Laura Tedesco
—philosophy. I don't know of instances where the Taliban were directly involved in heritage preservation projects. I do know of instances of projects that I've been affiliated with, where there's a kind of mutual unspoken understanding between me and the organization, who we're supporting to do work, that they have to pay the Taliban a certain tax or fee to remain unbothered.

10:39
Laura Tedesco
I don't know details, but I know that kind of transaction takes place. It's the cost of doing business. And it has been for a very long time. Now, it's just on the front page of The New York Times.

10:54
George Gavrilis
What's the city where all the Aga Khan stuff happened? They restored a park and you know—

10:59
Laura Tedesco
Oh, yeah, that's historic Balkh city, the mother of all cities.

11:03
George Gavrilis
Historic Balkh City. Sorry. Yes.

11:05
Laura Tedesco
Okay. The United States' interest to support heritage preservation in the north— people had been supporting and active and busy and aware of the heritage richness of the north of Afghanistan, long before I landed in a two-propeller plane to look around.

11:24
George Gavrilis
Right. The Russians, especially the French, the Aga Khan Foundation.

11:28
Laura Tedesco
Yes, exactly, exactly. I was able to see a lot of work underway— well-done archaeological work and restoration of old buildings and park enhancements to improve the quality of life in general in that part of Afghanistan.

11:46
Laura Tedesco
In that first visit that I made, and the— you know, blistering hot weather, was just to kind of review the state of things on the ground at that time. And then to identify where could the United States help direct some support— where could we get in the game in heritage preservation.

12:04
Laura Tedesco
And it was to have a diplomatic toehold. That's what it was all about— stretch the arm from a heritage preservation standpoint into the north of Afghanistan. Because then when you've got a United States-supported heritage preservation project, you create a reason for, say, an ambassador to go visit and to see the work underway. And then when an ambassador goes to visit for something like that, it creates an opportunity for him to meet with other people—oh, he's in the region already.

12:33
Laura Tedesco
While he's here, maybe he'll meet with these other power brokers. That's not to say that an ambassador needs a reason to go somewhere. But it creates a softening. At least the heritage preservation that I was involved in was very political in nature. And I was so naive at the time to that reality. I didn't understand that part of my job.

13:01
Laura Tedesco
I had this exuberance as a specialist of heritage where I was almost levitating as I'm walking around Noh Gumbad and seeing it for the first time, and didn't understand that I was party to a much bigger kind of Rubik's Cube that's only come into sharper focus to me over the years.

13:22
Laura Tedesco
And I'm glad that at the time, I had a naive sense about things, because I may not have been able to do my job with cynicism. I wasn't cynical. And I think some of the sadness you hear in my voice, it's layered with a cynicism. And I don't ever want to be a cynic, George.

13:44
George Gavrilis
I know. But your work fosters that feeling. It's tough to be in it and to not feel that. But when did the cynicism start to really creep in?

13:54
Laura Tedesco
I think after I had been doing my job for a few years. And I was maybe slow to see the behind-the-scenes motivations of people I was working with, not just Americans, but internationals in the heritage sector. I was slow to understand both the power of the United States' presence, the power of the money it brought to its presence, and the general unspoken disdain for the United States' involvement, not just by Afghans, but by other internationals that I encountered.

14:30
George Gavrilis
Right, because we were vastly outspending everybody.

14:33
Laura Tedesco
Not just that, but outspending with a kind of arrogance and urgency. And very little sense of a timeline that went beyond a one-year window.

14:45
George Gavrilis
Kind of the same way we're leaving, with an urgency.

14:49
Laura Tedesco
Kind of the same way.

14:58
Laura Tedesco
I noticed early on in Afghanistan when I would have the opportunity to talk with Afghans, particularly old men in white beards, because I almost never got access to women or young people, and it would always be through an interpreter as I was able to travel around Afghanistan to try to get a sense of how did Afghans regard their heritage, and in what ways did they frame it in their identity, their worldview—

15:24
Laura Tedesco
And it was so interesting. There was this consistent trend I noticed, this reflection to the past— a reflection that was oriented to the past and no reflection oriented towards the future. And it was so opposing.

