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deomelo:
Nairaland Says No To Secessionists, but NL front page is always full of biafra and Secessionists thread from top to bottom.

The man fighting for independence of the West African nation of Biafra... from a flat in Peckham
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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/01/16/GettyImages-497674810-xlarge_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqi2hQl7zmbLsEA5Mz8zrygm885TIQZJBiDp2ukqyI5ao.jpg

Protests for the release of Nnamdi Kanu in Aba, south-east Nigeria, in 2015

Colin Freeman
21 JANUARY 2017 • 9:00AM

It has been nearly 50 years since Biafra’s bitter independence struggle, the inspiration for Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling The Dogs of War. Now a south London DJ currently imprisoned in Nigeria has taken up the battle, and Biafrans are once again fighting – and dying – for the dream of their own country

Tucked between the bus garage and the Christ Miracle Gospel Ministries church, Sandlings Close is one of the more non-descript parts of Peckham. There are no gritty high-rise flats, no bearded hipsters running pop-up restaurants. Instead, there are rows of modest, semi-detached council houses, most now privately owned.

It’s the sort of place that SE15’s best-known fictional resident, Derek Trotter, might have retired to had Trotters Independent Traders ever turned a profit. Behind the door of one of these homes, however, lies an organisation that dreams far bigger than just New York, Paris and Peckham.

Welcome to the unlikely headquarters of Radio Biafra, broadcasting every night to an army of Nigerian listeners – not just in Little Lagos, as Peckham is sometimes dubbed, but in 100 countries around the world. It looks like a pirate-radio station, but its agenda goes far beyond music and chat. In the words of Nnamdi Kanu, its director and former DJ in chief, ‘We want a free and independent Biafra. Or death.’

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/01/16/GettyImages-76052069-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqzEtXRB0DXuIn2fl79S5BHU68ZLc4tf4tWlCSM-3sI_E.jpg
Biafran troops resisting federal attack in August 1967

A free and independent where? Mention Biafra today, and most Britons would probably struggle to find its place on a map, never mind its place in one of Britain’s bloodiest colonial epilogues.

In fact, finding Biafra on a map is impossible these days. It existed for just two and a half years, from 1967 to 1970, when, less than a decade after Nigeria gained independence from Britain, the mainly Christian Igbo people formed a breakaway state in the south-east.

Angered by the massacre of tens of thousands of Igbos in the Muslim-dominated north, Biafra formed its own army, produced its own currency, and declared independence. The Igbos, who often describe themselves as the ‘Jews of Africa’, wanted their own Israel. They got something closer to holocaust.

Finding Biafra on a map is impossible these days. It existed for just two and a half years, from 1967 to 1970
Britain, which had drawn Nigeria’s borders arbitrarily, had little patience with locals trying to reshape colonial frontiers. London backed Nigeria’s army in strangling Biafra at birth, supplying weapons and turning a blind eye to a military blockade that resulted in the starvation of about a million people.

Long before Live Aid, it brought the world images of African famine, with emaciated children dying in front of the cameras. Mercenaries and weapons smugglers also ran amok, inspiring a young reporter on the ground called Frederick Forsyth to write his bestselling novel The Dogs of War. For the next few decades, the dream was all but abandoned, with many Igbos leaving Nigeria altogether.

[b]Igbo's around the world unite[b]

Today, Igbo people live everywhere from Canada and Dubai to China. The original Radio Biafra, a true pirate outfit, which broadcast propaganda from a jeep-mounted studio to avoid Nigerian warplanes, fell silent. But eight years ago Kanu restarted it from London, and as the 50th anniversary of the conflict looms, it is once more campaigning for secession. As Kanu once put it, ‘No amount of intimidation, arrest, torture, deprivation will stop Biafra from coming.’

This time, the campaign is also enjoying its very own ‘Brexit boost’. For if Britain doesn’t want to be part of the European superstate, supporters ask, why should Igbos remain part of a disastrous behemoth like Nigeria, with its 250 different ethnicities, 500 tongues and 170 million people?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/01/16/GettyImages-609508778-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq5yQLQqeH37t50SCyM4-zeERf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpg
Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president since 2015

After all, five decades on from the war, the Nigerian state has become a byword for inept, corrupt government, with the world’s 10th biggest oil reserves, yet 60 per cent of people living on less than $1 a day.

