UNESCO in war against Islamic State to protect world’s cultural heritage from destruction

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Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO, addresses the United Nations Security Council after the Council voted to adopt a resolution on the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflict at UN headquarters in New York City. Photo: Reuters

Published: 2:15am, 13 Apr 2017Updated: 4:29am, 13 Apr 2017

Islamic State uses grisly violence to terrorise the West, recruit supporters, and subjugate people in the areas it controls. But it’s also waging a quieter war against more abstract enemies: culture and heritage.

As ISIS seized swaths of land in Iraq and Syria, it began destroying historic sites and artifacts, some thousands of years old. Museums, monuments, cultural sites getting caught in the crossfire of war is nothing new. But what ISIS is doing is different, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said.

The group sells ancient artifacts to bankroll its war machine and demolishes sites to demoralise its enemies and erase multicultural symbols - moves that all support the group’s wider plan. It’s “quite new, quite unseen, systematic and deliberate,” Bokova said. “It goes hand in hand with the destruction of diversity, persecution. . .of minorities.”

Syria's ancient city of Palmyra has been retaken by Syrian government forces from the Islamic State fighters. However, the city full of antiquities and ancient architectures has suffered destruction during the IS control. Photo: Xinhua

A key example was Palmyra, where the group recorded blowing up the ancient city that symbolised Syria’s historic multiculturalism, then spread the video footage on the internet to gin up extremist support and recruit new fighters.