Introduction
In our age of identity conflicts and war, cultural heritage, the material reference for identity, has become a major conflict potential as well as the focus of international protection initiatives. In this regard, academic scholars have noticed the collateral effects of international heritage politics on, namely, non-state armed actors’ motivation for attacking cultural heritage. Lynn Meskell noticed already in 2002 in her landmark article ‘Negative Heritage and Past Mastering in Archeology,’ the intricate interplay between the motivation of non-state armed groups to attack cultural heritage and international heritage politics with its inherent Western ethos.Footnote 1 Meskell returned to this topic in her recent work on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),Footnote 2 in which she points out how “[t]he proliferation of political meanings and potentials [of world heritage sites] has brought with it the threat of heritage conflicts … they are now commonly targeted as a means to outrage both local and international communities, as witnessed in the Balkan region, and in Bamiyan, Aleppo and Palmyra.”Footnote 3 Charlotte Joy’s work on heritage conservation in Mali also points at international heritage politics as a driver of antagonism and destruction.Footnote 4 Joy specifically identifies this pattern in relation to UNESCO’s interventions in Mali and the ambitions of UNESCO to induce Western concepts to define the meaning of sites of worship. She finds that “it is not surprising that UNESCO should be [Ansar Dine’s] target.”Footnote 5 Similarly, Ömür Harmanshah points out how it was the global attention to the value of antiquities that enabled Daesh to use the destruction of cultural heritage to create powerful media propaganda.Footnote 6 And Benjamin Isakhan and José Antonio González Zarandora concludes that “part of Daesh’s motivation for destroying cultural heritage was to … attack … key multi-lateral bodies such as UNESCO, which promote liberal values including the protection of heritage sites.”Footnote 7
These accounts represent an emerging agreement and concern in the heritage literature that international heritage politics and protection efforts can drive antagonisms and heritage destruction during violent conflicts. However, the literature lacks a systematic focus on this “dark side of cultural heritage protection.” The ambition of this article is therefore to spell out more clearly how international heritage politics and advocacy for protecting cultural property may sometimes generate adverse effects and even instigate destruction. One of the main points of the article is that the increasing focus in international politics on the destructive effects of violent conflicts on cultural heritage presents us with a major dilemma: the more we speak about the value of cultural heritage and the importance of protecting it, the more we stress how the destruction of cultural heritage means a loss to humanity as such, the more interesting it becomes for some groups to destroy cultural heritage as a strategy of war. The political focus simply contributes to pulling cultural heritage into the heart of armed conflicts.
This is a delicate argument. The international community and, namely, international organizations and professional milieus including museums, academic experts, media, and civil society organizations all work by reacting upon world events. When confronted with threats to heritage, including world heritage sites, they voice, of course, loud concerns. Those organizations vested with a mandate to protect heritage hold an obligation to act. And, like all others, they want to show action to mobilize support and funds for their cause. The outcries at the international level are therefore expected responses. Yet the international community, advocacy organizations, and interest groups also need to recon the possible adverse effects of their policy and action. Therefore, we need a candid and focused debate about the dark side of heritage protection.
This article aims to instigate such a debate by, first, examining three significant cases of heritage destruction in recent conflicts, which are the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001, Daesh’s destruction at Palmyra in Syria in 2015–17, and Ansar Dines destruction of the shrines in Mali in 2012. In all three cases, this article finds that the international community’s efforts to protect cultural heritage added fuel to the fire and blazed the trail for the acts of destruction. Second, the article elaborates some concrete as well as theoretical observations about the dialectic between international heritage politics and the developing role of heritage in armed conflicts. Finally, a set of recommendations will be set forward for accommodating the identified challenges.
Palmyra
The ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria became the symbol of Daesh’s systematic destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria. The city, a caravan oasis located where the silk road from Baghdad forked into paths to Damascus and Antioch, blossomed during the second and third centuries bc. In ad 271, the Roman emperor destroyed the city after its governor declared independence from the Roman Empire. Yet the city continued to flourish as a trade hub for some thousand years before its position started to fade.Footnote 8 The city of Palmyra continued to be a religious center, first for Christianity and then for Islam,Footnote 9 but the religious importance of its Roman temples and tombs had already crumbled with their destruction in ad 271. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, travelers discovered the ancient ruins, which today stand as one of the most important archaeological sites in the Middle East.
As Daesh started to roam the region, the ancient site of Palmyra did not hold political or religious significance like the tombs, mosques, churches, and shrines used for contemporary practices of religious worship that Daesh had destroyed so far. And at the Mosul museum, Daesh smashed figures they claimed to be idolatrous icons on display. In contrast, the ancient ruins of Palmyra displayed no idolatrous figures (they had been removed) and were not used for practicing religion. Rather, the ruins of Palmyra mainly formed an archeological site and, before Syria started to disintegrate, a tourist attraction, which neither the international press nor UNESCO gave much attention.