‘Brexit asked why Britain should remain in a system that does not fit it,’ says Emma Nmezu, a Radio Biafra DJ and supporter of Kanu’s movement Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). ‘Kanu says it is the same with us and Nigeria.’

Until recently, Kanu was politely ignored by the outside world. To many Igbos, he was at best an expat dreamer, at worst a rabble- rousing shock jock. Then, after years in which nobody took him seriously, the Nigerian government did just that. During a visit to Nigeria 15 months ago, he was arrested by its feared Department of State Security at a hotel in Lagos.


Ever since, he has languished behind the peeling walls of Kuje Prison, where he is now awaiting trial for ‘treasonable felony’, punishable with life imprisonment. One plank of the case against Kanu, 47, is a recorded speech to the 2015 World Igbo Congress in Los Angeles, in which he effectively gave a call to arms.

‘We need guns and we need bullets,’ he declared. ‘We now know that the best way to defend yourself is to be armed, because [Islamist terror group] Boko Haram is everywhere.’ Kanu’s lawyers say that it was just overexcited rhetoric, and that no shiploads of weapons ever crossed the Atlantic. But justified or not, his arrest has turned him from a loudmouth expat into a political prisoner.

In his supporters’ eyes, he is now Peckham’s own Nelson Mandela. Since his arrest, there have been pro-Biafran demonstrations in nearly every country with an Igbo presence, and bigger ones in the Igbo homelands of south-east Nigeria. In the city of Onitsha – the scene of heavy fighting during the war – crowds of 20,000 turned out, holding placards of the saviour from south London alongside the Biafran flag, a red, black and green tricolour emblazoned with a rising yellow sun.


And the blood has been flowing once again. Since the autumn of 2015, at least 150 Nigerians have died in clashes with security forces at pro-Biafran rallies, according to a report in November by Amnesty International, which accused the government of heavy-handed policing and ‘extrajudicial executions’. Hundreds more have been injured and arrested, and several police killed.

Further violence is a near-certainty if Kanu is convicted, a prospect security forces can ill afford while their hands are full with the fight against Boko Haram. Yet the furore over Kanu’s arrest has gone all but unnoticed in Britain, where the 200,000-strong Nigerian community is generally much seen but little heard. In areas like Peckham, though, Nigerians now vie with hipsters for dominance.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/01/16/Nigeria-Tom-Saater-3581-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqdeh_3hDPcNiQCx2ht-bXNZNz8f79EKHChc_sAJzrBo4.jpg
Nnamdi Kanu’s father and wife at the family home

Within the community, Igbos also stand out from Nigeria’s other two big ethnic groups, the Yoruba and the Muslim Hausa (the latter is largely absent from London). ‘Igbos are very entrepreneurial, and they also produce a lot of writers and British politicians,’ says Nels Abbey, a British-Nigerian businessman and former columnist on the black weekly newspaper The Voice.

Most British-Nigerian MPs are of Igbo descent, he points out, including Helen Grant, Britain’s first black female Tory MP, and Chuka Umunna, the former Labour shadow-cabinet minister occasionally tipped as a future PM. Other prominent figures include the rapper Tinie Tempah and the actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who starred in the film adaptation of Half of a Yellow Sun, novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s account of the Biafran war.

Since the autumn of 2015, at least 150 Nigerians have died in clashes with security forces at pro-Biafran rallies
‘In Britain, these people are just seen as “black” MPs, writers, actors, sportspeople, etc, but they’re not,’ Abbey adds. ‘They’re not even just Nigerian – they’re Igbo. Igbos are also sometimes perceived as a bit snobbish, as if they think they’re capable of anything. But it isn’t snobbery if you can back it up. Nnamdi Kanu is a case in point – a guy living in a house in Peckham who thinks he can be a saviour to a nation. That beautiful audacity is typically Igbo.’

Boko Haram: 'Biafrans are still being killed'

Tune into Radio Biafra and that sense of otherness combines with a feeling of persecution. There are frequent references to Boko Haram’s campaigns of church-burnings across northern Nigeria, which have forced up to a million Christians to flee. While Boko Haram has targeted Christians in general rather than Igbos in particular, it has revived memories of the pogroms of 50 years ago.

