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The president of the Iraqi Artists Society is on a mission to return a painting by Faeq Hassanwho he calls Iraqs Picassoto the Iraqi state. The 1968 painting, a dramatic depiction of Saladins famous 12th century conquest of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, was due to be auctioned at Christies Dubai last month, but was withdrawn after he sent a letter to the auction house. I am like Sherlock Holmes, says Qasim al-Sabti, the Artists Society president.

In the letter, sent on 4 March, Al-Sabti alleged that the painting had been stolen from the Iraqi Military Club in Baghdad (run by the Ministry of Defence) in the early 1990s and then illegally smuggled and sold outside Iraq. He asked the auction house to help us return it to its rightful owners in Iraq. Two weeks later, Christies withdrew the painting from its 18 March sale. According to Alexandra Kindermann, a senior communications director at Christies, Since then the matter has been investigated by the Dubai authorities, who have been in contact with the consignor of the work and will be ruling over this case.

Al-Sabti is working closely with Maysoon al-Damluji, an Iraqi parliament member and head of the commission for culture and information, who is championing the cause and has enlisted the help of Iraqs foreign minister.

To facilitate the paintings return, proof is required that it was in fact the property of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence. This is no mean feat: most of the Ministrys records were burned and looted in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.

For al-Sabti, the paintings return is not only a matter of rightful ownership, but also one of Iraqi patrimony. Faeq was a pioneer of Iraqi art, and was also one of my professors at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts, he relates, His work needs to be in an Iraqi museum so the next generation of artists can see it.

But Al-Sabtis artistic sleuthing may be more Don Quixote than Sherlock Holmes.

For the past month, al-Sabti has been conducting interviews, gathering documents from the Ministry of Defence and hunting down historical records to piece together the paintings history. A former military officer told him that the painting had been stolen by a police chief from Saddam Husseins regime, and then sold by his son to an Iraqi gallerist in Jordan. Meanwhile, al-Sabti has been searching for a 1973 issue of al-Rawaq, a periodical formerly published by the Ministry of Culture that featured the painting on its cover.

The paintings origins may be traced back to Iraqs former president. According to Haydar Salem, a former curator at Baghdads Saddam Centre for the Arts (now the National Museum of Modern Art), it is one of three historical scenes by three Iraqi artists that the president Hassan al-Bakr, Saddams predecessor, commissioned in the late 1960s. Salem says that the Military Club gave the two other painting to the arts centre in the late 80s, while the one by Faeq Hassan remained at the Military Club until it disappeared in the early 90s.

Al-Sabti, who has run the Hewar Gallery in Baghdad for decades and has weathered invasions, occupations and terror attacks, notes sanguinely that over 5,000 works of art have been stolen from Iraq, mostly since 2003.

But for al-Sabti and many other Iraqis, the Faeq Hassan work has particular significance. That painting is a famous one in Iraq and its part of our national heritage, says al-Sabti. It needs to be returned to us.

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One man's epic quest to recover a stolen painting by 'Iraq's Picasso' - Art Newspaper

The group's Egyptian affiliate which claimed Sunday's attacks in the Nile Delta cities of Tanta and Alexandria has been centred in the Sinai Peninsula, where it has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.

But IS has been unable to seize population centres there, unlike its early gains in Iraq and Syria, and it has also lost top militants to Egyptian military strikes in recent months.

The jihadists have attacked Egyptian Coptic Christians before, but their campaign against the minority picked up in December with a Cairo church bombing that killed 29 people.

In Sinai, IS militants killed seven Copts in January and February, forcing dozens of Christian families to flee the peninsula that borders Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

"IS and its supporters online have been methodically introducing more radical sectarian concepts to Egyptian jihadists since the December bombing," said Mokhtar Awad, a research fellow with George Washington University's Program on Extremism.

The December bombing in a church adjacent to the Coptic papal seat marked a shift in IS tactics.

"It was not until December 2016 when the Islamic State began a systematic campaign to target Coptic Christians in Egypt," said Jantzen Garnett, an expert on the jihadists with the Navanti Group analytics company.

"As the Islamic State is squeezed in Iraq and Syria it often conducts spectacular attacks elsewhere in an attempt to regain the narrative, boost morale and win recruits," he said.

In Iraq and Syria, where the group proclaimed its "caliphate" in 2014 as it swept across northern Iraq, IS has faced consecutive defeats over the past year and is on the verge of losing control of Iraq's second city Mosul.

