Increasingly the Obama administration and its allies are frustrated regarding the subject of the need to protect and preserve Syria's Endangered Heritage. They remain less than confident that ISIS plundering of our heritage in Syria as part of its intensifying social control in its "Caliphate" can be stopped anytime soon.
Yet at the urging of the White House, last week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee worked on H.R. 1493, the Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act and favorably reported the measure for full consideration by the Senate. The original bill passed in the House of Representative in June 2015 called for the appointment of an Assistant Secretary of State as the new United States Coordinator for International Cultural Property Protection, commonly referred to in Washington as a "Cultural Czar". The new language which was designed to obtain early passage, recommends "that the President should establish an inter-agency coordinating committee to coordinate and advance the efforts of the executive branch to protect and preserve international cultural property at risk."
The mandate of thenew inter-agency committee, to be chaired by an Assistant Secretary of State, includes working to protect and preserve international cultural property in Syria while working to prevent and disrupt cultural heritage looting and trafficking in Syria.
The legislation's mandate also includes protecting sites of cultural and archaeological significance while seeking to provide for the lawful exchange of international cultural property from Syria.
Franklin Lamb's recent book, Syria's Endangered Heritage, An International Responsibility to Preserve and Protect, is available on Amazon/Kindle, Smashwords, and other ebook sites as well as in hard-copy in Arabic and English. Lamb is currently based in Beirut and Damascus.
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