Cultural heritage, a victim of conflict : Jihadists in Iraq destroy ancient statues

PARIS-

Jihadists in Iraq have smashed ancient statues to pieces with sledgehammers in the second city Mosul, sparking global outrage, in the latest loss of world cultural heritage to conflict.

In September 2014, UN cultural agency UNESCO said jihadists from the Islamic State occupying parts of Iraq were destroying age-old heritage sites and looting others to sell valued artifacts on the black market.

In one example in July, the Islamic State group rigged the Nabi Yunus shrine in the northern city of Mosul — revered by both Muslims and Christians as the tomb of Prophet Jonah — with explosives and blew it up.

Some precedents:

MALI: The fabled desert city of Timbuktu, named the “City of 33 saints”, and listed by UNESCO, was subjected for months to brutal Islamic law.

In June 2012 Al-Qaeda-linked militants destroyed 15 of the northern city’s mausoleums, important buildings that date back to the golden age of Timbuktu as an economic, intellectual and spiritual centre in the 15th and 16th centuries, UNESCO reported. Reconstruction started in 2014.

Timbuktu is also renowned for its collection of precious manuscripts, some of which date back to the pre-Islamic era, and UNESCO estimates that around 4,200 of these were burned when the Islamist militants were in control.

LIBYA: In August 2012 Islamist hardliners bulldozed part of the mausoleum of Al-Shaab Al-Dahman, close to the centre of the Libyan capital.

The demolition came a day after hardliners blew up the mausoleum of Sheikh Abdessalem al-Asmar in Zliten, 160 kilometres (100 miles) east of the capital.

AFGHANISTAN: In March 2001, the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, ordered the destruction of two 1,500-year-old Buddha statues in the eastern town of Bamiyan, judged anti-Islamic.

Hundreds of members of the Taliban from across the country for more than three weeks set about demolishing the gigantic statues.

THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA: During the war in the former Yugoslavia, in late 1991, the medieval city of Dubrovnik, on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites, was ravaged.

The national library of Sarajevo, the jewel of Austro-Hungarian architecture in the 19th century, was destroyed in August 1992 by Serbian artillery during the Bosnian war.

In November 1993, the old bridge in Mostar, considered a masterpiece of Ottoman architecture, was detroyed by Bosnian-Croat forces. It has since been rebuilt.