“As IS moves into Kurdish areas in northern Syria, there’s definitely a lot of Kurdish heritage that is currently at risk,” said Danti, a Boston University professor. “When it looked like IS was taking Erbil or Dohuk, that was very worrying.
“Thankfully, those situations were turned around by the Peshmerga and US airstrikes.”
The US and allied countries launched the first air strikes against IS positions in Syria early on Tuesday, the Pentagon said
Fighters from IS, a brutal and effective Sunni Muslim army that is also known as ISIS and ISIL, have attacked Kurdish areas of northern Syria and forced some 130,000 Kurds to flee across the Turkish border, fearing for their lives.
As well as carrying out crucifixions, forced weddings and other outrages, IS has destroyed mosques, tombs and holy sites across Iraq and Syria, including the levelling of the Nabi Yunus Mosque, which had housed the Tomb of Jonah, after seizing Mosul in June.
Danti spoke with Rudaw at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday, as US Secretary of State John Kerry was warning against heritage destruction by IS, which has imposed caliphate-rule across Sunni-majority areas straddling the Iraq-Syria border.
“ISIL is not only beheading individuals; it is tearing at the fabric of whole civilizations,” said Kerry, speaking in front of an Egyptian temple. “It has no respect for life. It has no respect for religion. And it has no respect for culture, which for millions is actually the foundation of life."
Fighters have mostly targeted sites of Shiite and Sufi Muslims, who IS views as heretics, said Danti. The collections of 25 Syrian and Iraqi museums, as well as several sites deemed to be of outstanding importance by the UN, are threatened by IS.
In Raqqa, the Islamists’ makeshift capital, IS militiamen have demolished a 3,000-year-old sculpture and raided private collections – selling relics to boost their estimated $1 million daily revenue from ransoms and oil sales.
“Islamic State is a Salafist organization with a very conservative interpretation of the kinds of monuments that are appropriate for Islam, and it uses that as an excuse to destroy whatever suits its objectives. It can justify or rationalize the destruction of anything,” Danti told Rudaw.
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