In a video released in February, IS attacked Christians as "polytheists" and promised there would be further attacks.

After Sunday's bombings in Tanta and Alexandria, the group said it had deployed two Egyptian suicide bombers against the "crusaders".

A defiant President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reacted by declaring a three-month state of emergency.

The Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 90 million people, have been attacked by Islamists for years, more so after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

The Coptic Church was accused by the Islamists of supporting Morsi's overthrow which led to a bloody crackdown on Islamists, although Muslim clerics and politicians also backed his ouster.

Even before Morsi was toppled, jihadists had targeted the Christians, most notably in a 2011 New Year bombing of a church in Alexandria which police blamed on a group linked to Al-Qaeda.

The Islamic State group's "sectarian attacks fuel those ideologically inclined to support the group, while showing it's still 'expanding' despite battlefield setbacks," said Zack Gold, a non-resident fellow with the Atlantic Center's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

The three church attacks in December and now April also suggest an expanded presence of jihadist cells west of the Suez Canal separating the Sinai proper from the rest of Egypt.

Following the December bombing, Sisi said members of the jihadist cell who carried it out had been caught, but others remained on the run.

"The Islamic State has struggled, with constant setbacks, to establish a sizable presence on the Egyptian mainland over the preceding years. These church bombings indicate they have a growing presence on the mainland," said Garnett.

The IS affiliate's predecessor in Egypt, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, had carried out several attacks targeting the police on the mainland before pledging allegiance to IS in November 2014.

And several IS bombings and shootings took place in Cairo, also targeting policemen, before the December church bombing.

Police arrested several cells and in November 2015 announced they had killed a top IS jihadist, Ashraf al-Gharably, in a Cairo shootout.

-AFP

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Pressed in Iraq and Syria, IS lashes out in Egypt - Times LIVE

Penn Museum staff noted that it is important to consider the damage that is being done to cultural heritage sites in the Middle East today.

Responding in part to ongoing attacks in Syria and Iraq, the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology opened a new exhibition on April 8 that explores the cultural heritage of the region and Penns role in ensuring its preservation.

Titled Cultures in the Crossfire: Stories from Syria and Iraq, the exhibit will run through Nov. 26, 2018, and features 50 artifacts from the museums collections as well as Arabic manuscripts, music and documentary film clips.

The exhibit also showcases contemporary art a first for the museum. Artwork from contemporary Syrian artist Issam Kourbaj, whose work focuses on images from his homeland, is featured alongside ancient artifacts.

Kourbajs contributions include Strike i, ii, and iii, a series of video clips of burning matchsticks and Seed, an installation incorporating a plush toy caught in a hand grinder.

Speaking at the museum on April 7, the artist said that despite the destruction of cities and illegal trade of artifacts in the Middle East, there is still much to be done to preserve the artifacts that remain.

Director of Research and Programs at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center Brian Daniels agreed, adding that the center coordinates with 17 international organizations to preserve Syrian and Iraqi culture.

You cant take yourself seriously as engaged in cultural heritage issues if youre not responding in some way to the current crisis in Syria and Iraq, he said.

Daniels emphasized that while Penn experts are not currently working on the ground in the Middle East, they are coordinating with refugee communities in other ways, such as the preservation of cultural sites.

Daniels co-directs the centers Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq Project, which supports professionals and activists in conflict areas working to protect cultural heritage.

Were coordinating through the refugee and diaspora community that has sprung up, and academics who left the country, Daniels said.

Syrian-born archaeologist Salam Al Kuntar, who serves as another co-director for SHOSI, is one of these academics.

She has been involved in the centers cultural preservation efforts since 2013 and played a large role in creating this exhibition.

We are more focused on areas that dont really get help from international organizations, she said. While doctors and teachers may have more obvious roles to play in helping those affected by conflict in Syria and Iraq, archaeologists also play a role, she added.

Its symbolic, she said. This is what we know and do best.

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Modern art sits alongside ancient artifacts in Penn Museum's exhibit on Syria and Iraq - The Daily Pennsylvanian

the Hellenistic Temple of Mrn in Hatra - AFP

(Vatican Radio) This Holy Week in Iraq, Christians and Muslims will walk for 140 km through the Nineveh Plain in the name of peace and the end of violence in a once mostly Christian inhabited area.

