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Saving World Heritage – the West’s New R2P Pretext

Finian Cunningham

March 11, 2015 "ICH" - Is the defence of world heritage sites in Iraq the new «responsibility to protect» doctrine to justify Western intervention in the geo-strategically important region? The timing coincides with renewed admonitions from the United States and Saudi Arabia for a coalition of ground forces to defeat the Islamic State network in Iraq and Syria – and just when Iraqi and Syrian forces appear to be decisively pushing back the extremists in both countries.

The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon this week added his voice to calls for an international coalition of forces to prevent the continuing destruction of ancient cultural sites and artefacts by the IS terror group. The initiative comes after the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) condemned the campaign of IS looting and obliteration of antiquities as a war crime.

IS cadres – also known by alternative acronyms ISIL or ISIS – have issued propaganda videos of wholesale vandalism of museums, churches, sculptures and other archaeological treasures in northern Iraq. Images of bulldozers and sledgehammer-wielding militants tearing down 3,000-year-old porticos and statues have indeed shocked the world.

Cities under IS control, Mosul and Nimrud, have seen priceless artefacts destroyed in unspeakable acts of nihilism. Nimrud is the ancient capital of Assyria dating back to 800 BC and has associations with the great grandson of the reputed biblical prophet Noah. The next target for the Islamists is the city of Hatra, which is home to some of the oldest known architecture in the world.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article411200.htm

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