From a military perspective, Palmyra held some conventional strategic and tactical assets for Daesh. The town linked the desert highways leading to Deir ez-Zor, Homs, and Damascus, and it contained a large gas field, a gas pipeline hub, and a provisional airstrip. Furthermore, and importantly, the town housed a notorious prison, the Tadmur military prison, where Bashar al-Assad had kept political prisoners, typically sentenced under Syria’s vicious emergency law, which has been in effect since 1961, enabling the regime to sentence protesters and dissenters by the military court. The prison, known for atrocious torture, mistreatment, and death, stood as a symbol of the Assad regime’s tyranny. Daesh destroyed the prison shortly after taking the city.Footnote 10
Looking at Daesh’s propaganda material leading up to its entry into the town of Palmyra, we see that they focused on the destruction of the prison and on the seizure of important roads as well as the airport, but not on the ruins. Daesh’s propaganda material released between 1 September 2014 and 1 May 2015 in Arabic and English and available online does not contain any material in which Daesh threatens to destroy the ancient ruins at the archaeological site of Palmyra or even mentions them.Footnote 11 By all accounts, Daesh moved toward Palmyra not with the aim of destroying a UNESCO world heritage site but, rather, for more conventional military purposes. Their interest in the ancient ruins did not emerge before they entered the city of Palmyra.
Then why did Daesh start to take an interest in the ancient ruins? Did Daesh know what a UNESCO world heritage site was? How familiar were they with this idea of heritage “belonging to the whole of humanity”? Did they plan to “target the entire humanity,” as UNESCO labeled their destructions at Palmyra? The international community and press educated them. The images showing Daesh sledgehammering statues in the Mosul museum raised Daesh’s atrocities to an emblematic symbol, and they went viral on social media. The group’s destruction of tombs, mosques, churches, and shrines during 2014 drew wide international attention, and images of Daesh’s destruction circulated swiftly on all media platforms.
In the international media, heritage destruction gradually became a signature of Daesh. As one scholar puts it, “[t]he endless reproduction of images of plundered museums, exploding mosques and bulldozed ancient sites has strongly prescribed the visual culture of the war in Syria and Iraq.”Footnote 12 Politically, cultural heritage became a high-level issue, drawing the attention of, and comments from, state leaders and heads of international organizations. For instance, in September 2014, John Kerry, then the US secretary of state, spoke passionately at a conference in New York: “For the proud people of Iraq and Syria – ancient civilizations, civilizations of great beauty, great accomplishment, of extraordinary history and intellectual achievement – the destruction of their heritage is a purposeful final insult, and another example of ISIL’s implacable evil. ISIL is stealing lives, yes, but it’s also stealing the soul of millions.” And he adds: “I want you to know that President Obama and our Administration are laser-focused on protecting the cultural heritage of countries all around the world.”Footnote 13
If Daesh started out on its iconoclastic course unaware of the ruins’ political power, it soon understood that destroying old sites of worship and statutes in museums created not only local, but also regional and global, effects. But maybe they had not yet realized that an archeological site like Palmyra held even greater symbolic power than places of religious worship and that they could use it to enrage even the White House in Washington, DC! Again, the international community would teach the group that this was the case. Despite a lack of indicators of Daesh’s interest in the ancient ruins in Palmyra, on 13 May 2015, the day Daesh launched the Palmyra offensive, the director general of UNESCO issued a press release stating: “We must save Palmyra,” which singled out the temple of Baal at Palmyra as “one of the most important cultural monuments of the entire region.”Footnote 14 And the day before Daesh announced the conquest of Palmyra, the director general stated that
any destruction to Palmyra is not only a war crime, but it will mean an enormous loss for humanity. … We have to make everything possible to prevent its destruction. … I think we need a total mobilization of the international community. … We need indeed to have the Security Council. We need indeed to have the political leaders. … It is important because we are speaking about the birth of human civilization. We are speaking about something that belongs to the whole of humanity. … You know, the world heritage site, and the world heritage’s list is about outstanding universal value, and I think Palmyra is one of those sites, that embody this value, this notion about humanity standing as a whole … it is the birthplace of human civilization. It belongs to the whole of humanity.Footnote 15
This framing became a mantra of UNESCO and the international community: a strong declaration from the head of a lead international organization with 130 member states, which clearly outlined the value of Palmyra as viewed from the “Western” world.Footnote 16
It is worth noticing that just a few months before, on 12 February 2015, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) addressed for the first time heritage destruction in a Chapter VII resolution that was binding on all nations.Footnote 17 Consequently, the international political momentum for the agenda rose steeply, and the narrative in international politics about Palmyra and Daesh’s cultural heritage destruction more generally started to change seriously. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international experts, and academics and global media echoed UNESCO’s message: Daesh was going to destroy Palmyra. For instance, one opinion piece from The Guardian, which was shared almost 5,000 times, headlined that “[c]oalition air strikes should defend Palmyra – it belongs to the whole world.”Footnote 18 The Syrian regime also contributed to the choir. The director general of the Syrian Antiquities and Museums Directorate, Maamoun Abdul-Karim, warned that the historical city of Palmyra is facing “a real threat,” that Palmyra portends a “catastrophe” and that the battle for Palmyra was a “battle for culture per excellence.”Footnote 19 Russia also kicked in, agreeing with this narrative.Footnote 20
