Group razes Timbuktu’s heritage sites

The UN cultural body Unesco watched in horror yesterday as an armed group ravaged shrines in the fabled city of Timbuktu which it had listed as endangered sites just days before. The main watchdog for protecting some of history’s greatest treasures interrupted its annual meeting being held in Russia’s cultural capital to draw global attention to news filtering in from the ancient African caravan town. There, gunmen from a militant group, with ties to Al Qaeda, had attacked tombs and vowed to destroy every last shrine standing in an act similar to the 2001 destruction of ancient Buddhist relics in Afghanistan by the Taliban. “They are armed and have surrounded the sites with pick-up trucks. The population is just looking on helplessly,” local journalist Yeya Tandina said by telephone.Witnesses said Ansar Dine had already destroyed the mausoleums of three local saints - Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi El Mokhtar and Alfa Moya - and at least seven tombs.“The mausoleum doesn’t exist any more and the cemetery is as bare as a soccer pitch,” local teacher Abdoulaye Boulahi said of the Mahmoud burial place. “There’s about 30 of them breaking everything up with pick-axes and hoes. They’ve put their Kalashnikovs down by their side. These are shocking scenes for the people in Timbuktu.”“They have raped Timbuktu today. It is a crime,” said a source close to a local imam. Locals said the attackers had threatened to destroy all of the 16 main mausoleum sites by the end of the day. Witnesses in Timbuktu said the gangs had destroyed the mausoleum of a saint whose 15th century tomb was already desecrated in May by members of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, another of the groups in control in the north. “As I am speaking to you, Islamists from Ansar Dine have destroyed the mausoleum of saint Sidi Mahmoud,” said one witness. “They are now in the process of destroying the mausoleum (of Sidi Moctar),” added a local journalist. “They have said they will destroy everything.” In St Petersburg, Unesco session chairwoman Yeleonor Mitrofanova said: “This is tragic news for us all and even more so for the inhabitants of Timbuktu who have cherished and preserved this monument over more than seven centuries.” “I appeal to all those engaged in the conflict in Timbuktu to exercise their responsibility - for the sake of future generations, spare the legacy of their past,” she pleaded. The Paris-based agency’s general director Irina Bokova said she could confirm that Islamist militants from the Ansar Dine group had already destroyed three sacred tombs in a town also known as the ‘City of 333 Saints’. “There is no justification for such wanton destruction,” Bokova said in a statement. The rampage added a bitterly painful new cultural dimension to Mali’s uprising that started with an army coup in March and has since unravelled into conflict between rival groups of gunmen as well as the state. “Ansar Dine will today destroy every mausoleum in the city. All of them, without exception,” the militants’ spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama said through an interpreter from the city. “God is unique,” he added. “All of this is haram. We are all Muslims. Unesco is what?” The raid came as a particularly brutal blow to Unesco because the heritage committee had only on Thursday placed both Timbuktu and the nearby Tomb of Askia on its List of World Heritage in Danger. Unesco said the decision aimed “to raise cooperation and support for the sites threatened by the armed conflict in the region”, and expressed concerns that ancient artefacts could be smuggled out of the country abroad. The UN agency appeared shocked that gunman had decided to simply erase all trace of the treasures instead. “I call on all the members of the (Unesco) committee, who represent the international community, to join me in expressing sadness and concern for the survival of this important World Heritage property,” Mitrofanova told the session while reading from an official Unesco statement. The destruction in Mali is reminiscent of the Taliban blowing up the giant Buddhas of the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan - an ancient Buddhist shrine on the Silk Road and a world heritage site - in March 2001 after branding them un-Islamic. Mali has been gripped by deadly chaos since a March 22 coup effectively incapacitated the government’s army. Tuareg rebels who oppose the state and represent descendants of a group that is believed to have founded Timbuktu at the end of the fifth century spearheaded the initial armed takeover of the north of the country. They were soon joined by the Ansar Dine rebels with formal ties to Al Qaeda who have since taken the upper hand. Tensions have been running high between the two groups because of their differing objectives. Deadly clashes in the resulting fight for supremacy have made Gao - home to the Tomb of Askia - and Timbuktu into focal points of unrest. France’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks on what it called “a part of the soul of this prestigious Sahelian city”.The sites date from Timbuktu’s Golden Age in the 16th century.Located on an old Saharan trading route that saw salt from the Arab north exchanged for gold and slaves from black Africa to the south, Timbuktu blossomed in the 16th century as an Islamic seat of learning, home to priests, scribes and jurists.Mali had in recent years sought to create a desert tourism industry around Timbuktu but even before April’s rebellion many tourists were being discouraged by a spate of kidnappings of Westerners in the region claimed by Al Qaeda-linked groups.Mali’s neighbours are seeking UN backing for a military intervention to stabilise the country but Security Council members say they need more details on the mission being planned.But on Friday, another militant group in the lawless north, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao), threatened any countries which join a military intervention force to end the crisis. As well as three historic mosques, Timbuktu has 16 cemeteries and mausoleums, according to the Unesco website. It is also home to nearly 100,000 ancient manuscripts, some dating back to the 12th century, preserved in family homes and private libraries under the care of religious scholars.