After IS destroying ancient sculptures in the Mosul Museum, cleverly videotaping everything and uploading the demolition online for the world to share and condemn, without reflecting over the fact that we are all a part of IS propaganda machine, without actually putting the means in to stop them, a different kind of response came from Sweden.

The Swedish journalist Somar Al Naher published a photo of her mother who is from Iraq, when she visited Mosul Museum together with a group of girls 43 years ago, with a comment from Somar. Somar gave me the permission to publish this photo and her comment on Sweden and the Middle East Views. Here is what she had to say (translation from Swedish, Sweden and the Middle East Views):

“I have to tell this story and why this is an endless sorrow. This photo was taken exactly 43 years ago outside the Mosul Museum that is now destroyed. In the picture you can see my mom, she is in the middle of the back row, number five from the left. In front of her sits her younger sister. What we see in the picture are girls on a Scout camp. Each summer a number of girls were chosen from schools in Karbala and Najaf, to go on a camp in a new city in Iraq. Several girls come from deeply religious families, some of them had parents who were illiterate. But the trust and the confidence made the families allow their daughters to go on camps in places that were far away from home.

This picture symbolises everything that is about to be destroyed in Iraq: the people, the shared history, the proud heritage but also the development and the future. The girls of this generation would have had the possibility to change the world.”

Photo copyright: Somar Al Naher