One of my New Year's resolutions was to stop cursing, because at a certain age, it just isn't pretty. But today, I firmly and emphatically broke that pledge in a stream of Tourrette's-like swearing after learning that the Islamists in Mali did what everyone had feared they'd do: burn down the centuries-old libraries of Timbuktu. In doing so, these villains effectively erased a thousand years of written history from tribes and cultures all over the world.

I spent last December and January traveling in Mali, and more than a week in Timbuktu. I was there when the civil war broke out and I have several close friends from the city who have since fled. Beyond their history, the things these friends prized above all were their libraries, which codified their city as one of the most important in history. And these libraries were spectacular, containing thousands of ancient leather-bound books written in Arabic, Hebrew, African tribal languages, Turkish, and many other tongues, and covering topics like astronomy, poetry, music, politics, grammar, medicine, law, conflict resolution, and women's rights. The oldest books were from the eleventh century, when the Salt Road trading was at its peak and international traders would converge on Timbuktu. The information in these tomes was still so salient that, as the crumbling pages of the books were being preserved, people from all over the world were still trying to translate and study them to see if there was some knowledge they could use today.

"Last year people came to research the Palestinian and Israeli conflict," the librarian at the Ahmed Baba Institute told me when I visited. "Most wars have been fought before — and resolved. They wanted to see if the past could help the present."

It was only around 2000 that most people felt safe enough to unearth their family documents, and, with help from the Ford foundation, USAID, and UNESCO, hand them over to be preserved. Even days before the civil war broke out, families were still donating their books, trying to save them from the ravages of time — beautiful illuminated manuscripts that people had kept in boxes in the ground, ironically to keep them safe from Islamists.

When the Islamists rolled in, it was too late to hide them again.

While the invaders destroyed the tombs of the city's saints, people grieved, but still thought their books might be safe as the Islamists were holed up in the Ahmed Baba Institute, not for their love of learning, but for convenience. With the exception of the La Maison, a four-star hotel which was likely burned to the ground for being one of the few places that not only sold alcohol, but also catered to foreigners, the libraries were one of the few buildings in Timbuktu with modern plumbing and, even more importantly, air-conditioning. Because invaders love to be comfortable when not imposing their will on an opressed population.

But when the French invaded over the weekend, the Islamists added the ultimate insult to the injuries they'd already inflicted on the town, by blowing up a warehouse full of manuscripts, as well as the Institute itself.

There is more than a heavy dose of irony about the book burnings, especially since many of the books burned by Islamists were Korans, and worth millions of dollars. Why burn the books when selling them could've been so much more profitable and at least kept the artifacts intact?

There is a glimmer of hope: While The ABI is destroyed, there were over thirty smaller, private libraries in the town. We can only hope they are still in one piece. Ironically, thirteen is the holy number of Timbuktu, and while 2013 has brought liberation from (most) foreign invaders, the treasured books are still gone. At the end of the day the old saying is true: Those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it — even if you try to destroy it first.

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