MID-TERM PAPER
The State of Historical Artifacts in the Middle East
By [Student’s Name]
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According to Raphael Lemkin, genocide does not only mean physical destruction of life but a broad term including culture, religion, language, political structure, economics, and feeling of a group of individuals, and such has been the case of Iraq, Syria, and other countries of the middle east. War involving ISIS has led to the genocide of the people in all aspects of life. What makes us human is being chipped away at with every mosque or church that is demolished, every relic broke, every archaeological site that is razed. Ancient Mesopotamia, the region of the two rivers, was a key part of many faiths and beliefs across the globe.
Opponent groups with conflicting ideologies strive to push their own values system and ideas at the expense of all others because of the cultural heritage’s importance to one group. Daesh’s destruction of Iraq’s cultural history has two purposes: first, to demonstrate to its adherents their commitment to their own belief system, and second, to draw attention from the rest of the world. Iraq is historically a nation with a large and varied population. The outrage of the world is necessary to drive political response, but concurrently it plays into Daesh’s interests by attracting the attention of potential members to its cause and generating more motivation to destroy the culture and history of others.
Antiquities theft is also linked to the issue of cultural terrorism since it is a source of funding for terrorist organizations and has the same impact as destroying artifacts, as once an object is sold on the black market, it can never be retrieved and is effectively gone to the world. Cultural terrorism illustrates the interconnection of human rights since it not only harms the right to participate in the cultural scene, but it also feeds extremist organizations both economically and immaterially, supporting terrorism and its accompanying breaches of, among other things, the rights to life.
In addition, the right to religious freedom is directly infringed when religiously significant cultural heritage, such as mosques, churches, and religious items, is destroyed. In Iraq and Syria, Daesh has concentrated its efforts on these groups. Cultural heritage sites and museums may be essential economic drivers, particularly in less developed areas where they can provide jobs directly and indirectly via tourists during more tranquil periods, guaranteeing the right to a decent quality of life for the local population.
Consequently, Daesh’s methodical destruction of Mosul’s cultural treasures is planned and deliberate. Daesh released a list of more than 38 monuments in Nineveh province on social networks before its attack on northern Iraq and stated its intention to obliterate them. This ‘purification’ has a remarkable breadth of application. The destruction of Mosul’s Islamic period architecture has grave and unrecoverable ramifications for both the city’s cultural legacy and the world’s. Almost all of the city’s architectural features have been demolished, leaving behind a distorted view of the landscape. Furthermore, nearly all of the mosques and shrines built during the time of Badr al-Din Lu’lu’ have been destroyed in this devastation. This school was one of the few in the Islamic world to combine Christian and Shi’ite architectural styles, and experts have done a very little study into it. Several notable Early Ottoman mosques have also been lost. The city, which was once one of the most appealing historical centers in the Near East, has shed many of its genuine aspects. Graveyards and religious sites that have been revered for centuries are exploited to humiliate and disintegrate communities and the broader globe in the continuous ideological conflict.
Iraq’s cultural heritage issues must be addressed by all interested parties, including Iraqi and Kurdish government agencies, like the State Board for Antiquities and Heritage, working together. This coordination’s primary goal would include bringing foreign resources and expertise to Iraq in close collaboration with government agencies and other relevant parties. Duplication of money and effort will be avoided, and the ability to respond quickly to immediate, medium-term, and lengthy cultural heritage challenges will be maximized. If a national workforce of paid site guards is employed, they cannot also provide security. However, there are concerns that they may not be able to stand up to the terrorists’ troops (Harmanşah, 2015).
It is therefore possible to interpret the Islamic State’s demolition of archaeological sites, museums, and historical monuments as a sort of place-based terrorism that seeks to obliterate the local community’s feeling of belonging and its collective memories. On top of everything else, the Islamic State uses its own image-making apparatus, which includes advanced visualization and communication technologies, to orchestrate and choreograph these devastations as a third estates’ spectacles of violence directed at objects and sites of cultural heritage, which take place as reenactments or historical performances. As a consequence, not only are tangible objects destroyed, but also the memories of people’s way of life, which is a terrible loss. The monetary worth of these items has been completely lost to the rest of the world and the political system. This defines modern genocide that must end at all costs.
References
Harmanşah, Ö. (2015). ISIS, Heritage, and the Spectacles of Destruction in the Global Media. Near Eastern Archaeology, 78(3), 170–177. https://doi.org/10.5615/neareastarch.78.3.0170