Radio Biafra DJs like Nmezu insist they are simply highlighting Islamist violence – something they say Britain now fights shy of doing. ‘It was the British who first brought Christianity to us in Biafra,’ said Nmezu, who moved to Britain in 1975.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/01/16/Nigeria-Tom-Saater-3606-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqplGOf-dgG3z4gg9owgQTXAsIcagKWDTsYii0WZbrxoU.jpg
A pro-Biafran activist at a veterans’ cemetery in south-east Nigeria

‘But then they made us part of an Islamic country, where even now Biafrans are still being killed, and where our leader has been thrown in jail. Is Britain a country that still defends freedom of speech? We fear it’s moving away from the values of Christianity towards those of Islam.’

Part of the problem is that Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, is not only a Muslim northerner but an ex-general who fought the Biafrans during the war. He was also a military dictator in the 1980s, ordering soldiers to whip people who did not form orderly queues at bus stops. Much as he now styles himself as a democrat, with such a past, it has not been hard for Radio Biafra to portray him as the enemy.

Like the original station, the modern-day Radio Biafra is mobile, broadcasting sometimes from Peckham and sometimes from Croydon, also home to a big Nigerian community.

Radio Biafra and the dangers of broadcasting

Its DJs are security-conscious, which is perhaps understandable, given Buhari’s record for hunting down opponents abroad. In 1984, his government sent agents to London to kidnap Umaru Dikko, a former minister accused of embezzlement.

They were only thwarted when customs at Stansted opened a crate the Nigerian government claimed was ‘diplomatic baggage’ and found Dikko, drugged, inside. In protest, Britain broke off relations with Nigeria for two years. The Kanu affair has not had the same fallout, but has put the British Government in an awkward spot.


While Kanu’s supporters have lobbied Peckham’s MP, former acting Labour leader Harriet Harman, to press for his release, Buhari’s government is irked that Radio Biafra, banned in Nigeria, is allowed to broadcast from the UK.

British officials say that, as it is internet-based, it needs no broadcasting licence, and is legal as long as it does not breach hate-speech laws. Kanu’s home city is Umuahia, an urban sprawl of 400,000 that was a centre for the colonial administration. In his absence, the mouthpiece of the IPOB campaign is his brother Prince, 43.

In Britain, these people are just seen as “black” MPs, writers, actors, sportspeople, etc, but they’re not - Nels Abbey

Like many better-off Nigerians, the brothers spent time as students in Britain, where Nnamdi settled and took British citizenship, dabbling in property by day and politics by night. ‘My brother was singled out by God for this mission,’ Prince says. ‘Nigeria has been a pretty dire concept from the start – it’s like asking Brits to live together with Kosovans.’

Prince is vague on exactly why his brother was chosen, beyond saying that he had a ‘vision’ around 2006, which took place in Croydon, of all places. But visiting the family home, a compound where geckos prowl in the lush garden, it is clear that both boys were steeped in the Biafran cause from an early age.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/01/16/Nigeria-Tom-Saater-3911-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqAiJQrZkdRSYRHeCDHXkbfzWgikG3VOlQowz84hfNyOk.jpg
Kanu’s brother, Prince, and sister, Princess, in their home city of Umuahia

Their father, His Royal Majesty Eze Israel Okwu Kanu, is a local chief who ran aid convoys during the war, and now hosts meetings for local war veterans. A minute’s walk down the road is the weed-covered underground bunker that was the Biafran forces’ HQ, from where the bulky old transmitters for Radio Biafra used to broadcast.

Prince takes me down its echoing corridors, showing me the modest private living quarters once occupied by the breakaway state’s leader, General Odumegwu Ojukwu. Ojukwu, an urbane Oxford graduate, is revered in Umuahia to this day.

Remembering the past

It was Western education, however, that set his people apart in the first place. While northerners shunned it as a challenge to Islam (a view echoed by Boko Haram), Igbos filled missionary classrooms and prospered, dominating clerical jobs in the civil service and also spreading their influence in the north. But power also bred resentment.

In 1966, following a short-lived military coup by mostly Igbo officers, 30,000 Igbos in the north were killed by machete-wielding gangs.

‘I was a trader in the north. Hausas burnt down my shed and forced us to flee, saying we were infidels,’ says Protos Emanaha, 72, a lieutenant colonel in the Biafran army. ‘I saw them butcher a pregnant woman, slashing her stomach open and taking her baby out to kill it.’

