Скорбящая мать Хаита

The Grieving Mother of Kaita ( or Hoyit ) was built after the 1949 earthquakes and landslides in Tajikistan to commemorate the 28,000 who died. At the time, Tajikistan was a member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The monument was located in the Karategin (Rasht) valley, in the plain of the Yarhich River between Jirgitol and Gharm.

During the Tajik civil war, 1992 - 1997, the area was controlled by the Islamic Rebirth Party, who judged it to be un-Islamic and destroyed it.

I reprint this post and its picture - no, its icon - because it is so rare. As far as I can discover, this is one of only two pictures of the Mother of Khaita that exists on the web; I have found no others. The second is here:

I am thankful that I was able to have stumbled across it by accident back in July 2009. It was in the blog

http://easterncampaign.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/buddhas-and-grieving-mothers-destroying-history/
Ghosts of Alexander
Conflict and Society in Afghanistan and Central Asia

which is a must read for anyone who hopes to make sense of our policy in Afghanistan.
I refer to the lady of the statue now as

'Umm Khaita (the above written in my own hand), or Mother Khaita.
I am still rather astonished I had never heard of the statue, nor the catastrophe, until last year. I hope to find out more about it. The statue is huge, but it has a haunting spirituality that differentiates it from the usual Soviet realism.

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note: 
you will find the spelling Kaita or Khaita. The Russian spelling indicates "kh", as well as the alternative name of the region being "Hiyot", which suggests an emphatic "h" at least in the initial position.

reprinted for Linda