Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, has released footage showing a group of men smashing with sledgehammers what seem to be ancient artefacts (the Assyrian protective deity in the form of a winged bull is genuine while the rest are thought to be replicas).
“God created us to worship Allah, him only — not some stones,” a man says in the video. Earlier attacks on Mosul’s heritage by IS targeted the tomb of Nabi Yunus (the prophet Jonah), and the grave of Abu al-Hassan al-Jazari, a 12th and 13th century historiographer known as ibn al-Athir.
The destruction of Mosul’s history is a crime against people who are proud of their education and heritage, and fully aware of the value, for example, of the library of Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria (668-627BC), with its 22,000 cuneiform tablets. Destruction of monuments that have been preserved through 14 centuries of Islam in Iraq is widely abhorred. These actions can be likened to the barbarism of an extreme sect in early Islam that demolished the Mecca shrine. But it is a crime that also has to be seen as part of the trajectory of cultural destruction since the invasion of 2003. This destruction aims to erase memory and, above all, collective identity. Those who are responsible for historical destruction, no matter what rhetoric they adopt, must be held to account as war criminals.
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Among the crimes Iraqis have witnessed in more than a decade of chaos are the use of ancient heritage sites as U.S. bases. According to Zainab Bahrani, professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University, “These sites include Ur, the legendary birthplace of Abraham; Babylon, the famed capital of Mesopotamian antiquity; and Samara, the Abbasid Islamic imperial city.The digging, bulldozing, filling of sand bags and blast-barricade containers, the building of barracks and digging of trenches into the ancient sites have destroyed thousands of years of archaeological materials, stratiography and historical data.”
The Geneva convention, which states that an occupying army should use all means within its power to protect the cultural heritage of an occupied country, has been defied. This behaviour has given the green light to Iraqi governments, before and after the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2011, to carry on what seems to many Iraqis to be a mission of destruction.
Archaeological sites have become easy prey to looting. In October 2010, before the rise of IS, the Global Heritage Fund listed Nineveh among the top 12 sites in the world most threatened by irreparable loss. Historical artefacts are now sold in international markets: Political corruption in Iraq has left nothing for cultural protection and development.
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To end the process of human and cultural destruction a twofold solution is needed. First, only a national government representing all Iraqis will be able to protect national heritage. Second, world condemnation is not enough and international laws regarding human rights and protection of cultural heritage should be implemented. If not, we must prepare ourselves for further acts of madness.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015