With a Sunday-best white suit hanging off his frail frame, Emanaha is sitting with a dozen other veterans in the Kanu-family parlour. They speak proudly of their David and Goliath war against the Nigerian army, using home-made landmines called ‘Ojukwu buckets’ and mounting ‘suicide squad’ raids in which tiny groups of soldiers would go into battle outnumbered. There is no pride in how things are now.

Despite a government pledge after the war that there would be ‘neither victor nor vanquished’, Biafrans claim they have been starved of state funds. The area claimed by Biafra includes the oil hub of Port Harcourt, yet most roads have potholes.

Even flying the Biafran flag is considered provocative by the police. And in the few cemeteries for the war dead, headstones have been swallowed by the bush. Living casualties of the war also say they got no state help.


‘From 1970 until five years ago, I was begging for alms by the side of the road,’ says wheelchair-bound Major Chuku Usim, 75, who now lives in a home provided by the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, another pressure group.

‘Nigeria has done nothing for me – now all I am begging for is my freedom.’ Yet whether Nnamdi Kanu stays in jail or returns to Peckham, it remains to be seen how many Igbos really want Biafra back. Many accuse him of reopening ethnic wounds best forgotten, and few of his diaspora followers seem keen on direct action.

In the video from Los Angeles, many of the audience look aghast at his pleas to give up a comfortable life in the West and join an armed struggle. None the less, the dream of the nation that lived for just 30 months still has much romantic appeal. And be they in California or Croydon, many pro-Biafrans still often find themselves wondering how different west Africa might be today had Biafra survived.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2017/01/16/Nigeria-Tom-Saater-4028-large_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqLiZnSJs8x6dOfuqFtiWqEd49jcv1EHUuQWAXIpyp8BA.jpg
Major Chuku Usim was injured in the Biafran war

Among them is Frederick Forsyth, who embraced the cause and was once made an honorary chief by a Biafran group in south London. To this day he maintains that Britain badly let down the Igbos.

‘They are shrewd, hard-working business people who are dedicated to education and self-improvement, and Britain couldn’t have run Nigeria as a colony without them,’ Forsyth says. ‘Biafra could have been the most successful state in Africa.’

‘Some of what Kanu says is racist nonsense, some of it is Braveheart-style patriot,’ adds Nels Abbey. ‘But to the rural guy on the ground, hearing someone in London, who’s sophisticated enough to run a radio station, that ticks a lot of boxes. The dream Kanu taps into has never quite gone away, and if there was a peaceful referendum on independence, it would probably get carried.’

President Buhari ruled out such a referendum last year. Then again, as Britain itself now knows, referendum movements that once seemed marginal can quickly gather pace. In the meantime, every evening around 7pm, Radio Biafra’s remaining DJs are on air, broadcasting messages in support of the Peckham prophet.

In Sandlings Close at least, the half yellow sun will never set.

MZLady39:
Akintom,
Brother...so........what's the point?
Everyone knows that America is becoming more secular....with all of the distractions that exist.
Are you moving to America?

Homepage : Society : Hundreds of 'tortured' Bangladeshi women flee Saudi Arabia
Hundreds of 'tortured' Bangladeshi women flee Saudi Arabia

Diana Alghoul

Hundreds of 'tortured' Bangladeshi women flee Saudi Arabia
[img]https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/file/getimagecustom/160967bd-28e5-4698-b9a6-22239ebda1f6/850/479[/img]
Indonesian activists hunger striking outside Saudi embassy in protest of abuse of migrants [Getty]
Date of publication: 2 May, 2017
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The Bangladeshi embassy in Riyadh estimates that there are around 329 women seeking refuge inside the embassy waiting to return home after horror stories of mistreatment and abuse. Tags: Kafala system, sponsorship, Bangladesh, migrant rights
Naseeba* arrived in Saudi Arabia after being promised a career as a nurse assistant in Saudi Arabia. She left her home country Bangladesh with high hopes of earning a decent living and building a new life for herself and her family.

She was guaranteed the job she had applied for and had trustfully opened her arms to the opportunity, but her story took a bitter turn after she landed inside the kingdom.

“They promised me a job as a nurse assistant,” she told Bangladeshi newspaper Bdnews24, “but when I landed, they assigned me as a house cleaner and forced me to take it. They tortured me throughout.”

