نهب دورا-أوروبوس: داعش والتجارة غير المشروعة في القطع الأثريّة
Syria’s cultural heritage has been an early casualty of this conflict through the systematic looting and deliberate destruction of many of its archaeological sites and monuments. So, when ISIS began to occupy large swathes of territory in Syria in the latter half of 2013 and early 2014, it came upon an already-thriving trade in looted antiquities.
Recognizing that as a potential source of income, ISIS institutionalized and intensified this process of looting in areas under its control at sites like Dura-Europos, and Mari. This coincided with an exponential increase in popularity of social media platforms like Facebook in the region which became one of the main routes to sell and traffic looted antiquities.
Then 2015 heralded a darker and more sinister manifestation of ISIS’s control and exploitation of cultural heritage, which can only be described as cultural atrocities. This included the destruction of numerous religious sites and monuments most famously, temple of Bel at Palmyra. This paper aims to trace the evolution of the systematic looting and destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage by ISIS and other groups through the site of Dura-Europos and the role of social media like Facebook in facilitating and amplifying this phenomenon.