The Destruction of a Nation: Syria’s War Revealed in Satellite Imagery

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http://world.time.com/2013/03/15/the-destruction-of-a-nation-syrias-war-revealed-in-satellite-imagery/

The Destruction of a Nation: Syria’s War Revealed in Satellite Imagery
By Ishaan Tharoor


Smoke billows from a damaged pipeline on the outskirts of the Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs, Syria on Feb. 15, 2012.

The disintegration of a country is a hard thing to fathom, in any context. But it can be documented. DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite company that provides high quality images of the earth, has been tracking the Syrian war with its technology; in some instances, it has been able to compare the ravaged status quo of Syria’s present with the relative normalcy of a decade ago. The contrast is stark: whole neighborhoods that once teemed with life in historic cities like Damascus, Homs and Aleppo are now wastelands of rubble. Artillery fire has turned wheat fields and olive groves into warrens pock-marked with craters. DigitalGlobe says it has satellite imagery, too, of long slit trenches dug in the earth that have been used as mass graves.


A sequence of imagery, taken over nine days, showing the digging, operation and filling of a mass grave at the Daryya Mosque, south of Damascus.


Before and after images of the Ard as-Sabbagh district of Aleppo. Many buildings here have been either damaged or wholly razed since the conflict began.

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. Wow, thank you.