Looting has always been a problem during Iraq’s many wars - but it has been especially prevalent during the past three years of IS rule.
The group didn’t just seize all the gold and valuables of the 6,000-plus Yazidis that it captured.
Inside the occupied cities, IS gave its fighters the houses of those who fled its rule. When the time came for the fighters themselves to escape, they stripped the houses bare. The furniture eventually turned up in second-hand markets across Iraq.
It wasn’t only private possessions that were taken; heritage sites in Iraq and Syria were looted and antiquities smuggled out and sold on the black market. Some of these artefacts have been recovered from safe houses in Mosul - but most have disappeared.
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