Taliban pose threat to Afghan cultural heritage as they sweep back into power

When previously in power, the Taliban destroyed much of the Afghan culture.

When Ali Karimi was young, he had to bury his books in the backyard. In 1996, when the Taliban first came to power after years of civil war in Afghanistan, his family feared that fighters from the strict Islamist militant group would harm their family if they found the works of fiction in Persian. Earlier this month, Karimi, now an academic at the University of Pennsylvania, got a call from his father in Kabul, asking what to do with his Persian and English books again. "I told him Kabul will not fall. Like everyone else, I thought the government would last for at least a couple of months. And now, they are worried, and a lot of people are burying their books," Karimi told ABC News.