Protection at Source

The policy emphasis on protection at source, with protection conceived holistically to include public awareness and improved capacity alongside actual physical in situ protection, is unrealistic. To what extent these measures can ever offer long-term, comprehensive protection to cultural sites is questionable because of the demands they place on available resources. It has long been recognized that no country has the resources necessary to protect its cultural heritage from the attention of determined thieves.^{Footnote 13} In Syria there are an estimated 10,000 archaeological sites, and even before the current conflict it was only possible to employ something like one guard for every five sites.^{Footnote 14} A similar situation prevailed in peacetime Iraq.^{Footnote 15} The fall-back option is to concentrate resources on a small number of “significant” sites, presumably abandoning the rest to depredation. In any event, protection dissipates when it is needed most during periods of civil disorder, conflict, or economic recession or collapse.

The example of Iraq is a cogent one. John Russell, who was Deputy Senior Advisor for Culture for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from September 2003 until 2004, has described the financial and material support provided by governments and private foundations for active site protection on the ground in Iraq, where sites had been heavily looted since the 1990s. He states that because of the large number of archaeological sites needing protection from looters, the efforts of first the Italian Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale and later the Iraqi Archaeological Site Protection Force were by necessity focused on protecting only the largest ones.^{Footnote 16} The early signs were that this injection of money, material, and expertise had gone some way towards bringing the situation under control, but by 2008 there were reports of an upturn of looting in some areas.^{Footnote 17} Although a 2008 British inspection in southern Iraq of eight important sites found no evidence of recent looting (it could not comment on the situation at smaller sites),^{Footnote 18} Russell concluded the same year that despite the human and physical resources committed to site protection, looting was still not under control and that there were long term problems of sustainability.^{Footnote 19} Lawrence Rothfield offered a similarly pessimistic assessment.^{Footnote 20} Using satellite imagery, Katharyn Hanson showed that at the site of Umma in south Iraq, one of the large sites that was offered some protection, 8318 looters pits were dug between 2003 and June 2005, dropping to 500 between June 2005 and June 2008^{Footnote 21}. No evidence has been forthcoming for the situation at smaller sites. In 2009, archaeologist McGuire Gibson, who has worked extensively in Iraq, stated that “… looting on a scale that involves virtual destruction of whole cities ... is still occurring in southern Iraq, and there is no prospect of its ending.”^{Footnote 22} Thus at best the improved site protection ameliorated but did not solve the problem, though it is equally and perhaps more likely that any mitigation was due more to the restoration of effective civil government and consequent improvements in public order and legitimate economy. Furthermore, it seems likely that some material assistance was diverted away from heritage protection by agencies unknown,^{Footnote 23} at worst to fund militia groups but more likely for the personal gain of corrupt individuals and so acting as a drag on civic reconstruction. If that was the case, material assistance for in situ protection of cultural heritage would have been worse than useless.

The political and military fragmentation of Syria has not permitted direct in situ material assistance of the type that was possible in Iraq. Nevertheless, policy interventions have still been source directed. On 20 May 2015 UNESCO released an infographic on the first year’s activities of ESSHP. It reported damage documentation, communication and awareness-raising, and technical assistance and capacity building in Syria and neighboring countries.^{Footnote 24} There was no mention of any actions aimed at subduing demand or tackling the destination market. Similarly, the ASOR Syrian Heritage Initiative claimed to implement “cultural property protection” by documenting damage done to Syrian cultural heritage, promoting global awareness, and planning emergency and post-war reconstruction.^{Footnote 25} Again, however, the focus was very much on the source.

The Iraq experience was presented in a positive light at the February 2013 UNESCO meeting in Amman,^{Footnote 26} but five months earlier in October 2012 a UNESCO roundtable had been convened to discuss the challenges and achievements of protecting Iraq’s cultural heritage because:

This was an implicit admission that ten years of protection and recovery policy initiatives aimed at safeguarding sites in Iraq had not served to bring the problem under control. As the italicized wording shows, the solution offered was for more of the same. A similar solution was offered for Syria, with the same poor prospect of success.

