Don't have much for you today, but this one is a Good News story in ways that we haven't really seen in a long while.
Via Worldchanging we get this story from the New York Times about how employees of Afghanistan's Central Bank managed to protect 20,600 pieces of Bactrian gold jewelery from the Taliban:
Armed men ordered a Central Bank employee to open the vault in the Arg and brought a gold merchant from southern Afghanistan to inspect the bullion. But they knew nothing of the Bactrian gold lying just yards away, said one bank employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Then as they left at that time and the bank official locked the massive safe door, he snapped off the key in the lock, which successfully frustrated further attempts by the Taliban or anyone else to enter the vault.
A lot gets lost in war, through maliciousness or carelessness. We've seen pretty good examples of both during the Iraq debacle. Still, it's nice to know that we haven't completely managed to destroy all of our cultural heritage.
Posted by the Fourth Man at June 27, 2004 07:30 PM