Naseeba eventually managed to escape her ordeal after fleeing to the Bangladeshi embassy, where she is now staying in an overcrowded camp awaiting to return to her home country.

She is one of hundreds of Bangladeshi women that have fled their Saudi employers. The Bangladeshi embassy in Riyadh estimates that there are currently around 329 women seeking refuge inside the embassy awaiting to return. More than 500 were returned to Bangladesh at the end of last month.

There are also 74 women in the Bangladeshi Consulate General in Jeddah.

The escapees came with a range of horror stories of being mistreated. Many were lied to about their job role before arriving in Saudi Arabia. Stories of torture and sexual abuse are also all too common within the camps.

The escapees came with a range of horror stories of being mistreated. Many were lied to about their job role before arriving in Saudi Arabia. Stories of torture and sexual abuse are also all too common within the camps
Despite escaping, they are still not safe. Their lives are hanging on a thread while they are sardined inside camps, not knowing when they will be sent back home. Because the camps are so overcrowded, many women have fallen ill.

While devastating, the state of these women should not be of a shock. Saudi Arabia, along with other countries in the Middle East practice a controversial sponsorship system, commonly known as the ‘kafala’ system, a system built on institutional racism, which effectively makes migrant workers property of their employees.

When a migrant worker enters a country that practices the kafala system, their passports are often confiscated and their movement is monitored by the employee, who is deemed legally responsible for the migrant workers as the system strips them of their autonomy and their basic human rights.

More recently, the abuse of migrant workers are recorded on social media, in sadistic attempts to gain followers and fame.

A recent example of this is a Saudi Snapchat user finding herself in the Saudi Snapchat hall-of-fame by recording videos of herself visiting houses across the country to interrogate housemaids.

Read more: Saudi Snapchatter targets and terrifies 'black magic' housemaids
She is called by employers across the country when the domestic worker is suspected to have placed a curse on the household, or to have performed "black magic", or even when a domestic worker has been suspected of lying about their religion.

The evidence that the kafala system is effectively allowing migrant workers to be dehumanised and subject to slave-like conditions is growing at an overwhelming rate.

Social media activists are able to trace experiences of individual victims, and are becoming increasingly able to translate reports and cases to different languages and spread them across media outlets.

Yet despite this, governments that practice the kafala system are showing little desire to implement genuine change and abolish the oppressive system as a whole.


(* Names have been changed as victims have requested anonymity)

Nigerian pastor, Tim Omotoso charged with human trafficking,sexual exploitation in South Africa
[img]https://images.dailytrust.com.ng/cms/gall_content/2017/5/2017_5$large_Pastor_Tim.jpg[/img]


By . | Publish Date: May 3 2017 7:54PM
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Nigerian pastor, Tim Omotoso charged with human trafficking,sexual exploitation in South Africa
Flamboyant Nigerian televangelist appeared in a South African court on Wednesday facing 22 charges of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Tim Omotoso, 58, was arrested on April 21 when he landed in the southern city of Port Elizabeth, initially facing two charges of sexual assault and two of trafficking.
A flamboyant Nigerian televangelist appeared in a South African court on Wednesday facing 22 charges of human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

Tim Omotoso, 58, was arrested on April 21 when he landed in the southern city of Port Elizabeth, initially facing two charges of sexual assault and two of trafficking.

But by Wednesday, 18 more people had laid charges.

“He is facing numerous charges of human trafficking and sexual exploitation,” National Prosecution Authority spokesman Tshepo Ndwalaza told AFP.

“He is facing about 22 charges, but this figure can increase again as more people are coming forward to testify against him,” added Ndwalaza.

Omotoso will return to court on Thursday to apply for bail.

Dozens of his supporters, mostly women, staged a protest outside the court, demanding his release.(AFP)

Omotoso is accused of luring women and young girls from his churches across the country to his luxury home in the coastal resort town of Umhlanga Rocks near Durban where he allegedly assaulted them.

He was arrested at Port Elizabeth airport after being on reportedly been on the run for several days.

http://entertainment.ie/tv/news/Gardai-investigating-Stephen-Fry-under-blasphemy-laws-for-Gay-Byrne-interview/393075.htm#

Home>TV>TV News>Gardai investigating Stephen Fry under blasphemy laws for Gay Byrne interview Gardai investigating Stephen Fry under blasphemy laws for Gay Byrne interview
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It's been confirmed that a Gardai investigation for blasphemy has been opened relating to comments made by Stephen Fry in a 2015 interview with Gay Byrne.

