ISIS threatens Iraq's priceless cultural heritage
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Baghdad (CNN) -- There's been no shortage of news coverage of the atrocities carried out by ISIS against the people of Iraq and Syria, from beheadings to massacres to selling kidnapped women into sexual slavery.
What's less well known is the devastation the Sunni extremist group is wreaking on Iraq's priceless cultural heritage.
Thousands of years before the birth of Christ, the people of Mesopotamia mastered the first writing system, mathematics, astronomy, literature and law.
Iraq's past, however, is threatened by the nightmare of its present.
ISIS is not only at war with the Iraqi state, it's also at war with Iraq's very identity -- blowing up religious shrines, slaughtering and enslaving minorities such as the Yazidis, Christians and Turkmen, and executing its enemies.
And what it hasn't destroyed, ISIS is selling on the black market.
Qais Hussain Rashid, director general of Iraqi museums, told CNN of the depredations carried out by ISIS militants.
"They cut these reliefs and sell them to criminals and antique dealers," he said, gesturing toward an ornate carving dating back thousands of years.
"Usually they cut off the head, leaving the legs, because the head is the valuable part."
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ISIS threatens Iraq's priceless cultural heritage