Reactive Policy Interventions

In practice, if not in conception, the policy of protection and recovery is reactive. Reactive policy interventions fail for two reasons. First, they provide time and space for the unimpeded development of smuggling routes and a functioning market. Second, they come too late to prevent serious damage. It was well known that Syrian archaeological sites were being looted in the 1990s and 2000s and that Syrian cultural objects were being illegally traded.^{Footnote 28} Nevertheless, although the trade had prompted new Syrian legislation in 1999,^{Footnote 29} no international action was taken at that time to stop it. Satellite imagery of archaeological sites confirms that looting was already established before the 2011 onset of fighting.^{Footnote 30} One study of five sites for which images are available from before and after 2011 identified evidence of pre-2011 looting on every site, sometimes on a large scale.^{Footnote 31} At Dura Europas, for example, “hundreds or possibly thousands of looting holes” were counted on an image dating to 2007.^{Footnote 32} The Syrian director of museums Hiba al-Sakhel was quoted as saying in 2012 that the looting of archaeological sites had been ongoing for many years, but had accelerated as sites had been left unprotected during the fighting.^{Footnote 33} She was right. Organized smuggling networks established unhindered during the 1990s and 2000s were already in place and in a position to take advantage when fighting broke out and looting moved up a gear in 2011. The existence of these networks was suspected at least by Syrian authorities. A memo prepared by the Syrian prime minister Adel Safar in July 2011 warned of groups of criminals specialized in the theft of antiquities and manuscripts preparing to enter Syria.^{Footnote 34}

Even when it became clear post-2011 that cultural sites in Syria were being damaged or destroyed it was a further two years before the international community began to organize a response. ICOM was first to act, but even then did not release its Emergency Red List of Syrian Cultural Objects at Risk until September 2013, more than two years after the outbreak of fighting and ten years after the start of serious looting. As noted above, international support for capacity building aimed at enhancing site protection did not start reaching Syria until March 2014 with the establishment of the EU-funded ESSHP. The EU trade controls implemented in December 2013 do not apply to material exported from Syria before 9 May 2011, even though under the 1999 (amending 1963) Syrian national antiquities law, “movable” antiquities are state property and their export abroad for sale is forbidden.^{Footnote 35} Similarly, the trade controls implemented by UNSCR 2199 of February 2015 do not apply to material taken out of Syria on or before 15 March 2011.

These reactive interventions have failed to prevent the large scale looting of archaeological sites in Syria. A similar story of delayed and fragmented response to a crisis-inspired “emergency” could be repeated for Iraq, hinging on the March 2003 Coalition invasion and subsequent looting of the National Museum in Baghdad, years after serious looting had started in the 1990s. Again, international help arrived too late to prevent the calamitous looting of Iraqi museums and archaeological sites.

Country-specific Policy Interventions

The policy of protection and recovery is country-specific. The policy is not intended to be country-specific, but over the past three decades it has structured what are now termed “emergency actions” as the cultural heritage of one country after another has come under threat during a period of armed conflict. Country-specific emergency actions fail for two reasons. First, the targeting of international assistance at cultural heritage protection in one country leaves the cultural heritage of other countries vulnerable. Second, country-specific trade controls such as those imposed by UNSCRs take no account of the facts that both archaeological cultures and smuggling operations can spread across the territories of more than one modern country.

Already in 2001, Andrew Lawler had identified the problem with emergency country-specific actions when he wrote in Science about Iraq that an “extensive crisis has been unfolding for the past decade with barely a murmur of protest from the international community.”^{Footnote 36} Lawler was complaining about the lack of any concerted action aimed at stemming the illegal flow out of Iraq and onto the international market of Iraqi artifacts while public and political attention was focused on Afghanistan after the 1993 looting of the National Museum in Kabul and more looting and destruction around the country, culminating the 2001 demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas.^{Footnote 37} Yet it was during the late 1990s that a vigorous market in Iraqi antiquities developed despite what on paper was a draconian regime of UN trade sanctions imposed by UNSCR 661 in August 1990.^{Footnote 38} Between 1991 and 2003, UNSCR 661 was largely ignored and large collections of Iraqi artifacts were assembled in Europe and North America.^{Footnote 39} Yet, as Lawler correctly noted, not much was done about it.

