Remembering Syria’s suffering people and threatened heritage
In the spring of 2011, Vee and I had a holiday in Syria and Lebanon [for account of our visit, see here]. We crossed the border from one country to the other on 9 March 2011. Mass protests erupted on 15 March in Damascus and Aleppo, and spread in the following days to more cities, while growing in size. The week of 15–21 March is considered by news media as the beginning of the Syrian uprising.
Since then, something like a quarter of a million Syrians have been killed and the deaths, injuries, displacement and destruction is not over. Every time I read or hear a news report from the region, I shiver and I remember our time in the Levant.
Although one cannot compare lives to structures, another terrible feature of the Syrian civil war – accentuated now by the emergence of ISIS – is the destruction of the country’s heritage which includes remnants of the world’s earlier civilisations.
Already major parts of Damascus and Aleppo – both with a claim to be the oldest continuously inhabited cities in history – have been destroyed. Now ISIS threatens the obliteration of the ancient ruins of Palmyra [for account of our visit, see here].
As an article in today’s “Observer” newspaper puts it:
“Palmyra is an ancient Roman site whose significance and value is exceeded by very few others: those in Rome itself, Pompeii, possibly Petra in Jordan. Its temples, colonnades and tombs, its theatre and streets are extensive, exquisite, distinctive, rich. The loss of Palmyra would be a cultural atrocity greater than the destruction of the Buddhas in Bamiyan. It is hard to think of deliberate vandalism to equal it, despite the grim examples offered by the last hundred years.”
Rowan Moore writes:
“If Isis raze Palmyra, it would be a new demonstration of the evil and stupidity they have already abundantly displayed in their slaughters and enslavements, and in their videos of beheadings and burnings. It would also confirm Isis’s littleness: how could anyone be so threatened by ancient ruins, unless they lacked belief in their ability to create something themselves? It would make manifest Isis’s nihilism, their vision of the world as a desert populated only by themselves and their slaves. It is, of course, precisely the diversity of Syria’s heritage that Isis hate.”
May 19th, 2015 at 8:31 am
I like Rowan’s comments and would go a little further by saying that ISIS are no more or less than a criminal gang using religion as a cover for their selfish and perverse activities. We have seen many such groups down the centuries including quite a few who held sway over large tracts of the globe. I think any highly organised religious group may contain a number of senior members whose intent is essentially criminal. The Borgias and the Spanish Inquisition spring to mind, both connected with Christianity.
June 12th, 2015 at 9:23 pm
It’s an awful disregard for history but the plight of the Syrian refugees, to me, is more worrying than the destruction of any architectural landmark.