Waging holy war, establishing a global caliphate, and ushering in the apocalypse are not things you can do on the cheap. And since ISIS set out with each of the above on its prophetic to-do list, it needed cash—a lot of cash. So, it started selling artifacts. Today, the jihadist group has lost the territory it once occupied in the Middle East. But in its pomp, ISIS’ looting was so extensive that it was, quite literally, visible from outer space—satellite images have shown Iraqi and Syrian archaeological sites pockmarked with thousands of holes, where treasures have been dug from the earth. No one knows just how much ISIS has made on the black market since 2013, but estimates from the UN, U.S., and Russia put it in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Selling stolen art to finance horrible shit is nothing new. Both the Nazis and the Taliban, for instance, were and are notorious art thieves. But it’s ISIS that has really upped the stakes when it comes to turning the process into a slick, corporate business model. “ISIS didn’t start this looting and trafficking,” Amr Al-Azm, a professor at Shawnee State University, told VICE. “What they did do, though, was essentially institutionalize the process.” While ISIS control the supply, the demand for these artifacts—which include ancient mosaics, Roman and Greek coins, Palmyrene busts, church bells, Byzantine icons, and neo-Assyrian clay tablets—is global and driven mostly by biblical history obsessives in the West. “Part of this is the connection of ancient Mesopotamia to the Bible,” explained Stephanie Selover, a professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Washington. After all, Iraq is ancient Mesopotamia, the home of biblical cities like Babylon and Nineveh. The entrance to an ancient Greek Orthodox church in Damascus, Syria. As an example, Selover points to the “thousands” of artifacts, both authentic and counterfeit, purchased from war-torn parts of the Middle East by the Green family, the evangelical Christian billionaires who own U.S. arts and crafts retail chain Hobby Lobby. Their collection helped build the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., and the family’s activity in the market also caused the cost of Iraqi artifacts to skyrocket, generating even greater demand. Of course, the Green family isn’t solely to blame for the antiquities black market. However, their story shows how Western thirst for Middle Eastern art has helped fund one of the most brutal militant groups of our time. Amr Al-Azm, who was educated in the UK before moving to Ohio, said: “We’re the rich countries. We have the money, resources, and institutions that can stop this. And yet we don’t do as much as we should to try and prevent this from happening.” Jihadist rebels on patrol in Damascus, three months after ousting Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Officially, ISIS call their antiquities department the “Diwan al-Rikaz,” which translates as “Department of Precious Things That Come Out of the Ground.” A man named Abu Sayyaf once managed this wing of the jihadist organization. Sayyaf, a senior ISIS commander, sometimes hosted the group’s founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at his home in Syria. He also held a Yazidi slave and American hostage Kayla Mueller. After U.S. forces killed him in a predawn raid in May 2015, they discovered valuable artifacts in his home: Roman gold coins from Emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, a gold brooch depicting Athena, and an Assyrian stela honoring King Shalmaneser III from Tell Ajaja—each valued between $30,000 and $50,000.Receipts found in the raid showed ISIS had made about $265,000 from antiquities sales in just a few months. The State Department then estimated total annual profits from the trade reached into the millions. Centuries-old art inside a convent in Syria. ISIS loved broadcasting its obliteration of ancient sites—to them, anything pre-Islamic or polytheistic was fair game. Videos show fighters with sledgehammers, bulldozers, even dynamite, smashing artifacts they called “idolatrous.” In one video, a militant says after destroying relics: “They become worthless to us even if they are worth billions of dollars.” But ISIS certainly did not see artifacts as worthless. Far from it. Its antiquities department stayed in the shadows because of how profitable it actually was. “The famous video of ISIS soldiers destroying Assyrian statues and other materials from the Mosul museum actually shows them destroying some reproductions rather than real materials,” Selover said. “They were creating this vision of a group that destroyed all the pre-Islamic cultural heritage objects they came across, but in reality, they were selling much more than they were destroying.”Painting of Christ, desecrated by jihadists in a Syrian church. ISIS blew up Palmyra and beheaded its antiquities chief, Khaled al-Asaad, after he refused to give up the location of hidden objects—but it was mostly for show. A brutal PR stunt to sell the group’s image as holy warriors. Behind the scenes, it was a different story. When U.S. forces took out Sayyaf, artifacts in his home weren’t destroyed; they were tagged, cataloged, and quietly prepped for sale. Even the “blasphemous” ones. The supply chain is where things get tricky. Generally, looted artifacts follow the same supply chain as other black market goods. “The same way you might smuggle out guns and drugs is the same way you might smuggle out antiquities,” Al-Azm explained. Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan were common stopovers. In Lebanon, Hezbollah sometimes helped move stolen artifacts to Europe or the Gulf. Items were also sometimes routed through Southeast Asia to avoid suspicion before landing in Western Europe or North America.A cache of weapons used by a Syrian guard who formerly fought for al-Nusra and ISIS. Israel was another middleman. Selover says there is a legal Israeli market, but fake papers are easy to get, giving stolen artifacts false provenance. If an item falsely claimed to be from a private collection before 1970—making it illegal to sell under UNESCO rules—it can still slip by online sellers and auction houses. Advertised on Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and eBay, it wasn’t uncommon for these items to ultimately wind up in auction houses in Paris, London, Berlin, and Rome. “They’re aware of these issues,” Al-Azm said, referring to the auction houses, “but they still turn a blind eye.” The iconic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, the site of former ancient Roman temples and a Christian cathedral. Isber Sabrine, a Syrian researcher and co-founder of Heritage for Peace, knows what’s at stake. “I want to empower people to restore their lost heritage,” he told VICE. He’s building a database of stolen artifacts, hoping to return some of them to the ruins they came from. But the problem runs deeper than that. At the 2018 Met Gala, Kim Kardashian snapped a selfie with a gold coffin from ancient Egypt—looted, as it turns out. The pic went viral, tipped off Egyptian officials, and exposed a $4 million screw-up by the Met Gala. It wasn’t ISIS’ doing, but it shows how rich countries keep the black market humming. “What’s important for us to understand is that it is the demand that drives supply, not the other way around,” Al-Azm said. “And the main demand comes from Western Europe and North America. So that’s what’s really driving this kind of problem.” He believes it’s unfair for Western governments to blame supply countries, as many are in the throes of war, humanitarian crises, or economic collapse. Places like Sudan, Libya, and Syria are in ‘survival mode,’ so looting shouldn’t exactly come as a shock. “If we ever want to really address this issue,” he says, “we need to address the demand.” Follow Ryan Biller on X @rybillerThe post How Bible-Loving Westerners Fueled the ISIS Looting Boom appeared first on VICE.