15:44
George Gavrilis
For example?

15:44
Laura Tedesco
Okay, I'm trying to think off the top of my head because there are many examples. I was in Panjshir Province looking at historic sites and trying to get a sense of— the agenda was, could Panjshir Province be a destination for international tourists in two to three years' time? That was in 2011, and we were evaluating Panjshir to develop a tourism industry. The heritage and the natural beauty of Panjshir— if you've ever been to Panjshir— it's stunning.

16:14
George Gavrilis
Panjshir is, yeah, it's stunning. It's also the gateway to the north. It's a really important province on a very strategic route.

16:20
Laura Tedesco
Yes, and very insular. It became evident after about three hours, that flocks of tourists wasn't going to go well in Panjshir.

16:31
Laura Tedesco
Nevertheless, it was an opportunity to learn some things and I remember speaking with several village elders or village representatives. One in particular had shown me a mound that he said was an archaeological site on his family's property. He opened up his hand to show me some small artifacts that he had found. And wanted to know if I wanted to buy them. And was certain that they were the remnants of Alexander the Great.

17:00
Laura Tedesco
I'm not an expert on Alexander the Great and his military campaigns and where his generals were moving and occupying. I would need to do a deep read on this, but I don't think Alexander the Great settled in Panjshir. But it's beside the point.

17:17
Laura Tedesco
This particular elder was offering to sell me some bronze bracelets that he found in his farm, and also very clearly saying, we don't want you here unless you want to buy this stuff. And at the same time reflecting on the kind of historical significance that he was attributing to his particular mound in his farm, he felt it was enormously important. Whether it was Alexander's or not, is beside the point.

17:50
Laura Tedesco
It took me a while to identify the trend. And that was true anywhere I went. And those snippets of conversations that I was able to have with an interpreter, and they might have lasted three or seven minutes. But I was hungry to listen closely, because the objective that I had was: what's important for Afghans? I was thinking that first and then I had to marry that with: how do I blend that with U.S. foreign policy that I had to follow, and align with, in my very novice way.

18:23
Laura Tedesco
I'm glad I was naive. Maybe I still am, in many ways, but that I was blind to how naive I was in that first visit to Balkh where I was exuberantly visiting the mosque, the very famous shrine in Mazar-i-Sharif and thinking, how amazing is that? Or these— Noh Gumbad, or the Balkh city walls, the foundations of which Alexander really had built.

18:52
George Gavrilis
Are you saying that the years you've spent and the work you've done wasn't worth it, that it was in vain?

18:57
Laura Tedesco
I don't think I'm saying that.

19:00
George Gavrilis
Yeah. Where are you?

19:02
Laura Tedesco
I don't know exactly where I am. We'll have to check back in a year and then five years and 10 years and see whether it was in vain or not. I hope it wasn't. I don't think that the Afghans and the other people that I worked closely with think that their work is in vain. So I don't want to diminish their work by saying mine was in vain. I was doing it with a genuine attention. Devotion is too strong of a word, but a genuine attention. These could be legacy projects that would far outlive me and you.

19:40
George Gavrilis
When we talk about Afghanistan, we act as if it's some bizarre outlier, some exotic, violent place. In reality, Afghanistan represents what much of human history is about and certainly human political history, which is that land changes hands, often violently, populations move, loyalties change, empires crumble, Buddhist sites become mosques. The very nature of modern-day archaeology is to preserve something for posterity, so that it never changes again.

20:14
Laura Tedesco
Hmm.

20:15
George Gavrilis
And there's something ironic in that because like you were saying about Mes Aynak, if you keep digging far enough, you're going to go beyond the Buddhist city strata, and start to discover Iron Age material, right?

20:29
Laura Tedesco
Yeah. You're making a really great point, George. And there's something very present-day that this touches on.

20:36
George Gavrilis
So, meaning that the Taliban fighters that you showed me the picture of today, who are standing inside the Noh Gumbad mosque— We see them as a threat, as an aberration, but in some ways, they too are part of history, and that will be part of the mosque's history, ten, 20, 100 years down the road.