The Irish Independent reports that a member of the public made the allegation at Ennis Garda Station following the broadcast. Gardai in Donnybrook - where RTE is headquartered - then contacted the complainant a source revealed that an investigation into the interview is now under way.

The person who made the report at Ennis Garda Station explained to the Irish Independent that "(he) told the Garda I wanted to report Fry for uttering blasphemy and RTE for publishing/broadcasting it and that (he) believed these were criminal offences under the Defamation Act 2009." The person, however, said that he was not personally offended by the comments, but that he "simply believed that the comments made by Fry on RTÉ were criminal blasphemy and that I was doing my civic duty by reporting a crime."

Here's Stephen Fry's comments that started the investigation.



Ireland's blasphemy laws, however, are largely unenforceable.

Under the Defamation Act of 2009, a person can be fined up to €25,000 per offense for making blasphemous comments. However, the Act also states that " it shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates."

The Irish Independent's source also stated that it was "highly unlikely" that a prosecution would take place, but confirmed that the investigation was underway and that a file would eventually be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

zionmade:
Let me explain to u wat u re asking.
Offering is strictly between God and man. Now watch ur steps u are getting into d middle. For u to open ur mouth to ask someone wat is his maximum offering just to create and avenue for daughters of philistines to come and mock something dat is sacred means u dnt fear d God u serve. Every single insult to God and his church altered on this thread will be on ur head.

Wen d bible says dat a perfect man is one who can bridle his tongue. It goes a long way to show wat serious impact our tongues can make in our walk with God.

TimmyPapa:
There Is one thing u guys don't knw Abut d bible..
The bible only contains Wats pertaining to us..wat concerns us an Wats edifice us..so that mean anything dat dus not edifices U... s not in d bible... nd d bible was Writen by men of God throug inspiration tru revelation so only wa is shown to them they write down...so ma friend GoD created everyfin... if not may b u can enlighten us and tell us wu u think created d other planets

felixomor:
Firstly.
Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning God Made the Universe".... (GNT)
The Universe encompasses all planets and everything pertaining to space and matter.

felixomor:
Secondly, please OP have u seen any of these other planets you have mentioned with your eyes or someone told you? (Just asking)

annunaki2:
Islam keeps descending to new lows everyday, the demonic spirit of Islam is certainly what is pushing these vermins to this lunacy.

Here Are the Ancient Sites ISIS Has Damaged and Destroyed


Shocking destruction in the Syrian city of Palmyra is part of the militant group's ongoing campaign against archaeology.
By Andrew Curry, National Geographic
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 1, 2015

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2015/09/isisarch/1isisarch.adapt.1190.1.jpg


The ancient city of Palmyra, located in war-torn Syria, flourished as a Roman trading outpost around A.D. 200. ISIS militants seized it in May, and are destroying some of its historic buildings.
PHOTOGRAPH BY YOUSSEF BADAWI, EPA/COBIS
Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria continue their war on the region’s cultural heritage, attacking archaeological sites with bulldozers and explosives.

The so-called Islamic State (ISIS) released a video that shocked the world last month by showing the fiery destruction of the Temple of Baalshamin, one of the best-preserved ruins at the Syrian site of Palmyra. Last weekend, explosions were reported at another Palmyra temple, dedicated to the ancient god Baal; a United Nation agency says satellite images show that larger temple has largely been destroyed.

The destruction is part of a propaganda campaign that includes videos of militants rampaging through Iraq's Mosul Museum with pickaxes and sledgehammers, and the dynamiting of centuries-old Christian and Muslim shrines.

ISIS controls large stretches of Syria, along with northern and western Iraq. There's little to stop its militants from plundering and destroying sites under their control in a region known as the cradle of civilization.

The militant group is just one of many factions fighting for control of Syria, where a civil war has left more than 230,000 dead and millions more homeless.

The group claims the destruction of ancient sites is religiously motivated; Its militants have targeted well-known ancient sites along with more modern graves and shrines belonging to other Muslim sects, citing idol worship to justify their actions. At the same time, ISIS has used looting as a moneymaking venture to finance military operations.

