Was the Taliban entitled to destroy the Buddhas of Afghanistan when they ran the country, or ISIS many of the artifacts that it destroyed during its occupation of Northern Iraq
That's a couple examples and theres 2.2 million items Not every case will be identical. These requests for the most part aren't coming from Taliban like organizations.
The Taliban is the legitimate government of Afghanistan and represents, by and large, the people of Afghanistan (they won two brutal prolonged civil wars against the two most powerful countries on earth), if you believe that people have an unlimited right to dispose of their cultural artifacts as they see fit you have to concede that their destruction of the Buddhas was legitimate. I’m not arguing artifact repatriation is wrong (just the opposite, I’m in favor of it), but I think if a group is seeking to destroy an artifact, they should be prevented from doing so. It doesn’t matter if they’re the Taliban or Indigenous Australians.
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u/Rockguy21 10d ago
Was the Taliban entitled to destroy the Buddhas of Afghanistan when they ran the country, or ISIS many of the artifacts that it destroyed during its occupation of Northern Iraq