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Home Life Tips In the Middle East, save statues to save lives

In the Middle East, save statues to save lives

By fashionlifeshopping 02/10/2022 1368 Views

Reading time: 8 min

At the height of the Roman Empire, the metropolis of Palmyra was a gateway to the riches of Persia, India and China. Even in the first century AD, it already had the makings of an ancient city. In 2,000 years, it had gone from a simple isolated staging post for caravans to a cultural and commercial center which contained some of the greatest artistic treasures in the world. Its sculptures, its temples, its theaters and its tombs, in the middle of the desert of the road to Damascus, are still today a source of pride for Syria, where Jews, Christians and Muslims have protected them for more of a millennium. Today, these treasures are under threat.

After a week-long offensive against the modern city of Tadmor, the Islamic State swept into Palmyra on May 21 and raised its black flag over its ruins. After surviving the ravages of time and all manner of invaders for millennia, this symbolic site may well not recover from this latest surge of fanaticism. In an interview and video report, the group claimed that they would keep Palmyra's ancient architecture (even though the city's statues would surely be destroyed). However, his recent actions describe a more disturbing pattern.

In July 2014, the Islamic State completely destroyed the Jewish-Christian Tomb of Jonah in Mosul, northern Iraq, as well as the Sunni Mosque of the Prophet Yunus. The group has used this destruction as a propaganda tool: last February, it posted a video of its black-clad thugs jackhammering the ancient city of Nineveh (one of the largest cities in the world), as well as the enormous winged bulls that had guarded it since the 7th century B.C. Hatra, Khorsabad and Nimrud. In the Islamic State's latest architectural snuff-movie, a polished production that includes a soundtrack and replays, the jihadists stage their attempts to destroy Nimrud. We see the palace of Ashurnasirpal from the Old Testament disappearing under explosions worthy of Hollywood.

First and foremost a human tragedy

Nothing equals the horror of the Islamic State's massacre of aid workers, captured soldiers, journalists, religious minorities and even children. The group has already begun lining up the corpses of its opponents in the streets of Palmyra. We must not forget that this is above all a human tragedy, but being saddened by these attacks on cultural heritage is not synonymous with forgetting.

As devastating as this destruction is, history warns us of what is yet to come. Once you begin to erase the historical identity of a people, the next step is often to eradicate that people themselves. The Holocaust followed the total annihilation of old Warsaw. Cambodia's Killing Fields followed the destruction of churches, mosques and pagodas. Ending the Islamic State's devastation of the region's identity is directly linked to the humanitarian crisis.

For the Islamic State, death and destruction are inextricably linked. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the group recently executed twenty civilians in the Roman amphitheater in Palmyra in a propaganda “coup” reminiscent of those of Joseph Goebbels. Since terrorists don't respect borders any more than human life or cultural heritage, these actions should worry far more people than the self-declared caliphate. It has to be put to an end.

In the Middle East, save statues to save lives

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However, the most serious threat to cultural heritage is not iconoclasm, but lucrative looting. Every time a masterpiece is destroyed by the Islamic State in front of the cameras, thousands more fill its coffers thanks to the black market.

Last February, the G7 Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental body based in Paris, reported that the Islamic State “would have earned up to $10 million” from the resale of Syrian antiquities alone . Later that month, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2199, which recognizes that the Islamic State and groups associated with al-Qaeda use "the looting and smuggling of objects belonging to the cultural heritage” to finance “their recruitment efforts or to improve their operational capabilities to organize and carry out terrorist attacks”. Last week, the UN General Assembly also adopted Resolution 69/281, which calls on all member states to help stop terrorist financing from antiquities trafficking.

A conviction that comes a little late

This recent condemnation is welcome, but it comes a little late: Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, head of the investigation linked to the looting of the National Museum of Iraq in 2003 and co-author of this article, has been sounding the alarm for ten years. In the New York Times, in his book Thieves of Baghdad, but also with the United Nations, Interpol and the English Parliament, he has always argued that the traffic in antiquities finances the bullets and bombs which are at the origin of so many deaths.