The peace march is supported by the Chaldean Patriarchate, which declared 2017 as the Year of Peace.

The march started in Ankawa, a suburb of Erbil city in northern Iraq, after participants took part in Palm Sunday Mass. The march will continue through Holy Week and will end in Qaradosh, close to the ruins of the Assyrian cities of Nimrud and Nineveh, about 32km from the city of Mosul.

The Nineveh Plain is filled with ancient, religious sites. When the area was captured by so-called Islamic State terrorists in the summer of 2014, historic architecture and archeological remains, including the UNESCO world heritage site Hatra, were destroyed. Part of the territory was liberated in November 2016 by Iraqi forces. However, many towns and villages occupied by Christians were abandoned.

An estimated 100 people from Iraqi and other countries are expected to walk through these historic lands.

During the week-long journey, participants will pray for the rebirth of these abandoned towns as well as for peace and for the will to overcome all forms of violence.

The march aims to sow the seeds for a new the beginning of healing for a population torn apart by conflict and violence.

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Christian and Muslims in Iraq march together for peace - Vatican Radio

FlaglerLive | April 9, 2017

An F/A-18C Hornet lands aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush in the Arabian Gulf in late March. (Christopher Gaines)

By Peter Certo

In a desolated patch of Mosul, Iraq, people are still digging through the rubble. Rescuers wear masks to cover the stench, while anxious family members grow desperate about missing loved ones.

The full story of what happened in the al-Jidideh neighborhood isnt yet clear, but the toll is unmistakable. A New York Times journalist reported stumbling across charred human limbs, still covered in clothing, while a man stood nearby holding a sign with 27 names extended family members either missing or dead.

All told, 200 or more civilians may be dead there following a U.S. airstrike on the densely populated neighborhood. The military has acknowledged the strike, but says its still investigating the deaths. If the allegations are true, this was by far our deadliest attack on innocents in decades.

The carnage comes amid a push by the U.S. and its Iraqi allies to reclaim Mosul, Iraqs second most populous city, from the Islamic State (or ISIS). Thats making life terrifying for the citys residents, whove endured years of depredations from ISIS only to fall under U.S. bombs and to face possible human rights abuses from Iraqi soldiers they dont trust. Now it feels like the coalition is killing more people than ISIS, one resident told the UKs Telegraph newspaper.

Unfortunately, that may not be so far from the truth. AirWars, which tracks civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria, counted over 1,300 reports of civilian deaths from coalition airstrikes in March alone. Thats about triple the count from February.

In fact, AirWars estimates, more U.S. coalition strikes are now causing civilian casualties than strikes by Russia, which was loudly (and appropriately) accused of war crimes for its bombing of Aleppo, Syria last year.

Is this the simple result of the fight heating up in Mosul? Not quite.

In the same month, at least 30 civilians were reported killed by a U.S. airstrike outside Raqqa, Syria where the real battle with ISIS hasnt even begun yet and up to 50 more may have died when the U.S. bombed a mosque in Aleppo.

Instead, some observers suspect the Trump administration is relaxing Obama-era rules designed to limit civilian casualties in war zones. They deny this, but the Times reports that field commanders appear to be exercising more latitude to launch strikes in civilian-heavy areas than before.

During the campaign, Trump himself famously promised to bomb the s out of ISIS. That sounds extreme, and it is.

But its only a few steps beyond the Obama administrations approach of gradually expanding our air wars outside the public eye. Trumps just taking it to another level by putting virtually all key foreign policy decisions in military hands, while gutting resources for diplomacy and humanitarian aid.

The human costs of this will be enormous. The political costs will be, too.

The U.S. has been bombing the s out of Iraq for decades now, which has consistently created more terrorists than its killed. Extremists are flourishing in Iraq. The same cant be said for the civilians now burying their dead in Mosul.

Of course, ISIS is guilty of its own innumerable atrocities. But the war-torn sectarian politics that gave rise to the group are a direct result of this military-first foreign policy. Theres simply no reason to believe that reducing Iraqs cities to rubble will give way to less extremism in their ashes.

Iraqis will still have to wrest their country back from ISIS. But if its ever going to get back on its feet, what the country truly needs is a political solution. Thats going to require a surge of aid, diplomacy, and honest brokering all of which are in short supply now.

Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of OtherWords.org.

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Trump Steps Up Bombing in Iraq, Civilians Die - FlaglerLive.com