One week in the Near East

23 October 2016

Monday. The battle to retake the town of Mosul from the ISIS extremists has begun. The Peshmerga Kurds are on the frontline, backed up by the Iraqi forces and coalition bombardment. The battle will be difficult and long. Mosul was the first town to fall into the hands of ISIS. The jihadists wasted no time in burning thousands of ancient manuscripts and books, and likewise reducing to rubble the Assyrian and Parthian statuary conserved in the city’s museum.

The Iraqi-Kurdish soldiers who slowly advance discover installations set up by ISIS mercenaries: tunnels, booby-traps, mines. How many people will perish before Mosul is liberated and her inhabitants are once again able to resume living a normal life?

Tuesday. Concerned about my university colleagues, I send an e-mail to M to tell him that my thoughts are very much with him and his compatriots. A reply comes very quickly, with some backdated news. It seems that he stayed at Mosul until the beginning 2015, notwithstanding very difficult circumstances, especially for him, being an intellectual with a passion for science and for liberty. ISIS torched the university library, a library that had already been destroyed in 2003, and which the university had attempted to recreate with the assistance of Europeans and Americans. He eventually managed to escape to Bagdad, but part of his family stayed put. His house was confiscated. Today, a refugee in Iraqi Kurdistan, M is waiting for his town to be liberated and is trying to focus on his work so as to occupy his mind, rather than to constantly shudder at the thought of not being able to see his family, friends and neighbours again…

Wednesday. Aleppo, the City of Martyrs, looks ever more like a heap of ruins. In the past month, Russian and Syrian bombs have rained down on the town and have already caused more than 500 casualties, many of whom are children. The town has been besieged for far too long. The town has not received supplies since July: food shortages and hunger are indiscriminately killing its trapped inhabitants.

Thursday. A colleague has written to me to see if something can be done for N, who fled their country in 2013. Like many of our other Syrian and Iraqi colleagues, he defended his thesis abroad, before returning home to Aleppo to teach future generations in his capacity as a professor at the university. He has also translated a number of scientific works into Arabic in order to render them accessible to his students. Since 2013, N has been a refugee in Turkey, where he held a temporary post for a while; today he is without any means.

Friday. Finally some positive news. Thierry Mandon, the Secrétaire d'État chargé de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche has announced the launching of a programme to receive scientists in danger. This announcement follows the report by Liora Israël on the same subject. A system of this kind already exists in the United States and various European countries. For example, in Germany the Philipp Schwartz initiative of the Humboldt Foundation has already made it possible to host (for two years) 23 foreign scientists in German scientific institutions, more than half of whom are Syrians

Saturday and Sunday. Recreational activities and studies with the students. The science festival, which is held every year in October, has once again provided an opportunity to raise awareness in the young of the history and the cultural heritage of the ancient Near East. Primary and secondary school students slipped into the shoes, as it were, of apprentice scribes who learnt to read and write in cuneiform in Babylon some 4,000 years ago. Nothing could be more gratifying than to see these classes of pupils aged from seven years to 18 become enthused about writing in clay and the sexagesimal counting system. In the United Kingdom, as part of the Gilgamesh Epic Project for Young People, youngsters, supervised by the Enheduanna Association (Zipang), and conservators from the British Museum were grabbed by this epic and put on a show. Let us hope that such initiatives will increase in number, because education is unquestionably the most effective ‘weapon’ against barbarity, and it can also be fun!