UNESCO urges all parties in Syria to protect cultural heritage (26 July 2012)
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42567&Cr=syria&Cr1
Unfortunately, the earnest appeals from UNESCO -- much like the appeals from the UN Secretary-General's envoy and from human rights organizations -- are being widely ignored, as Robert Fisk reports:
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The Independent on Sunday (London)
5 August 2012
-Exclusive-
Syria's ancient treasures pulverised
By Robert Fisk
Middle East Correspondent
The nation's extraordinarily rich historical heritage is falling victim to the looting of war
The priceless treasures of Syria's history - of Crusader castles, ancient mosques and churches, Roman mosaics, the renowned "Dead Cities" of the north and museums stuffed with antiquities - have fallen prey to looters and destruction by armed rebels and government militias as fighting envelops the country. While the monuments and museums of the two great cities of Damascus and Aleppo have so far largely been spared, reports from across Syria tell of irreparable damage to heritage sites that have no equal in the Middle East. Even the magnificent castle of Krak des Chevaliers - described by Lawrence of Arabia as "perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world" and which Saladin could not capture - has been shelled by the Syrian army, damaging the Crusader chapel inside.
The destruction of Iraq's heritage in the anarchic aftermath of the Anglo-American invasion of 2003 - the looting of the national museum, the burning of the Koranic library and the wiping out of ancient Sumerian cities - may now be repeated in Syria. Reports from Syrian archeologists and from Western specialists in bronze age and Roman cities tell of an Assyrian temple destroyed at Tell Sheikh Hamad, massive destruction to the wall and towers of the citadel of al-Madiq castle - one of the most forward Crusader fortresses in the Levant which originally fell to Bohemond of Antioch in 1106 - and looting of the magnificent Roman mosaics of Apamea, where thieves have used bulldozers to rip up Roman floors and transport them from the site. Incredibly, they have managed to take two giant capitols from atop the colonnade of the "decumanus", the main east-west Roman road in the city.
In many cases, armed rebels have sought sanctuary behind the thick walls of ancient castles only to find that the Syrian military have not hesitated to blast away at these historical buildings to destroy their enemies. Pitched battles have been fought between rebels and Syrian troops amid the "Dead Cities", the hundreds of long-abandoned Graeco-Roman towns that litter the countryside outside Aleppo, which once formed the heart of ancient Syria. Syrian troops have occupied the Castle of Ibn Maan above the Roman city of Palmyra and parked tanks and armoured vehicles in the Valley of the Tombs to the west of the old city. The government army are reported to have dug a deep defensive trench within the Roman ruins.
"The situation of Syria's heritage today is catastrophic," according to Joanne Farchakh, a Lebanese archaeologist who also investigated the destruction and plundering of Iraq's historical treasures after 2003, and helped the Baghdad museum to reclaim some of its stolen artifacts. "One of the problems is that for 10 years before the war, the Syrian regime established 25 cultural museums all over the country to encourage tourism and to keep valuable objects on these sites - many placed stone monuments in outside gardens, partly to prove that the regime was strong enough to protect them. Now the Homs museum has been looted - by rebels and by government militias, who knows? - and antique dealers are telling me that the markets of Jordan and Turkey are flooded with artifacts from Syria." [...]
* For the rest of Robert Fisk's report, see:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-syrias-ancient-treasures-pulverised-8007768.html
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