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posted by takyon on Thursday August 20 2015, @01:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the unsafe dept.

Islamic State militants beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, 82, a renowned antiquities scholar in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and hung his mutilated body on a column in a main square of the historic site because he apparently refused to reveal where valuable artifacts had been moved for safekeeping.

Before the city's capture by Isis, Syrian officials said they moved hundreds of ancient statues to safe locations out of concern they would be destroyed by the militants. Isis was likely to be looking for portable, easily saleable items that are not registered.

Unesco warned last month that looting had been taking place on an "industrial scale". Isis advertises its destruction of sites such as Nimrud in Iraq but says little about the way plundered antiquities help finance its activities. Stolen artefacts make up a significant stream of the group's estimated multi-million dollar revenues, along with oil sales and straightforward taxation and extortion.

Asaad had worked over the past few decades with US, French, German and Swiss archaeological missions on excavations and research in Palmyra's famed 2,000-year-old ruins. "He was a fixture, you can't write about Palmyra's history or anything to do with Palmyrian work without mentioning Khaled Asaad. It's like you can't talk about Egyptology without talking about Howard Carter."

Archaeological experts say Isis took over the already existing practice of illegal excavation and looting, which until 2014 was carried out by various armed groups, or individuals, or the Syrian regime. Isis initially levied 20% taxes on those it "licensed" to excavate but later began to hire its own own archaeologists, digging teams and machinery.

"Their systematic campaign seeks to take us back into pre-history. But they will not succeed."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:35PM (#225407)

    Well, America created the political situation that allowed them to thrive, so yes, America is responsible.

  • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:46PM (#225412)

    Sorry, but for nut jobs like them you don't need to create anything. They'll do it all by themselves.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @02:56PM (#225420)

      No, you have to create something. Namely a space where they can grow to become a serious problem before anyone stops them.

      You think they would have had the slightest chance under Saddam Hussein?

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @03:29PM (#225437)

    America created the political mess that is the Middle East? You, sir, are an ignorant dumbass that needs glasses that can look back a couple thousand years.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:22PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:22PM (#225471)

      Daesh didn't form 1000 years ago. It didn't form 500 years ago. It didn't even form 50 years ago. It didn't form until America entered Iraq, removed its government, and then didn't do the tedious job of rebuilding it into a reasonable state, but left it in a desolate condition. This power vacuum they created was what enabled Daesh to become a dangerous power.

      George Bush was wise enough not to remove Saddam Hussein from power. George W. Bush didn't have that wisdom.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:53PM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:53PM (#225487) Journal

        "America is responsible" sounds very like an arrogant "White Man's Burden" view of the situation. There's much more to it than that. Invading Iraq was a major blunder. The neocons oversimplified the problems, and mostly got it all wrong. They went charging in, pretending even to themselves that they were on white horses. That there's a lot of oil involved was kept as quiet as they could, which wasn't very quiet. Killed a bunch of people and flipped Iraq from Sunni domination to Shia, and solved nothing. Made a lot of things worse. The Shias have no better idea what to do than the Sunnis did.

        Iraq and Syria are ecological disasters. Any solution that doesn't account for that is going to fail. Syria destabilized when a major drought struck, and the Assad government responded with stupidity and brutality.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:18PM

          by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:18PM (#225534)

          "America is responsible" sounds very like an arrogant "White Man's Burden" view of the situation. There's much more to it than that. Invading Iraq was a major blunder. The neocons oversimplified the problems, and mostly got it all wrong. They went charging in, pretending even to themselves that they were on white horses. That there's a lot of oil involved was kept as quiet as they could, which wasn't very quiet. Killed a bunch of people and flipped Iraq from Sunni domination to Shia, and solved nothing. Made a lot of things worse. The Shias have no better idea what to do than the Sunnis did.

          Iraq was a created nation in the first place, essentially three regions forced together, with mistakes made every step of the way. The Kurds were split in half with Turkey retaining control of one part, and Sunnis and Shiites made up the rest. The Shiites were the majority, but the Sunnis dominated the government, from the monarchy set up by the British through Saddam Hussein. Every step of the way was in part a result of interference by Western governments. When Hussein was removed with no leadership plan in place beyond some fairy tale idea that the Iraqis would cheer their liberators, naturally the majority faction (the Shiites) would hold the most influence, but no one was in charge. When there is a power vacuum, power moves in to try to take control. Anyone with half a brain should not be surprised by the rise of an ISIS or a Taliban or some other brutal, repressive force.
          As far as the ecology of the region, it has been in decline since before the Mesopotamians fell apart. If it were not for the presence of oil and Western interference, "civilization" there would likely be small, scattered villages with little connection between them. When the oil runs out or demand for it falls far enough, that is what it will likely become. Whether those villages are controlled by benevolent leaders or brutal fundamentalists will probably be determined by what outside influences do between now and that point in the future.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:15PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 20 2015, @07:15PM (#225533) Journal

    You, also, are neglecting to distinguish between groups given a name, and individuals given the same name. Very few of the individuals would agree with the actions that the "group with the same name" takes. This is why authoritarians love hierarchies--most people don't get a real voice, and certainly no effective power, but those at the top of the hierarchy can act "in the name of the group" and get the blame diffused over bunches of people who had no say in what was going on, and often wouldn't have approved of it. (Sometimes they are decieved into approving of an action based on false evidence, but usually they are just ignored.)

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @07:40AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @07:40AM (#225746)

      The majority of Americans voted for a second term of Goerge W. Bush. Which shows that they did agree and actively support his politics.

      That's the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship. In a democracy, the citizens share some of the blame, because they could do something about it. In a dictatorship, short of a revolution, nothing can be done about it.