OUR PALS

Philip Kennicott of The Washington Post doesn't much like Christian Frei's new documentary film about the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the Taliban in early 2001, but he does note this detail Frei uncovered:

...it was the Taliban that destroyed them. With the help, we're told by a local, of engineers from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, although the filmmaker doesn't bother to follow up on that tantalizing but possibly dubious nugget of complexity....

Interesting, if true. (What, not Iranian engineers, or Saddamist Iraqis? Aren't they the region's worst freedom-haters and evildoers?)

For what it's worth, when the prime minister and foreign minister of Sri Lanka tried to prevent the destruction of the Buddhas, they appealed not to anyone in the Taliban, but to Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf; Pakistan was one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban government, the other two being Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.