The situation changed radically in 2003 when the Coalition invasion of Iraq triggered a new wave of looting and destruction, and a new “emergency” situation unfolded, attracting media and political attention and triggering the policy response aimed at site protection described above. By 2008, it was easy to predict that the shift of international attention and resources to Iraq would leave the cultural heritage of other countries open to the depredations of the market^{Footnote 40}. Syria, for one, was offered no assistance during this period of what can now in retrospect be seen to have been one of growing vulnerability for its cultural heritage. Thus whatever the merits or otherwise of policy implementations during the late 2000s aimed at protecting Iraqi heritage, in one conspicuous respect, they failed—the financial, material and human resources committed to Iraq did nothing to secure protection for Syrian heritage. Meanwhile, in the wider region, archaeological sites were being looted in other countries too. The problem had reached crisis proportions in Jordan by the 1990s,^{Footnote 41} but the country was never offered the international attention or support afforded to Iraq and Syria.

To some extent, it might be possible to characterize the looting in Syria and Jordan during the 1990s and 2000s as “spillover” from events in Iraq. Jordan was plunged into economic recession by the 1991 Gulf War, which encouraged people to engage in illegal digging and trading.^{Footnote 42} The spillover might also have manifest through the emergence of regional smuggling networks, perhaps centered on Iraq and drawing impetus from the political and economic fallout of the 1991 and 2003 wars but extending throughout the wider region. By and large, collectors and dealers do not specialize according to country. Throughout the 1990s, for example, there were persistent allegations of a trading network orchestrated by Amman resident Ghassan Rihani, which was transporting material from Iraq and Jordan but also—not remarked upon at the time—Syria for sale in London and beyond.^{Footnote 43} Rihani died in 2001, without any serious effort having been made to investigate his business organization and practices, but the international origins of his traded material are noteworthy. When faced with trading networks that are transnational in their organization and reach, a country-specific policy response is clearly inappropriate.

The country-specific approach also falls afoul of the fact that archaeological cultures are often not coincident with modern national borders. Many objects of types shown on the ICOM Red List of Syrian Cultural Objects, for example, can also be found in neighboring countries. Thus a system of “emergency” trade controls such as those of the EU and UN aimed only at Syrian objects, or even at Iraqi and Syrian objects, still leaves wide open the opportunity for material to be sold and collected with impunity as originating in Turkey, or Jordan, or Lebanon, or another country in the region. Rihani, for example, was able to ignore UNSCR 661 by claiming a Jordanian origin for material he was trading from Iraq.^{Footnote 44}

The international community did nothing to stop the trade in Syrian objects during the 1990s and 2000s because its attention was focused on the situation on Iraq. Once attention had shifted to Syria, Iraq was seemingly forgotten. Until July 2014, that is, when in response to news reports of a new wave of destruction and illegal trade at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), UNESCO introduced another “emergency response action plan” to protect cultural heritage in Iraq, again calling for improvements in inventory and training and international ratification of the relevant conventions.^{Footnote 45} So, by August 2014, there were two separate emergency action plans, one aimed at Syria, the other at Iraq. Meanwhile, in neighboring Lebanon, the illegal export of antiquities was ongoing, in Yemen too, the situation was serious, and in Jordan, Egypt, and perhaps Iran and Turkey. The list of countries could go on. In February 2015, Laura Mallonnee asked “Why is no one talking about Libya’s cultural destruction?”^{Footnote 46} She was right to ask. The answer was that the attention of the international community was very firmly focused on the actions of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Recovery and Return

The practice of securing the recovery and return of objects stolen from museums, libraries, and archives is understandable. But more generally, the practice is of limited utility. It does not restore damage caused by the looting of archaeological sites, nor does it deter dealers from trading in illegally-acquired material. The emphasis on recovery and return of a policy that is used, if not intentionally designed, to protect the archaeological contexts of archaeological objects is dubious. By the time an object is subject to recovery, its informational value has been lessened, perhaps irredeemably so, by the destruction of context caused by its theft, clandestine excavation, and illegal trade. It is easy to understand the rationale for the recovery of important pieces such as the Euphronios krater, for example. Even out of their original contexts, they are considered to be significant works of ancient art. But most archaeological objects on the market are not of that standard. The occasional seizure and return of small numbers of cuneiform tablets looted from Iraq, for example, during a time when collections numbering in their thousands were being assembled in Europe and North America,^{Footnote 47} cannot have mitigated the loss caused to historical knowledge by past looting. Thus the return of small numbers of relatively mundane objects does not and cannot repair the cultural harm caused by the damaging circumstances of their removal. Worse, it imposes an unforeseen and unasked for cost on the country concerned in terms of long-term curation.

