An affront to humanity: Syria's cultural heritage under fire
Published in The McGill Tribune.
A brutal war is grinding Syria’s magnificent cultural heritage into dust. In addition to the conflict’s horrific human toll—with over 220,000 killed to date, according to the United Nations—remarkable monuments that have stood for millennia are currently threatened or under fire. Syria’s historical treasures such as the ancient Norias of Hama, and the medieval Citadel of Aleppo encompass irreplaceable structures and artifacts that document a thousand years of Roman and Byzantine civilization, the first years of Islam and Christianity, and successive periods of great achievement by many cultures...
Young boy sits atop Palmyran antiquity. Photo: Alessandra Kocman