In the name of the common culture of humanity as such, a layer of political agreement between nations and organizations otherwise being at odds emerged around the cause of saving Palmyra. Palmyra rose as a symbol for humanity and civilization, endangered by terrorism to the extent that UNESCO suggested military intervention in Syria to defend it – a bold proposal compared to the devastating humanitarian crises in Syria and, from a military perspective, unrealistic as well. By end of May 2015, the story of the danger to Palmyra was all over the news. Going over all of the articles published in the New York Times and the Washington Post during that period containing the word “Palmyra,” we see that these authoritative newspapers, which have a profound impact on world opinion, uncritically communicated the message that Deash planned to destroy Palmyra.Footnote 21 They quoted experts and practitioners along the lines of: “The capture of Palmyra has stoked fears that the militants might try to destroy one of the Middle East’s most spectacular archaeological sites – a 2,000-year-old Roman-era city on the modern town’s edge – as they have destroyed others in Syria and Iraq.”Footnote 22
Yet it was not before 27 June 2015, almost two months after capturing the city, that Daesh started to destroy constructions at the ancient site. In July 2015, they also released three different highly professional propaganda videos, which showed executions, including a mass execution of regime soldiers in the middle of the old amphitheater of Palmyra. In August 2015, Daesh executed the archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, the head of antiquities for the ancient city of Palmyra. According to UNESCO and international media, al-Assad refused to reveal where Palmyra’s treasures were hidden and, hence, according to UNESCO, heritage advocates, and the media, chose to sacrifice his life for the ruins.Footnote 23 According to UNESCO’s director general, “[t]hey killed him because he would not betray his deep commitment to Palmyra.”Footnote 24
However, we know little about exactly who killed al-Asaad and why. We do know that Daesh killed anyone who refused to follow its decrees. Sources even report that the killing was done by locals from Palmyra because of family conflicts.Footnote 25 But the image of al-Asaad’s self-sacrifice for Palmyra surely fitted well with the international narrative and the need for heroes in the heritage protection field. After the killing of al-Asaad, the destruction of the temple of Baalshamim and the temple of Bel followed. During its first round of conquering Palmyra (from 13 May 2015 to 27 March 2016), Daesh destroyed seven tombs. The acts received massive international attention. UNESCO condemned all of the events through press releases exactly one day after they happened, and the Heritage Program at the American Schools of Oriental Research and the United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Program published satellite images, proving the destruction.
Global media thus played a critical role.Footnote 26 Heritage destruction makes superb news stories. The iconic and dramatic images of destroyed heritage – yellow stones and black smoke against a deep blue sky – circulate much better in global media than images of human atrocities, which get filtered out. They make much better front-page images than tortured bodies. The question is whether global media would have picked up so intensely on the topics if it had not been for the UNSC’s action and the authoritative narration provided by UNESCO, among others. It is noticeably clear that UNESCO as well as other organizations and global media amplified the effects of the destruction by producing and circulating information and images. Daesh needed to do no more than place some explosives at a site, and they could lean back and relax while others – their adversaries – effectively disseminated their misdeeds. Daesh could hardly have wished for better strategic communication support.
Concurrently, the Syrian regime was responsible for destroying several mosques and historical urban areas. Yet this did not receive much international attention. For instance, when studying the press releases from UNESCO from the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011 to September 2014, there is a distinct focus on the atrocities conducted by Daesh or a more vague description of “all parts of the conflict.” And in a press video released on 20 May 2015, UNESCO’s director general does mention that the ruins of Palmyra were used as a military garrison before Daesh conquered the city. However, the director general fails to say by whom, nor does she condemn all of the years that the Syrian regime used the ruins for military purposes, which also caused damage, including severe looting. Instead, the images of the Syrian regime’s soldiers looting at Palmyra became widely circulated as proof of Daesh’s looting.
Of course, an international organization like UNESCO must be careful not to criticize a member state. Singling out a terrorist organization is much easier. Nevertheless, by focusing on one aspect of heritage destruction and ignoring others, complexity was reduced, and an agenda was fortified: the relationship between terrorism and heritage destruction, between an enemy of humanity and the heritage of humanity, and between the educated West and the vandals and barbarians. The powerful image of Palmyra constituted the icon of this nexus.
In late May 2016, pressured by Russian-backed Syrian forces, Daesh withdrew from Palmyra. Soon after, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew in an entire symphonic orchestra led by a famous Russian conductor to perform a liberation concert in the amphitheater at Palmyra, with the same backdrop that Daesh had just used to stage mass executions. The concert was broadcasted and accompanied by speeches and also attended by UNESCO. In and of itself, the concert at Palmyra makes a fascinating case study of contemporary international heritage politics. Yet here we suffice to notice that the first thing Daesh did after regaining control of the area in March 2017 was to destroy the enormous facade of the amphitheater, reportedly as a response to the concert.Footnote 27 If Putin had not deployed a full orchestra to the amphitheater to triumph over Daesh, the theatre would in all probability not have been Daesh’s first target.