Unfortunately, in accordance with the policy of protection and recovery, law enforcement and particularly customs authorities are encouraged to recover and return these archaeologically unimportant objects without following through with criminal prosecution. In 2009, for example, the UK returned to Afghanistan more than 1500 artifacts weighing together 3.4 tons. The material had been seized by UK customs during random searches made since 2003 at London’s Heathrow airport of incoming passengers from Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. All the objects had been illegally traded, but it was reported that something like 90 percent were of limited importance because of their lost contexts.^{Footnote 48} A second shipment of 800 objects was returned in 2012.^{Footnote 49} The fact that more than 2000 objects were discovered in the luggage of incoming air passengers suggests a substantial number of individual interceptions of people passing through customs, but it is noticeable that no prosecutions or convictions were ever reported. Presumably recovery and return were considered an appropriate and sufficient response.

This pattern of seizure and civil forfeiture without prosecution is widespread. Between 1991 and 1998, Canadian customs seized 76 pieces of floor mosaic declared as Lebanese handicrafts but in fact illegally-exported from Syria. Expert analysis suggested the pieces had come from western Syria, probably from somewhere close to the town of Hama.^{Footnote 50} All were returned to the ownership of Syria in 1999. A Canadian customs officer was quoted at the time as saying there had been no arrests as it was simpler to proceed under civil law.^{Footnote 51} Presumably, the criminals involved were left free to continue their wrongdoing, and perhaps to trade Syrian objects looted after 2011. And the criminals involved might have been frightening. The mosaics must have been looted in the late 1980s, at a time when Shabiha criminal gangs were heavily involved in smuggling cultural objects out of Syria.^{Footnote 52} The Shabiha subsequently took to the field in 2011 as a violent pro-Assad militia. During the early 1980s, until his fall from favor in 1985, Rifaat al-Assad (uncle of Bashar al-Assad) controlled the antiquities trade in Syria. In 2007 it was alleged that he was the one who “stole Hamah antiquities.”^{Footnote 53} The Canadian archaeologist involved in returning the mosaics to Syria expressed concern about the indifferent attitude of his Syrian counterparts.^{Footnote 54} Their seemingly reluctant cooperation might be more understandable in the threatening context of Shabiha profit and violence.

For another example, between 2008 and 2011 there were two seizures by US customs and one by UK customs of objects coming from Iraq, Egypt and Libya, all dispatched by the same Dubai-based dealer Hassan Fazeli and all with associated documents listing Turkey as country of origin. In 2008, US customs intercepted an Assyrian stone head from Iraq,^{Footnote 55} and in 2010, a shipment at Newark International Airport, this time comprising five ancient Egyptian artifacts.^{Footnote 56} The Assyrian head was returned to Iraq in March 2015,^{Footnote 57} and the Egyptian pieces were returned to Egypt in April 2015.^{Footnote 58} In 2011, half a marble statue believed to have been looted from Cyrene in Libya entered the UK and was seized by UK customs two years later in 2013 from a bonded warehouse at Heathrow Airport.^{Footnote 59} No further investigations have been announced into the ongoing dealings of Fazeli who is presumably free to carry on trading material from Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and—potentially—Syria and other countries in the region.

Seizures and forfeiture actions are defended because the lower burden of proof and reduced mental requirement of civil actions makes it easier to recover objects than would otherwise be the case through criminal prosecution.^{Footnote 60} But if they are intended to exert a deterrent effect upon dealers, it is far from clear that they do. They are not likely to discourage further illegal trading because of the mark-ups in price that occur as material enters the destination market.^{Footnote 61} In the Fazeli cases, for example, the Assyrian head had a declared import value of $6,500 and an appraised market value of $1,200,000.^{Footnote 62} The five Egyptian pieces together had a declared import value of $17,000 and an appraised market value of $57,000.^{Footnote 63} The Libyan statue had a declared import value of £60,000 but was estimated to be worth at least £1.5 million.^{Footnote 64} Even for the lower priced Egyptian pieces, if the importer was forced to bear the financial loss of the forfeiture, it could be written off by the subsequent sale of one successfully received shipment. Thus financial losses incurred through seizures and civil forfeitures are not so much a deterrent as a cost of doing business that can be factored into the pricing arrangement. Rick St. Hilaire has additionally pointed out that seized objects are potentially material evidence of criminal wrongdoing, so that their return to the country of origin effectively precludes any criminal proceedings against alleged wrongdoers.^{Footnote 65}