3 works are helping us better understand what the world can and can't do about war's devastating toll on cultural artifacts
#CultureUnderThreat: Recommendations for the US Government
a task force report by the Antiquities Coalition, the Asia Society, and the Middle East Institute
46 pp., April 2016; available at taskforce.theantiquariancoalition.org
The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War
by Robert Bevan
Reaktion, second revised edition, 303 pp., $19.95 (paper)
Palmyre: L’irremplaçable trésor
by Paul Veyne
Albin Michel, 144 pp., $14.50
... ISIS documents recovered by US Special Forces in May 2015 suggested that the group has an organized system for imposing taxes on the trade in looted antiquities, and the plunder of sites continues to be a very serious concern. However, so far, few Syrian objects of significant value have been identified in the West, and the overall looting situation, in which many different groups, including the regime, appear to be involved, remains murky. (The US government recently estimated that ISIS has earned “several million dollars from antiquities sales”—making it a modest part of its overall income—rather than the tens or hundreds of millions that have often been mentioned in the press.)
Meanwhile, the US and its allies have seemed helpless to make a difference where it matters most: before the damage or destruction occurs. As long ago as December 2014, well before ISIS captured Palmyra, the United Nations released a report showing that nearly three hundred historic sites in Syria had been damaged since the beginning of the war, most of them by groups other than ISIS. Of these, twenty-four had been “totally destroyed” by different militias or by the Assad regime itself, including twenty-two in Aleppo alone. As of this year, all of the six sites in Syria that were supposedly protected by UNESCO World Heritage status have been damaged, including, along with Palmyra, the Krak des Chevaliers, Syria’s most important crusader castle, the remains of the Hellenistic city of Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates, and the Roman city of Bosra. A number of the destroyed monuments, like the Temple of Bel frieze at Palmyra or the majestic, eleventh-century minaret in Aleppo, toppled amid fierce fighting in early 2013, were unique works with no known parallels.
For many Syrians, the international response has been baffling. While speaking constantly of ISIS, whose destructive acts they can do little about, Western leaders and cultural officials have mostly overlooked the grave damage that is occurring in many other parts of Syria—often in areas where preventive steps can be taken. And for all the extraordinary expressions of concern for the fate of the country’s museums, monuments, and artwork, hardly anything has been said about the relation of these sites to the communities surrounding them, which are often deeply attached to them. (One of the few Western scholars who has is the historian Glen Bowersock, who observed last year in the NYR Daily that there is a “tradition of Palmyrene achievements that really means something to the Arab world.”) ...