(Read: ISIS Destruction of Ancient Sites Hits Mostly Muslim Targets.)

“It’s both propagandistic and sincere,” says Columbia University historian Christopher Jones, who has chronicled the damage on his blog. “They see themselves as recapitulating the early history of Islam.”

A guide to cultural sites that ISIS has damaged or destroyed so far:

[center]SYRIA[/center]

PALMYRA
Palmyra thrived for centuries in the desert east of Damascus as an oasis and stop for caravans on the Silk Road. Part of the Roman Empire, it was a thriving, wealthy metropolis. The city-state reached its peak in the late 3rd century, when it was ruled by Queen Zenobia and briefly rebelled against Rome.

Zenobia failed, and Palmyra was re-conquered and destroyed by Roman armies in A.D. 273. Its colonnaded avenues and impressive temples were preserved by the desert climate, and in the 20th century the city was one of Syria’s biggest tourist destinations.

(Read: How Ancient Palmyra, Now in ISIS's Grip, Grew Rich and Powerful.)

ISIS seized the modern town of Palmyra and the ancient ruins nearby were seized in May. The militants initially promised to leave the site’s columns and temples untouched. Those promises were empty: In August, they publicly executed Khaled al-Asaad, a Syrian archaeologist who oversaw excavations at the site for decades, and hung his headless body from a column.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/2015/08/26/palmyraagain/2palmyraagain.adapt.352.1.jpg
Picture of Isis allegedly blowing up part of Palmyra
The Temple of Baal Shamin at Palmyra was attacked last month by ISIS fighters using improvised explosives. The group released photos of the destruction, and satellite images have since confirmed the Roman-era building was wiped out.
PHOTOGRAPH BY KYODO, AP

And the group released photos last month of militants rigging the 1,900-year-old Temple of Baalshamin with explosives and blowing it up. It was one of Palmyra’s best-preserved buildings, originally dedicated to a Phoenician storm god. Now it is nothing but rubble.

Just days later, explosions were reported at the Temple of Baal, a nearby structure that was one of the site’s largest, and a United Nations agency says the building was flattened.

MAR ELIAN MONASTERY
The Christian monastery was captured in August, when ISIS militants captured the Syrian town of al-Qaryatain near Palmyra. Dedicated to a 4th-century saint, it was an important pilgrimage site and sheltered hundreds of Syrian Christians. Bulldozers were reportedly used to topple its walls, and ISIS posted pictures of the destruction on Twitter.

APAMEA
A rich Roman-era trading city, Apamea has been badly looted since the beginning of Syria's civil war, before ISIS appeared. Satellite imagery shows dozens of pits dug across the site; previously unknown Roman mosaics have reportedly been excavated and removed for sale. ISIS is said to take a cut from sales of ancient artifacts, making tens of millions of dollars to fund their operations.

DURA-EUROPOS
A Greek settlement on the Euphrates not far from Syria's border with Iraq, Dura-Europos later became one of Rome's easternmost outposts. It housed the world's oldest known Christian church, a beautifully decorated synagogue, and many other temples and Roman-era buildings. Satellite imagery shows a cratered landscape inside the city's mud-brick walls, evidence of widespread destruction by looters.

MARI
Mari flourished in the Bronze Age, between 3000 and 1600 B.C. Archaeologists have discovered palaces, temples, and extensive archives written on clay tablets that shed light on the early days of civilization in the region. According to reports from locals and satellite imagery, the site, especially the royal palace, is being looted systematically.

Picture of the Temple of Bel in Syria

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The Temple of Baal was one of the main attractions at Palmyra, a Roman-era trading outpost in the desert northeast of Damascus, Syria. A UN agency says it was mostly flattened over the weekend by explosions detonated by ISIS.
PHOTOGRAPH BY SANDRA AUGER, REUTERS
IRAQ
HATRA
Built in the third century B.C., Hatra was the capital of an independent kingdom on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Its combination of Greek- and Roman-influenced architecture and Eastern features testify to its prominence as a trading center on the Silk Road. Hatra was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985.

In 2014, Hatra was taken over by ISIS and reportedly used as an ammo dump and training camp. A video released by ISIS in April 2015 showed fighters using sledgehammers and automatic weapons to destroy sculptures in several of the site’s largest buildings. "The destruction of Hatra marks a turning point in the appalling strategy of cultural cleansing underway in Iraq," UNESCO head Irina Bokova said at the time.