20:54
Laura Tedesco
Yeah, sure, they will. Sure. You're absolutely right. This idea of preserving something in a static moment of time, that is the effort of heritage preservation. Even if you're reconstructing a monument, you reconstruct it to represent what it looked like at a particular moment in time.

21:12
Laura Tedesco
So on that theme, the Buddhas of Bamiyan, we've touched on them before and that they were destroyed spectacularly for the international world to see— that footage that we all remember of the Buddhas exploding.

21:25
Laura Tedesco
So there's been this debate really ever since— to reconstruct the Buddhas or to not reconstruct the Buddhas, or maybe reconstruct one. And then the question is, well, reconstruct them to look like what? Like they did the day the Taliban destroyed them, because that's not what they looked like when they were built. Or do you reconstruct them to some version several centuries after they were built, when they were modified? Or do you reconstruct them to even several other intervening centuries ahead when they were partially destroyed?

22:02
Laura Tedesco
It raises a bigger ethical question and maybe a philosophical question, in a way. You want to recreate the Buddhas of Bamiyan as a memento. But a memento of what exactly? Their original intention, what they looked like the day before they were destroyed, or the weeks before they were destroyed, because their destruction actually took place over several weeks. But those are the questions that heritage people reflect on. Gets us thinking about history.

22:33
George Gavrilis
How much money do you think you spent over the years in Afghanistan? I'm curious about how generous your budgets were, or not, in the greater context.

22:42
Laura Tedesco
Yeah. So, in the scale of heritage preservation, what's our point of reference?

22:48
George Gavrilis
Well, we know that in the past 20 years, the U.S. spent nearly $1 trillion, maybe closer to $800 billion depending on how you count, just on military expenditures in Afghanistan. And if you add the reconstruction work, the development work, that figure goes up by another $140–$150 billion. So we're talking about well over $1 trillion to stabilize and build a strong, enduring democratic Afghanistan. So what percentage of that was your budget?

23:22
Laura Tedesco
It's infinitesimal. It's with so many zeros. You put the decimal point.

23:27
George Gavrilis
After the decimal point.

23:30
Laura Tedesco
Yeah. So since 2010-ish, when there was the surge that we've talked about—the military surge in the sort of diplomatic and financial surge— about $50 million has been spent in this sphere of heritage protection, heritage preservation.

23:51
Laura Tedesco
And in the world of heritage protection, that is an enormous sum of money. I don't know of any point of comparison, it's by a factor of ten more than any other NATO country has contributed— maybe a factor of eight, I think the Germans were pretty generous for a while. But a lot of countries have contributed.

24:15
Laura Tedesco
But here is something: when we start to assign a dollar amount to a particular activity, it attaches to it immediately a kind of expectation of what that dollar amount is supposed to buy, and what that's supposed to look like. Even when I'm talking to my colleagues in the State Department, and they want to put out a press release or a Facebook post or a tweet about cultural heritage, and how great the United States is for all its work, and they want to know dollar amount, and I'm always pushing back and saying, stop it.

24:50
Laura Tedesco
Stop it with the money all the time, we just talk about money all the time. Isn't that ascribing a kind of— in my view, we're putting a monetary value on a small portion of a nation's heritage. How do you do that? It creates a false value. And it reifies the image that we're all so focused on money, and how much we spent and what became of it.

25:13
George Gavrilis
Fair enough.

25:17
George Gavrilis
You've been listening to Monuments Woman with Laura Tedesco. I'm your host George Gavrilis. Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. To stay in touch, also follow us on Instagram, at the_monuments_woman. Join us next week when we dive deeper.

25:33
George Gavrilis
This show is produced by Christian D. Bruun and May Eleven Projects. It is recorded by Audivita Studios, and edited by Shaun Hettinger and Greg Williams. The theme song is This Love by Ariana Delawari, featuring Salar Nader.

Ep 12: Silverback Gorillas — The North, Part 2 of 2

Topics Covered in this Episode 

Viktor Sarianidi, and the Bactrian Treasure
Noh Gumbad, Taliban, heritage work
The North, heritage preservation, and diplomacy
Cynicism
Afghans look to the past, not to the future
Was the work done in vain?
Modern-day archaeology
U.S. financial investment in heritage

Recorded on June 29, 2021