The United Buddy Bears sculpture installation, noted yesterday for its Tokyo exposition, will not be successful in its stated objective as the only difference a democratic state and a tightly, ruthlessly controlled despot state have to reconcile is the latter's ambition to conquer and consume the former. Exhibitions and festivals only grant dictatorships propriety and authority; witness the 1936 Olympic Games. Of yesterday's four bear sculptures to which I linked, Lebanon, still under Syrian rule at the time of documentation, credited its submission to a faceless government bureau. The design, too, while well-executed and in any other situation perfectly acceptable in its celebration of national character, is in shocking contrast to the work of Afghan Nasima Sheerzoi.

Perusing the Bears this morning, I noticed Sheerzoi standing before what looked to be a painted figure in the early stages of blocking. In photographs of the completed work, the figure still appeared unrefined; a featureless, brown swath for a face. Then I remembered what it was — one of the two statues of Buddha carved out of solid rock vandalized by the Taliban in Afghanistan's last year of tyrannical rule. The partial destruction of two national wonders may have since receded to historical news trivia for the rest of the world but from Sheerzoi's own words, the memory of violation is both vivid and compelling:

The large Buddha statues of Bamian which were destroyed by bombs of the Taliban regime together with hundreds of other small statues in March 2001, are still the "Emblem of Afghanistan." And they are also World Cultural Heritage.

The global reaction to the destruction of the Buddha statues of Bamian was shock and helpless anger.

The Buddha statues had been set into the rocks. They were placed in a nice which protected it from erosion for approximately 1,500 years. The bear is similar to a stone relief. That's why I wanted the largest Buddha statue of Bamian (53 metres), the largest Buddha statue in the world, to be at the front. That proved to be impossible as the bear's belly curved too far outwardly. I therefore decided to paint the Buddha on the bear's back.

I've chosen the destroyed Buddha as the first (most important) motif to express my grief, my pain and rage over this loss as an, artist, as through its destruction more than an emblem of Afghanistan was lost.

Islam is assiduously practiced in Afghanistan, the faith of nearly every man, woman and child, and yet the country's representative chose to eulogize the foreign religious icons her former oppressors saw fit to demolish. Participation in the United Buddy Bears, like any expressive medium, is intended for the free. This artistic conjunction will do nothing for those in bondage but once those held captive in tyranny are liberated by the assertion of democratic states, their stories may finally be told.