NINEVEH
Ancient Assyria was one of the first true empires, expanding aggressively across the Middle East and controlling a vast stretch of the ancient world between 900 and 600 B.C. The Assyrian kings ruled their realm from a series of capitals in what is today northern Iraq. Nineveh was one of them, flourishing under the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib around 700 B.C. At one point, Nineveh was the largest city in the world.

Its location on the outskirts of Mosul—part of the modern city is built over Nineveh's ruins—put it in ISIS's crosshairs when the group took over the city in 2014. Many of the site's sculptures were housed in the Mosul Museum (see entry below), and some were damaged during the rampage through the museum documented on video. Men were also shown smashing half-human, half-animal guardian statues called lamassus on Nineveh's ancient Nirgal Gate. “I’m not sure there’s much left to destroy in Mosul,” says Columbia’s Jones.

MOSUL MUSEUM AND LIBRARIES
Reports of looting at Mosul's libraries and universities began to surface almost as soon as ISIS occupied the city last summer. Centuries-old manuscripts were stolen, and thousands of books disappeared into the shadowy international art market. Mosul University's library was burned in December. In late February, the ISIS campaign escalated: Mosul's central public library, a landmark built in 1921, was rigged with explosives and razed, together with thousands of manuscripts and instruments used by Arab scientists.

The book burning coincided with the release of the video showing ISIS fighters rampaging through the Mosul Museum, toppling statues and smashing others with hammers. The museum was Iraq's second largest, after the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. Statues included masterpieces from Hatra and Nineveh.

Margarete van Ess, head of the German Archaeological Institute's Iraq field office, says that a trained eye can tell that about half of the artifacts destroyed in the video are copies; many of the originals are in the Iraq Museum.

NIMRUD
Nimrud was the first Assyrian capital, founded 3,200 years ago. Its rich decoration reflected the empire's power and wealth. The site was excavated beginning in the 1840s by British archaeologists, who sent dozens of its massive stone sculptures to museums around the world, including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum in London. Many originals remained in Iraq.

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Picture of nineveh, iraq
The walls of Nineveh were built around A.D. 700 to protected the Assyrian capital, at the time probably the largest city in the world. In February, ISIS fighters released video of fighters smashing sculptures and gates at the ancient site.
PHOTOGRAPH BY RANDY OLSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

The site itself is massive: An earthen wall surrounds 890 acres. The Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities says ISIS bulldozed parts of the site, but the extent of the damage isn't yet clear. Some of the city was never uncovered and remains underground—protected, one hopes.

KHORSABAD
Khorsabad is another ancient Assyrian capital, a few miles from Mosul. The palace there was built between 717 and 706 B.C. by Assyria's King Sargon II. Its reliefs and statues were remarkably well preserved, with traces of the original paint still decorating depictions of Assyrian victories and royal processions.

Most of the reliefs and many of the statues were removed during French excavations in the mid-1800s and by teams from Chicago's Oriental Institute in the 1920s and '30s, and are now in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad as well as in Chicago and the Louvre in Paris. It's not clear what part of the site ISIS targeted.

"We don't have photography showing how far the damage might go," van Ess says. "The only information right now is from local people and Iraqi antiquities ministry."

MAR BEHNAM MONASTERY
Established in the 4th century, the monastery was dedicated to an early Christian saint. The holy site, maintained since the late 1800s by Syriac Catholic monks, survived the Mongol hordes in the 1200s but fell to ISIS in March. The extremists used explosives to destroy the saint’s tomb and its elaborate carvings and decorations.

MOSQUE OF THE PROPHET YUNUS
Mosul's Mosque of the Prophet Yunus was dedicated to the biblical figure Jonah, considered a prophet by many Muslims. But ISIS adheres to an extreme interpretation of Islam that sees veneration of prophets like Jonah as forbidden. On July 24, ISIS fighters evacuated the mosque and demolished it with explosives.

Like many of Iraq's sites, the mosque was a layer cake of history, built on top of a Christian church that in turn had been built on one of the two mounds that made up the Assyrian city of Nineveh.

IMAM DUR MAUSOLEUM
The Imam Dur Mausoleum, not far from the city of Samarra, was a magnificent specimen of medieval Islamic architecture and decoration. It was blown up last October.