The financial incentives to looting are very powerful such that to date the international community's existing methods of prevention are largely ineffective.
But we must not be idle bystanders to a fire sale of our and Syria's national and historical heritage.
So what can we do now that the continuing destruction of our cultural heritage has sparked a fresh round of global outrage? How can it be harnessed to save other heritage sites under nihilist Da'ish control? Short of defeating the entrenched jihadists militarily which appears highly unlikely anytime soon?
The challenges are great. The tens of thousands of foreign would-be jihadists who have now poured into Syria, most to join the perceived "A-team-Varsity Squads" of Da'ish (ISIS) and Jabhat Al Nusra. There is little evidence of success from international efforts to diminish their ranks. Few on the ground are much impressed by the new Russian hyped 4+1 planned coalition or the Russian proposed bilateral coordination with the U.S. against Islamic State. This is partly because currently, an average of about 1,000 foreign fighters are arriving every month ready to turn Syria into Russia's new "Afghanistan" with pledges to fight for as long as it takes to expel Putin's arriving forces. In the past year jihadists from 20 additional countries have entered Syria bringing to more than 100 the total number of countries with fighters in Syria.
Many suggestions have been heard by this observer in Syria including from local officials and citizens who are on the front lines trying to preserve and protect the cultural heritage that we all share. Some are proposing that cultural heritage benefactors buy the looted objects off looters and errant regular citizens and secure them in safety vaults somewhere until the fighting ends. This has actually been done in Syria with modest success but given its sensitivity, without much publicity. It has been reported that nearly 330,000 artifacts, many from lawless non-state actor areas, have been moved to safety from imminent danger from jihadists and profiteers.
The Syrian government currently has 2,500 people working to save Syria's past, on both sides in many parts of Syria. Fourteen DGAM employees have been killed so far. It's Director-General Dr. Abdul Karim has reported to this observer and others that "We saved 99 per cent of the collection in our museums. It's good. It's not just for the good of the government. It's for the opposition, for humanity, for all Syria. It is our common identity, our common heritage."
Ricardo J. Elia, an archaeologist at Boston University, endorsed a moratorium on purchasing trafficked item, arguing that "looting is a function of a system that runs on supply and demand. Would it not be possible for museum associations, dealer associations, auction houses, and private collections to say "look: this is a horrific crisis. Let's just stop these things. Let's diminish the demand side." To avoid collecting potentially looted antiquities, Richard Stengel, US under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, recently proposed: "Don't sell; don't buy. That's the best solution."
A similar proposal comes from American cultural heritage lawyer Rick St. Hilaire who has prepared a proposal to avoid purchasing "blood antiquities." It also promotes as a protective measure a "Don't Buy" initiative backed by strict due diligence. It is worthy of implementation and can be linked to the 2009 Code of Ethics for Collectors of Ancient Artifacts authored by individual collectors that is being considered again given our current cultural heritage crisis. It urges the public and all buyers to protect archaeological heritage and uphold the law, check sources, collect sensitively, recognize the collector's role as custodian, keep artifacts in one piece and consider the significance of groups of objects, promote further study, and dispose of artifacts responsibly.
To achieve these goals, the ethics code highlights common sense due diligence and acquisitions advice, including: "Ask the vendor for all relevant paperwork relating to provenance, export etc. Take extra care if collecting particular classes of object which have been subjected to wide-scale recent looting. Verify a vendor's reputation independently before buying. Assure yourself that they are using due diligence in their trading practices, and do not support those who knowingly sell fakes as authentic or offer items of questionable provenance. Do not dismember any item, or acquire a fragment which you believe to have been separated from a larger object except through natural means. Consider the implications of buying an item from an associated assemblage and the impact this could have on study. Liaise, where possible, with the academic and broader communities about your artifacts."
One encouraging sign that those destroying our cultural heritage may be more apt to face legal accountability before the International Criminal Court in The Hague is this month's arrests and extradition of the alleged Islamic extremist Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi also known as "Abu Tourab" who the ICC claims was a member of Ansar Dine, an affiliate of Al Qaida. He appeared on 9/30/2015 before the ICC and was formally charged with involvement in the 2012 destruction of 14 of the 16 mausoleums and other historic buildings including a Mosque, in Timbuktu, Mali. The entire city of Timbuktu, nicknamed the "City of 333 Saints" is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and during the 15th and 16th centuries, operated 180 schools and universities that received thousands of students from all over the Muslim world. According to Corrine Dufka of Human Rights Watch's Africa division, "The Abu Tourab case signals that there will be a price to pay for destroying the world's treasures."
On a related matter, during his 9/28/2015 UN General Assembly address, Ban Ki-moon called for the Syrian crisis to be referred to the International Criminal Court. This would include jurisdiction over all cultural heritage crimes committed at Syria's archeological sites.
Several encouraging and admirable public and private initiatives are employing creative ways to protect Syria's millennia-long cultural heritage are currently underway as experts and locals scramble to save what they can. Others are about to be launched, and all warrant our support. .
Some of the current initiatives include, but are not limited to the following.
The Million Image Database is a large-scale scholarly project targeting both object documentation, and trafficked object identification. The project is sending thousands of low-cost, easy-to-use 3-D cameras to volunteers across the Middle East to document sites and objects in their area. Images and videos collected in this way are received for processing by the project's technical team in the United Kingdom via uploads to the project's website. Some of these images will be used to create detailed maps of Syrian sites, and to create 3-D models of buildings and artifacts that will be useable as blueprints for full-scale reconstruction. The project website is closed to the public to protect volunteer's anonymity and also to ensure that the initiative remains a purely scholarly venture, not a social media platform for activists, according to Alexy Karenowska, the project's director of technology. But she assures that as project progresses, it will find a way to share storytelling from the material to the public. The images are to be collated in a huge, publically accessible database. Available to all, and under development in collaboration with UNESCO, the vision for this resource is for an ever-growing archaeological catalogue which brings together scholarly information about sites and artifacts, raises awareness of cultural heritage and cultural heritage preservation, and provides a new platform for the identification of trafficked objects. The database will be integrable with existing catalogues and lists of known missing or stolen items and employ the latest image comparison and feature recognition based search technology, removing the need for those inspecting suspect cargos or objects to have specialist knowledge.
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