The picture that emerges when looking back at the Palmyra crisis is that the enormous international focus on saving Palmyra created a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy by pushing an easily accessible target right into the hands of Daesh. The intense political focus drew a physical line between “us” and “them” in the midst of the conflict zone. This enabled Deash to attack the entire notion of Western civilization by blowing up some ancient stones in a remote desert. The international community simply served Palmyra to Daesh on a silver plate and subsequently helped them to trumpet their message to a global audience, including prospective Daesh recruitees. Based on the available knowledge, we can only speculate on the precise influence of international politics on Daesh’s choices. However, the connection is clearly there, and, in this case, international heritage politics therefore evidently has a “dark side.”
Afghanistan in 2001
The Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in March 2001 presents us with another instance of the momentous and politicized conflict-related destruction of heritage in our time.Footnote 28 Technically viewed, the destruction took place during peacetime, more than half a year before the international military intervention in Afghanistan, known as Operation Enduring Freedom, began on 7 October 2001. Yet the international crisis loomed on the horizon as the Taliban refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden, who trained his men in Afghanistan. After years of fruitless consultations with Taliban officials, the United States and Russia engaged the UNSC. In November 1999, the UNSC adopted an air embargo on the Taliban and froze its assets in order to apply pressure, and, in January 2001, the council also added an arms embargo.
The Taliban had already aired the idea of destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas in 1997. Yet, in 1998, when a local commander in the area took practical steps toward this end, the Taliban leadership halted him. And, in July 1999, Taliban leadership issued a decree stating that the Buddhas should not be destroyed, but protected.Footnote 29 The decree also emphasized that the Buddhas were not part of any religious practice in Afghanistan. After that, the Taliban did not talk about destroying the Buddhas. Then, on 26 February 2001, the Taliban issued the famous iconoclastic decree stating that “[b]ased on the verdict of the clergymen and the decision of the supreme court of the Islamic Emirate [the Taliban] all the statues around Afghanistan must be destroyed.”Footnote 30 The decree, which was issued as an international delegation visited Kabul to inspect rumors about the Taliban’s destruction of pre-Islamic artifacts in the national museum,Footnote 31 sparked an outcry in the international community.
UNESCO took the lead by launching an international campaign to save the Bamiyan Buddhas. They convened a meeting of UNESCO member states in Paris and issued a joint declaration; co-signed by Kofi Annan, the United Nations (UN) secretary-general, UNESCO’s director general released a plea for the Taliban to reconsider its decision to destroy all of the statues in the country.Footnote 32 UNESCO’s director general’s special envoy to Kabul, Ambassador Pierre LaFranche, met with the Taliban officials, and Kofi Annan pleaded with the Taliban’s foreign minister in Islamabad.Footnote 33 UNESCO’s director general also approached a number of Islamic UNESCO member states, and some of them, including Pakistan and Egypt, endorsed UNESCO’s campaign.
In addition, UNESCO succeeded in mobilizing religious leaders from Egypt, Iraq, and Pakistan to issue fatwas against the destruction. The International Council on Monuments and Sites and the International Council of Museums issued an appeal on 1 March 2001 stating that destroying the Buddhas “would be a total cultural catastrophe. It would remain written in the pages of history next to the most infamous acts of barbarity.”Footnote 34 The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as well as some Buddhist states, such as Thailand, Sri Lanka, and even Iran offered to “buy” the Buddhas or to pay for their preservation. The Centre Pompidou in Paris mounted a large image of the Buddhas on its facade as “a sign of protest against fanatism.”Footnote 35 And front-page images of the endangered Buddhas appeared on innumerable global media sources.
As concluded by key observers,
[f]ew events have caused as much shock and condemnation within the international community in recent years as did the destruction of the great Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. Individual states, international organizations, such as the United Nations and UNESCO, religious authorities, including some of the most influential Islamic authorities, NGOs and people all over the world have called for international mobilization against such acts of barbarity and religious intolerance.Footnote 36
If the Taliban doubted the value of the Buddhas, and if they underestimated the possible effects of their iconoclastic policies, the international community soon enlightened them.
The destruction started on the 2 March. Shells, mortars, and rockets failed to destroy the statues, so the Taliban drilled dynamite into them. On 9 March, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted a resolution “strongly urging Taliban to halt implementation.”Footnote 37 The resolution, sponsored by more than 90 countries, “called upon Member States to help safeguard the unique Buddhist sculptures in Bamiyan, using appropriate technical measures, including, if necessary, their temporary relocation or removal from public view.”Footnote 38 The national representatives speaking at the debate preceding the adoption of the resolution stressed that “the artifacts being destroyed in Afghanistan, including the Buddhist statues in Bamiyan, belonged to the common heritage of humankind.”Footnote 39
But neither the UN nor the global media attention could stop the destruction. “All we are breaking are stones,” responded the Taliban leadership.Footnote 40 The Taliban also criticized the international community for expressing a will to save the Buddhas but not to contribute with aid to Afghanistan’s poverty-ridden population. The week after the UNGA issued its resolution, the statues lay crushed on the ground. Reportedly, the Taliban then transported chunks of the relics to the Pakistan border where they were put up for sale.Footnote 41 The Taliban also invited international media to document the destruction. In late March, 20 foreign journalists took the bait and were flown to Bamiyan and thus effectively aided the Taliban in creating a global spectacle out of the destruction of the Buddhas.Footnote 42 Observers viewed the destruction of the Buddhas as a response to the sanctions imposed on the Taliban to extradite Osama Bin Laden and the refusal of most UN members to recognize the Taliban emirate.Footnote 43 The Taliban reportedly denied this observation, claiming that they had acted out of a religious necessity. Maybe there was some truth to this. But it was not an either-or situation, and the international attention clearly created an international political agenda for the destruction to happen as it did.
