ISTANBUL
— The reports are like something out of a distant era of ancient
conquests: entire villages emptied, with hundreds taken prisoner, others
kept as slaves; the destruction of irreplaceable works of art; a tax on
religious minorities, payable in gold.
A
rampage reminiscent of Tamerlane or Genghis Khan, perhaps, but in
reality, according to reports by residents, activist groups and the
assailants themselves, a description of the modus operandi of the
Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate this week. The militants have
prosecuted a relentless campaign in Iraq and Syria against what have
historically been religiously and ethnically diverse areas with traces
of civilizations dating to ancient Mesopotamia.
The latest to face the militants’ onslaught are the Assyrian Christians of northeastern Syria, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, some speaking a modern version of Aramaic, the language of Jesus.
Assyrian
leaders have counted 287 people taken captive, including 30 children
and several dozen women, along with civilian men and fighters from
Christian militias, said Dawoud Dawoud, an Assyrian political activist
who had just toured the area, in the vicinity of the Syrian city of
Qamishli. Thirty villages had been emptied, he said.
The Syriac Military Council, a local Assyrian militia, put the number of those taken at 350.
Reached
in Qamishli, Adul Ahad Nissan, 48, an accountant and music composer who
fled his village before the brunt of the fighting, said a close friend
and his wife had been captured.
“I
used to call them every other day. Now their mobile is off,” he said.
“I tried and tried. It’s so painful not to see your friends again.”
Members
of the Assyrian diaspora have called for international intervention,
and on Thursday, warplanes of the United States-led coalition struck
targets in the area, suggesting that the threat to a minority enclave
had galvanized a reaction, as a similar threat did in the Kurdish city
of Kobani last year.
The
assault on the Assyrian communities comes amid battles for a key
crossroads in the area. But to residents, it also seems to be part of
the latest effort by the Islamic State militants to eradicate or
subordinate anyone and anything that does not comport with their vision
of Islamic rule — whether a minority sect that has survived centuries of
conquerors and massacres or, as the world was reminded on Thursday, the
archaeological traces of pre-Islamic antiquity.
An Islamic State video showed the militants smashing statues
with sledgehammers inside the Mosul Museum, in northern Iraq, that
showcases recent archaeological finds from the ancient Assyrian empire.
The relics include items from the palace of King Sennacherib, who in the
Byron poem “came down like the wolf on the fold” to destroy his
enemies.
“A
tragedy and catastrophic loss for Iraqi history and archaeology beyond
comprehension,” Amr al-Azm, the Syrian anthropologist and historian,
called the destruction on his Facebook page.
“These
are some of the most wonderful examples of Assyrian art, and they’re
part of the great history of Iraq, and of Mesopotamia,” he said in an
interview. “The whole world has lost this.”
Islamic
State militants seized the museum — which had not yet opened to the
public — when they took over Mosul in June and have repeatedly
threatened to destroy its collection.
In
the video, put out by the Islamic State’s media office for Nineveh
Province — named for an ancient Assyrian city — a man explains, “The
monuments that you can see behind me are but statues and idols of people
from previous centuries, which they used to worship instead of God.”
A
message flashing on the screen read: “Those statues and idols weren’t
there at the time of the Prophet nor his companions. They have been
excavated by Satanists.”
The
men, some bearded and in traditional Islamic dress, others clean-shaven
in jeans and T-shirts, were filmed toppling and destroying artifacts.
One is using a power tool to deface a winged lion much like a pair on
display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS
or ISIL, has presented itself as a modern-day equivalent of the
conquering invaders of Sennacherib’s day, or as Islamic zealots smashing
relics out of religious conviction.
TURKEY
Qamishli
Hasaka
Area of abductions
Khabur River
Raqqa
Deir al-Zour
SYRIA
IRAQ
SYRIAN DESERT
Yet
in the past, the militants have veered between ideology and pragmatism
in their relationship to antiquity — destroying historic mosques, tombs
and artifacts that they consider forms of idolatry, but also selling
more portable objects to fill their coffers.
The
latest eye-catching destruction could have a more strategic aim, said
Mr. Azm, who closely follows the Syrian conflict and opposes both the
Islamic State and the government.
“It’s
all a provocation,” he said, aimed at accelerating a planned effort,
led by Iraqi forces and backed by United States warplanes, to take back
Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.
“They
want a fight with the West because that’s how they gain credibility and
recruits,” Mr. Azm said. “They want boots on the ground. They want
another Falluja,” a reference to the 2004 battle in which United States
Marines, in the largest ground engagement since Vietnam, took that Iraqi
city from Qaeda-linked insurgents whose organization would eventually
give birth to the Islamic State.
The
Islamic State has been all-inclusive in its violence against the modern
diversity of Iraq and Syria. It considers Shiite Muslims apostates, and
has destroyed Shiite shrines and massacred more than 1,000 Shiite Iraqi
soldiers. It has demanded that Christians living in its territories pay
the jizya, a tax on religious minorities dating to early Islamic rule.
Islamic
State militants have also slaughtered fellow Sunni Muslims who reject
their rule, killing hundreds of members of the Shueitat tribe in eastern
Syria in one clash alone. They have also massacred and enslaved members of the Yazidi sect in Iraq.
The
latest to face its wrath, the Assyrian Christians, consider themselves
the descendants of the ancient Assyrians and have survived often bloody
Arab, Mongolian and Ottoman conquests, living in modern times as a small
minority community periodically under threat. Thousands fled northern
Iraq last year as Islamic State militants swept into Nineveh Province.
Early
in February, according to Assyrian groups inside and outside Syria,
came a declaration from the Islamic State that Christians in a string of
villages along the Khabur River in Syrian Hasaka Province would have to
take down their crosses and pay the jizya, traditionally paid in gold.
That prompted some to flee, and others to take a more active part in fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish militias, helping take back some territory.
Islamic
State militants hit back, hard, driving more than 1,000 Assyrian
Christians from their homes, some crossing the Khabur River, a tributary
of the Euphrates, in small boats by night.
Local
Assyrian leaders were negotiating with the Islamic State through
mediators, said Mr. Dawoud, the deputy president of the Assyrian
Democratic Organization. The Assyrian International News Agency, a
website sharing community news, said Arab tribal leaders were mediating
talks to exchange the prisoners for captured Islamic State fighters and
that the Islamic State had agreed to free Christian civilians but not
fighters.
Mr.
Nissan, the accountant, described how he and others crammed into a
truck, paying exorbitant rates, to escape. Earlier, he said, Nusra Front
fighters and other Syrian insurgents had looted the village without
harming anyone, but he feared ISIS more because “they consider us
infidels.”
“I
made a vow, when I return I want to kiss the soil of my village and
pray in the church,” he said, adding that he had composed a song for the
residents of Nineveh Province when they were displaced a few months
ago.
“I called it ‘Greetings from Khabur to Nineveh,’ “ he said. “Now we’re facing the same scenario.”
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