NEW DELHI (WION) — One of the tallest Buddha statues in the world was destroyed by the Taliban 20 years ago. The step was considered a cultural genocide.

The statues were blown up and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were idols.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two monumental statues of Gautama Buddha carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley of central Afghanistan, at an elevation of 2,500 m. Carbon dating of the structural components of the Buddhas has determined that the smaller 38 m Eastern Buddha was built around 570 AD, and the larger 55 m Western Buddha was built around 618 AD.

Buddhism first arrived in Afghanistan in 305 BC when the Greeko-Scythian Seleucid Empire made an alliance with the Indian Maurya Empire. The resulting Scytho-Buddhism flourished under the Scytho-Bactrian Kingdom (250 BC-125 BC) and the later Indo-Scythian Kingdom (180 BC-10 AD) in modern northern Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Buddhism in Afghanistan was one of the major religious forces in the region during pre-Islamic era. The religion was widespread south of the Hindu Kush mountains. Scythian Buddhism reached its height under the Kushan Empire, which used the Greek alphabet to write its Bactrian language.