Mali
Our last example concerns the destruction of the shrines in Mali in 2012. In late March 2012, a group of Malian soldiers calling themselves the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State overthrew the Mali government. Subsequently, they allied themselves with, among others, Ansar Dine, a militia closely affiliated with Al-Qaida. Ansar Dine, whose goal was to impose strict Sharia law over all of Mali, soon started to fight with its allies. In June, the group gained control over Gao, Timbuktu, and Kidal. Only a few days later, Ansar Dine began destroying various shrines and manuscripts that formed part of an important pilgrimage site for Sufists in the region and beyond and that held status as UNESCO world heritage. Ansar Dine proclaimed that it would destroy all of the shrines because of their idolatrous character.
The question is, could the international responses to the situation leading up to the destruction have affected Ansar Dine’s choice of targeting cultural heritage? Compared to the situation with Daesh and the Taliban, international focus on the heritage of Mali prior to the destruction of the shrines was moderate. So was the international community’s general attention to the political situation. Yet, even if we did not see the same intense international political prelude as in the cases of Afghanistan and Syria, international heritage politics had already induced an antagonism around the question of heritage in Mali. In Mali, Western politics had for many years been strongly associated with cultural heritage, as described so well by Charlotte Joy. In her book, The Politics of Heritage Management in Mali, Joy describes how UNESCO’s interventions had politicized heritage in Mali, explaining that “[t]he ‘voices of heritage’ that are heard coming out from Djenné are those of the heritage elite, and to a large extent they reflect the Western heritage organizations preconceived views of what is and what isn’t important in the town.”Footnote 44 Commenting on Ansar Dine’s destruction, Joy later writes that “[i]f … militant Islam is seeking legitimacy … through global media stunts, it is not surprising that UNESCO should be its target”Footnote 45 and, in another article, that “paradoxically, sites are more of a target because of their link to UNESCO.”Footnote 46
On 4 May 2012, two months before their wave of destruction, Ansar Dine desecrated the front door and the protective curtain of the tomb of a celebrated Sufi scholar, Sidi Mahmoud. The pilgrimage site was not destroyed as such, yet, according to UNESCO, the act indicated an intention to target cultural heritage. The prompt press release from UNESCO’s director general on 4 May – the very same day the desecration happened – stated that “[t]his desecration is a sign of a change for the worse that is deeply concerning in the attacks on Malian heritage, already highly threatened in recent weeks. I call on all parties involved to ensure immediate protection of this World Heritage property, essential to preserving Mali’s rich culture, which is part of the indivisible heritage of humanity. This cultural heritage is our common property, and nothing can justify damaging it.”Footnote 47 Ansar Dine, fueled by strong anti-Western sentiments and aware of the issues in Mali with regard to defining the political status of heritage, surely picked up on such an instant response from a lead international organization.
Throughout the spring of 2012, the Economic Community of West African States also was preparing a regional peace support operation for Mali, and, in early June, the African Union authorized the operation.Footnote 48 In May, the government of Mali referred to crimes committed since January 2012 by armed factions to the International Criminal Court (ICC). On 28 June 2012, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee accepted the request of the government of Mali to place Timbuktu and the Tomb of Askia on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger.Footnote 49 On 29 June, it was reported that Ansar Dine had gained control of Timbuktu and that they had scaled up the destruction of shrines. The UNSC did not act before the autumn of 2013, and global media also lagged behind in a situation that clearly was spiraling out of control. However, the UNSC did react to the heritage destruction in Resolution 2056, which was adopted on 5 July 2012, “[c]ondemning strongly the desecration, damage and destruction of sites of holy, historic and cultural significance, especially but not exclusively those designated UNESCO World Heritage sites, including in the city of Timbuktu.”Footnote 50 The destruction continued throughout the autumn. In late January 2013, as French-Malian troops ousted Ansar Dine from Timbuktu, the militia burned the Ahmed Baba Institute with its ancient manuscripts as a closing act.
