Mes Aynak

Province

Mes Aynak ( Dari: source of copper, copper shaft ) is a 40 km southeast of Kabul place situated in the district of Mohammed Agha the Afghan Logar province. Mes Aynak was from the late Kushan period up to the late Shahi period ( 2nd to 9th century), a sprawling Buddhist settlement. The settlement consisted of several ornate monastery complexes with stupas and hundreds of Buddha statues as well as residential and commercial buildings. Below the Buddhist monastery ruins remains of a prehistoric settlement from the Bronze Age have been discovered.

Mes Aynak also houses one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the world. The Afghan government has the mineral rights in 2007/ 08, the Chinese mining company, China Metallurgical Group (MCC ) awarded that had it offered $ 3.5 billion. Since the historic monastery complex is completely soft copper mining, the Afghan Minister of Mines Mohammad Ibrahim Adel agreed with the MCC on the implementation of archaeological rescue excavations with the involvement of the National Institute of Archaeology of Afghanistan. The excavations at Mes Aynak, which are implemented with international support, began in 2009 should be completed within three years, but will continue at present. (August 2013).

In the context of increasing international coverage of the threatened historic cultural center, the Afghan government postponed the start of the open pit copper to 2014.

The historic settlement systems

Archaeological findings indicate a first colonization of the Mes Aynak region during the Bronze Age. The extensive copper deposits Mes Aynaks were already known as one discovered during excavations in Bronze Age copper mine occupied. Advances in metal processing had made to a copper required for the production of bronze alloys commodity.

Another settlement was ( 2nd to 9th century ) was detected for the period from the late Kushan Empire until the late Shahi rule. During this period existed in Mes Aynak an extensive Buddhist settlement, which included several separate monasteries. Besides the already proven monasteries " Kafiriat Tepe " and " Gol Hamid ," it should have been at least two other systems. Without the monastic tradition of these monasteries could be identified so far indicate discoveries of stone reliefs of bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteshvara on one of the precursors schools of Mahayana Buddhism.

The decline of the settlement, which served as a trading center at the same time, may have begun in the 8th century at the latest, as slowly prevailed in the area of present day Afghanistan resulting from the invasion of the Muslim Arabs of Islam. Perhaps the settlement but only became finally abandoned during the 13th century. The historic Buddhist monastery complex located on a hill in 2,400 meters above sea level and covers a total of one and a half square kilometer area, has been rediscovered in 1963. Several geological exploration projects resulted in the following years further evidence of the Buddhist monastery ruins. When, in the course of illegal illicit excavations from 2004 increasingly emerged Buddhist artifacts in the capital Kabul, the National Institute of Archaeology of Afghanistan 's historic heritage in Mes Aynak was attentive.

From the Buddhist monastery in Mes Aynak located next building remains single coins have received ( the oldest of Kushan ruler Kanishka ), ceramics, wall paintings, rock carvings and slate and clay sculptures in the Greco- Buddhist Gandhara style. The cultural and historical significance of the complex is about the archaeological site of Hadda and the monastery complex in Bamiyan. All three Buddhist sites in the area of present-day Afghanistan, about the same time incurred when Buddhism spread through the region along the Silk Road to Central Asia and China.

Proposed open pit copper and rescue excavations

China is the world's largest buyer of refined copper. As domestic inventories are no longer sufficient, Chinese companies investing in the face of rapidly growing demand in increasingly untapped copper deposits. In November 2007, the China Metallurgical Group (MCC ) received after two years of negotiations, for $ 3.5 billion contract for the mining rights to the Aynak copper deposits in Mes. The contract term is 30 years. It is the largest foreign investment project of Afghan history. The MCC quantifies the volume of the copper deposit in Aynak measuring approximately 11 million tons of copper with a total value of tens of billions of dollars. The MCC plans to build for the copper mining, including new roads, a railway line and a 400 - megawatt power plant.

The planned copper mining threatens the historic cultural sites. In the wake of press reports on the impending destruction of Mes Aynaks in which the MCC was compared with the destroyers of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan, the MCC approved plans to for a rescue excavation. In the course began in 2009 rescue excavation, carried out by a 16-member team of archaeologists led by the " Delegation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan " ( DAFA ) and financially supported by several states and institutions such as the World Bank, as many artefacts are secured in a great hurry and be removed. The excavation project has been the subject of international conferences of geologists, mining engineers, archaeologists and development experts (for example, in Washington, DC, 2012).

To the international attention that drew the endangered Afghan cultural site since 2007 to be contributed to a film project. The 2013 finished documentary The Buddha from Mes Aynak (The Buddha of Mes Aynak ) of the U.S. filmmaker Brent E. Huffman tells the story of the excavation site and portrays the precarious situation in which the planned copper mine has brought archaeologists, Chinese workers and locals. The film presents the planned copper mining and the rescue excavation from the perspective of various archaeologists and a manager of the MCC Represents the member of the DAFA teams Philippe Marquis speaks in the film, a fact that so far only ten percent of existing artifacts could have been secured and that at least ten years of excavation project was needed to expose a large part of the still hidden buildings and art treasures and be able to document.

In July 2013, Wahidullah Shahrani, nobility successor appeared disappointed as mining minister, about the delay of the project by the Chinese contractors. Given the poor security situation in the region and high protection money demands of the Taliban would consider the MCC contract with Afghanistan no longer profitable and wanted to negotiate this new.

Photo Gallery of the archaeological area ( 2011)

Historic monastery of Mes Aynak

Monastery of Mes Aynak, northern view

Historic monastery of Mes Aynak

Panoramic picture of the monasteries

Excavation site at the summit, Mes Aynak

Excavation site at the summit, Mes Aynak

Excavation forces at the summit

Excavation site on the eastern slope

Archaeological sites on the eastern slope