Mesopotamia Academy appeals for books

By Dr Jan Best de Vries:

Mesopotamia Academy opening ceremony

Everything written today about the further development of Rojava focuses on the future. In the city of Qamishli in the Cizîre canton, the Mesopotamia History and Sociology Academy has been founded and it is asking us for books. The question is how to deliver books to the academy on the topics of history and sociology.

It is not possible these days to do so via a central address in Aleppo because books cannot be safely sent from this town onto Rojava due to the blockade of the IS gangsters to the east and also to the Assad and Hezbollah troops still present in a town that suffers daily bombardments. Neither is Kurdish Diyarbakir an option, because Turkey’s government  prohibits all traffic – with the exception of the IS jihadists – from Turkey to Rojava. So the sole option for Rojava at the moment is to get an address in Erbil as a collection center,  from which they may be transported by car over a bridge on the Tigris, that is if IS-jihadists are not occupying the other side in Syria.

So the best thing to do for the moment seems to be to collect and store books in our Western private libraries, destined to be sent to the Mesopotamia Academy at the first possible opportunity. It would be nice if the librarians of this Academy would name their new library after the female Peshmerga Rihana who was a week ago beheaded by an IS fanatic. Thus the regional Arab and Kurdish youngsters, both Muslims and Christians and those from other minorities, who study in this library will not forget the name of the young woman who should also have been able to study there. Martyrs for the cause of Rojava do not die!

Dr. Jan Best de Vries is an archaeologist and historian, decipherer of the so-called Byblos Script from Aleppo and Alalakh (‘How to Decipher the Byblos Script’, Aspekt Publishers 2014, ISBN978-946-153-420-0)