Fueled by strong anti-Western sentiments, and aware of the controversies in Mali about government elites, Western influence, and the definition of Malian heritage, Ansar Dine surely picked up on the response from the leading international organizations. As everyone else is doing today, in our digital age, Ansar Dine followed their own social media footprint almost before they moved their own feet. Their practice clearly indicated how the destruction was aimed at an international and Western audience rather than merely constituting religiously motivated acts: the group meticulously videotaped the destruction and circulated the images on social media as a clear provocation directed toward “the West.” In fact, Ansar Dines’s filming of the destruction was so meticulous that when the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC eventually built its case against Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, all it needed to do was to collect and review the videos, which documented every step of the destruction.Footnote 51 The effect of their attacks on heritage, to a large degree, was conditioned by social media and the international responses. The case of Mali thus presents us with a peculiar dialectic or even dialogue between a non-state armed group’s destruction of heritage and the international responses, similar to the cases in Afghanistan and Syria.
Heritage in conflicts as a global social field
To view our three cases in their broader context, we need to recognize how Western ideas about cultural heritage has functioned as a global backdrop for the destruction in Palmyra, Bamiyan, and Timbuktu. This idea that such places of “our common heritage” hold significance to persons and groups across the globe is relatively new. It has spurred a global consciousness, where people in, say, Alaska may feel emotionally hurt by the destruction of old ruins in some remote desert in the Middle East. It is a relatively new global consciousness, fostered by the twentieth century’s development of norms, rules, and institutions related to cultural heritage on a national and international level. As one scholar puts it, “[h]eritage is increasingly promoted as a force of good. Preservation policies are firmly integrated into the bureaucracies of many modern states, but as local, national and international activities are seen as building upon each other they are also linked through a plethora of international and non-governmental institutions.”Footnote 52
The maturing of national and international norms, laws, and institutions related to cultural heritage, combined with the rise of identity-driven, asymmetric, urbanized, and globalized conflicts, has simply recast the fate and role of cultural heritage in conflicts.Footnote 53 By functioning as the material references and physical infrastructure (for example, artifacts, memorials, monuments, historical constructions, churches, mosques) of culture (for example, ethnicity, race, religion, nationality), cultural heritage transpires, foremost, as identity markers for conflicting parties and, increasingly, as objects for armed attacks, misappropriation, manipulation, or protection initiatives and showcases. And digital technologies and global social media play a critical role as enablers for the exploitation of the power of cultural heritage for strategic communication. Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Mali, Bosnia, Kosovo, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Nagorno-Karabakh provide the most dramatic recent cases.
A common political dynamic across the cases of Palmyra, Bamiyan, and Timbuktu has been the relationship between those who wanted to protect the sites from others who wanted to destroy them (partly) in order to show the inability and weakness of the protectors. In the case of the Bamiyan Buddhas, the relationship was direct in the form of high-level diplomatic negotiations. By taking the Buddhas as hostages, the Taliban momentarily gained international agency. In the cases of Daesh and Ansar Dine, the relationship between the perpetrators and the international community mainly played out on global media. In all three cases, the militias succeeded, with clear intent, in drawing enormous international attention by staging their acts of destruction as media performances that spoke to the global audience. In two of the cases – Palmyra and Bamiyan – the sites were primarily internationally recognized heritage sites and not used for contemporary religious practice. And, in all three cases, the international responses include norm and law developments by key international bodies, ranging from the UNGA, the UNSC, the ICC, UNESCO, and the European Union (EU), to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And the more norms and laws that spell out the value of cultural heritage, the higher its value as a target: there is a definite dialectic.
Altogether, we may conclude that the Taliban, Daesh, and Ansar Dine did not invent the idea that they could use cultural heritage as a weapon of war, a tool of propaganda, and a means for targeting the international community. The international community, advocacy organizations, and media played a significant great role in “educating” the perpetrators about the usefulness of cultural heritage for realizing their objectives. In this way, the developing role of cultural heritage in conflict appears as a relational, global social field shaped by the policies and practices of a multitude of agents. Disparate activities, such as Daesh’s destruction campaigns, the advocacy and protection efforts of UNESCO, international court decisions on the destruction of heritage in armed conflict, NATO’s development of policy and doctrine, Russian hybrid warfare strategies toward heritage in Crimea,Footnote 54 the UNSC’s practice, international fundraising events, and related academic scholarship, including this article, and so on, all form part of the same evolving global and relational social field. It is a heterogeneous social field composed of agents with diverse interests and outlooks that compete to control objects, monuments, buildings, and places identified as cultural heritage. This is done through a variety of politically interlinked practices, from the development of norms, policies, rules, and protection practices to destruction, misappropriation, and manipulation.
According to Lynn Meskell, world heritage has been instrumentalized by, among others, Ansar Dine, Daesh, and UNESCO to promote their particular, yet divergent, worldviews.Footnote 55 I will add that, from a closer inspection, these agents have capitalized on each other’s attitudes and actions: the instrumentalization of heritage as a “weapon of war” or as a cause to promote agendas and worldviews must be understood as a relational practice that builds on the attitudes and acts of the other parties. Ansar Dine and Daesh, as well as the Taliban, enabled UNESCO, states, and the broader “heritage community” to act as the defenders of world heritage. At the same time, protection initiatives promote world heritage as a targetable value and disseminates information about its destruction in a way that supported the perpetrator groups in creating spectacles of destruction. We may also add to Meskell’s analysis that this trend applies to other categories of heritage than merely world heritage sites.
