Monuments men version syrienne

Le titre de cette entrée réfère au livre et au film racontant la mission d'un groupe chargé par le Général Eisenhower de suivre les alliés pour récupérer et protéger les oeuvres volées par les Nazis pendant la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale. Voici le récit du travail d'une groupe d'activistes qui tentent de préserver des trésors anciens de la Syrie.

 "Salem, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, is part of an underground network of activists secretly documenting the ransacking of Syria's ancient treasures. ISIS's handiwork appears often in their photos. What antiquities the militant group doesn't destroy, it steals to peddle on the international black market—a trade some experts claim is increasingly vital to the organization's finances. "The looting is much more intensive and criminalized in ISIS-held territories," says Amr Al-Azm, an archaeologist who has been working with the network from his home in the United States and in Turkey. And these ISIS-held areas are all the more risky for the underground preservationists like Salem. "We have to be really careful, especially with ISIS," Al-Azm explains. "It's a lot of money and a real criminal underworld, not a bunch of geeks playing game cards and getting a little frisky with them."

 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/how-isis-cashes-illegal-antiquities-trade