The controversial element of this perspective is that it places militias and terrorists as agents within the same social field as the UNGA, the UNSC, the ICC, UNESCO, the EU, NATO, NGOs, states, and academics. The Taliban, Daesh, and Ansar Dine often get described as ignorant radicals and vandals who blindly follow a flawed religious path. But the cases of Bamiyan, Palmyra, and Timbuktu reveal a much more complex picture where attitudes and agency significantly contribute to the formation of international politics in relation to cultural heritage.
Responsibility
Addressing UNESCO’s failure to hinder the destruction of the tombs in Mali, Meskell concludes that “[t]his is a story of failed ambitions at one level, of the powerlessness to act in conflict zones, but also of the shifting power of particular nations and their representatives.”Footnote 56 However, by framing the dialectics between international politics and heritage destruction as a “gridlock-situation,” a systemic error, Meskell downscales individual choices and agency and thereby also the question of responsibility. To be sure, there is a gridlock situation. The international community has created an inoperative response system for protecting cultural heritage during armed conflicts. But, as our three cases indicate, the question of responsibility on the side of the international community for escalating destruction looms as the elephant in the room. When Daesh started to move toward the city of Palmyra, the lessons learned from the case of the Bamiyan Buddhas as well as in Timbuktu clearly indicated the likely adverse effect of international politics on the motivation of radical groups for destroying cultural heritage. Despite these hard lessons learned, UNESCO’s leadership once again rolled out a dramatic campaign with the effect that the entire world zoomed in on Palmyra. It can be argued that the spotlight simply made it difficult for Daesh not to attack the ancient ruins because, by avoiding their destruction, it would have appeared as a victory for the international community.
Rodney Harrison has pointed out how “the destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban … has done more for the global hegemony by UNESCO and World Heritage than the Buddhas could have achieved if they never had been threatened.”Footnote 57 Daesh’s destruction of cultural heritage similarly created an incredible momentum for UNESCO, allowing the organization to elevate its cause to the UNSC and strengthen UNESCO as an organization. UNESCO suddenly became a security actor, and its leader was depicted as “the woman standing between Daesh and world heritage.”Footnote 58 After its “Daesh moment,” UNESCO stood stronger and better linked to the UNGA and the UNSC.
If UNESCO’s recent politics on heritage destruction are linked to its gridlocked situation, it must be viewed as an attempt to get out of that gridlock by flagging the acute relevance of UNESCO and mobilizing funds and political support. We can only speculate on how the candidature of UNESCO’s secretary-general (2014–16) for the job as the UN secretary-general affected her strategic priorities regarding UNESCO’s attitude toward cultural heritage in conflicts. What we know is that the decisions on this matter were taken at the very top of UNESCO and that the expertise of the organization, by all accounts, seldom was invoked as decision-making support.Footnote 59 One example was the continuing argument from UNESCO’s leadership that the protection of cultural heritage should be included in the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) framework. R2P is an international policy agreement that provides a political and moral (but not legal!) responsibility for the international community to intervene in situations where a state is unable or unwilling to protect its population against genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.Footnote 60 This bold suggestion was turned down by an expert meeting at the UNESCO headquarters in 2015,Footnote 61 but the idea lives on in policy and among academics.Footnote 62 Casting cultural heritage destruction among the most serious international crimes elevates the topic in global security but also shapes its prominence as a target.
The question is whether we could have prevented or limited the destruction by silencing the matter? Maybe. Our three cases definitely warrant a closer inspection of whether or how international organizations and fora such as the UNGA and the UNSC have considered the possible negative side effects of their protection efforts and policy related to cultural heritage in conflicts. It also warrants reflections on the competence and capacity regarding conflict and security management of the organizations that handle issues related to cultural heritage in conflict.
In this regard, we see a general lack of capacity among states and international organizations to handle challenges related to heritage in armed conflict.Footnote 63 This comes into expression not least in the historical neglect from states of the 1954 Hague Convention and its protocols and an enduring lack of institutional capacities and resources.Footnote 64 In fact, key international organizations for coordinating defense and security matters hardly have such capacity, and they all lack dedicated policy, doctrines, and guidelines.Footnote 65 And the organizations and institutions focusing on cultural heritage lack competence and capacity on conflict and security management. UNESCO’s member states have been reluctant about expanding UNESCO’s work in armed conflict situations, and the relevant desks at UNESCO have never received the needed resources to develop an operational approach. Consequently, the topic of cultural heritage in armed conflict continuously falls between the chairs of institutions and mandates, and policy and strategic communication capacities on this matter similarly come out shorthanded.
The heritage community, mainly consisting of heritage professionals, archeologists, art historians, and museum staff, has long expressed frustration with this situation. It is commonly known that they, like UNESCO, instrumentalized the heritage crisis related to Daesh to promote their cause in the hope of gaining support and funds. It is also commonly known that the heritage community, including academic researchers, therefore dramatized rumors and consciously ignored or even glossed over the lack of facts. For instance, we have evidently seen a great deal of Daesh’s involvement in looting and trafficking of heritage as a part of a larger trend: “Looting and spoliation of archaeological sites represent a known crisis in many parts of the world, and it is widely acknowledged that despite what we know about the scale of site destruction, the reality is worse.”Footnote 66 The question is whether looting and illicit trade really offer any significant income for terrorist groups to the extent that the problem warrants action at the highest international level for dealing with peace and security issues – that is, the UNSC. The initially presented “evidence” indicated that such a link was heavily tainted by war propaganda, but the heritage community supported the narrative or stayed silent in the hope that the terrorism connection could put a bit of wind in their sails.
When the Russia-supported UNSC Resolution 2199 embraced UNESCO’s call for including a focus on the connection between looting of antiquities and terrorism, evidence was absent.Footnote 67 Still today, UNSC Resolution 2199, a Chapter VII resolution, binds all nations. Several UNSC resolutions confirmed Resolution 2199, including a major resolution from 2018. The European Council adopted a resolution on the topic in 2018. The UNSC’s involvement has contributed strongly to promote the international agenda on cultural heritage in conflict. Yet, the intense political focus has failed to translate into practical initiatives. State initiatives remain unambitious, indicating that the “terrorism-heritage nexus” never really hit the fan. Recent commentators have found that looting and illicit trafficking as a means for financing terrorism has been way exaggerated and that “bloggers, journalists and advocacy groups” have “fueled a false narrative.”Footnote 68 As of 2021, the connection between looting of antiquities and a noteworthy financing of terrorism remains unclear if not unsubstantiated. Still, we hear only few voices in the heritage community, including academic researchers and other experts, expressing concern about this enduring inconsistency between facts and policy.
Altogether, we have seen a political dynamic between a heritage community struggling for recognition and funds, the elevation of an unclear topic to the UNSC’s level, the strengthening of the international political discourse on heritage and armed conflict, and a resulting increase in the value of cultural heritage as a target for non-state actors and terrorists.
The dark side of cultural heritage protection
My aim with this article is of course not to silence concerns and debates. Nor is my aim to belittle the many eminent protection and preservation initiatives. Rather, my aim is to illuminate and thematize some unfortunate collateral effects of the current policies and practices of cultural heritage protection, which call for serious self-scrutinization. The concept of the dark side of heritage protection seeks to capture the socio-logical dynamics of how cultural heritage advocacy and protection initiatives sometimes produce an image of cultural heritage as something that can be targeted to launch a blow at one’s adversaries. It seeks to capture the paradox that the more we speak about the value of cultural heritage and the importance of protecting it, the more we speak about the dramatic loss that its destruction involves, the more interesting it becomes for armed groups, terrorists, and, sometimes, states to target it.
We construct cultural heritage as an object of global security in a feedback loop: elevating the value of cultural heritage to a security issue increases the political effect of attacking cultural heritage and, thus, the likelihood that it will be attacked, thus further raising security interest in the object. We need to ask ourselves in what situations and to what extent do our voiced concerns about cultural heritage and protection initiatives instigate the kind of destruction they aim to prevent? What could we do to avert such effects? Condemning and shaming has proved to be counterproductive compared to the desired end state, which is to reduce or avoid the destruction of cultural heritage.
A more sensitive approach means a focus on strategic communication with a skilled eye to conflict dynamics and the political psychology involved in the conflict-related destruction of cultural heritage. Namely, stakeholder communities should be careful with toying with the strong emotions involved in cultural heritage to promote their own agendas. In practice, this means, for instance, that when international organizations and states adopt cultural heritage protection policies and capacities aimed at conflicts, or when they instigate protection activities during conflicts, they should keep a low profile. If they hoist the protection flag, if they pride themselves on protecting the cultural heritage of mankind to show moral high ground, adversaries may seek to challenge and ridicule them by destroying cultural heritage in places or situations where protection is too risky or expensive. Bamiyan, Timbuktu, and Palmyra offer paradigmatic examples of that dynamic. Heritage protection can make international organizations and states as well as other organizations and entities look morally good, but it easily generates undesirable and unmanageable situations and dilemmas.
A precondition for averting these dark sides of heritage protection is that states must invest in building adequate competencies and capacities at the state level as well as in international organizations to handle challenges related to cultural heritage in conflicts. On the one hand, such capacities should ensure that the lessons learned are taken in and translated into adjustments of policy and practice. On the other hand, the existence of capacities could prevent the wicked quests for recognition and funds that keep derailing the international debates, processes, and protection initiatives. It is crucial to ensure that defense and security institutions and related experts take ownership of the policy debates and response mechanisms. We have clearly progressed from seeing conflict-related destruction of cultural heritage as just a “cultural tragedy” to viewing it as intricately connected to the broader conflict and security agenda. If the issues related to cultural heritage and conflicts continue to lie solely with the heritage community and the cultural sector, and not with the professional milieus dealing directly with conflict and security, we will mostly likely never see practical solutions and operative responses to the growing challenges with cultural heritage in armed conflicts.
