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Heritage and Theft in Syria and Iraq

Stolen antiquities recovered in Iraq in 2008.

Stolen antiquities recovered in Iraq in 2008.

How has the theft and destruction of heritage been exploited in Syria and Iraq? This week The Mosaic Rooms hosted a talk with leading experts to discuss this.

Toby Dodge Director of the Middle East Centre at the LSE chaired the evening, introducing Benjamin Isakhan from Deakin University, Melbourne who heads the university’s project Heritage Destruction in Iraq and Syria and Neil Brodie who has researched the illicit trade in antiquities for over 20 years.

Isakhan described how cultural destruction has been perpetrated in Iraq and Syria, reflecting on the size of the problem: ‘ISIS are just one of the many perpetrators across the entire Middle East that are responsible for industrial scale destruction [of heritage]’. Focussing on ISIS, he argued that these are not ‘arbitrary acts of cultural destruction, it has specific political messages’. He described the ‘cultural genocide’ of sites of significance to oppressed communities, including Yazidi, Christian and Armenian communities. He cited the targeting of the Armenian Genocide Martyrs’ Memorial in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, a place of central significance for contemporary worship and as a site of remembrance and burial for victims of past genocide, which suffered wholesale destruction by ISIS in 2014.

The way in which ISIS propaganda videos present acts of destruction revealed their targets, Isakhan said, with attacks on pre Islamic sites translated in English and those on Islamic (such as Shia) sites in Arabic. The targeting of pre Islamic heritage was, he suggested, a considered attack on the enlightenment values of western society represented by the institution of the museum.

Trade and Preservation

Neil Brodie urged us to remember earlier acts of destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq. He argued that our short-term views are damaging, as destruction continues attention moves on. Brodie also pointed to research indicating that ISIS are not the only group profiting from trading antiquities, citing evidence that the Syrian Government and other groups are also involved. The reports of ISIS’s profits from trafficking artefacts he argued are overblown and misleading, distracting from the importance of developing a wider strategy for protecting heritage.

Audience questions sparked a wide ranging discussion, from the role of archaeology as a practice with colonial origins, to tributes to the efforts of local people to protect heritage, to the question of who benefits from this destruction?

Western attitudes to heritage preservation were also questioned. Isakhan described the reaction of a man who lived near the ancient site of Babylon to the millions being spent on ‘propping up a column’, when residents who had lived through starvation under Saddam Hussein and then suffered under American military occupation continued to live in deprivation nearby. Parallels could be drawn he said with the outcry over Palmyra whilst the starvation and killing of people in Syria continues unchecked.

What are the Solutions?

Seeking solutions, the role of UNESCO was criticised by both speakers. Neil Brodie argued that action to protect heritage has come too late: ‘our inability to come to terms with this has brought about a kind of hysteria…I think UNESCO hasn’t helped’. He advocated for a change of focus from the countries themselves to shutting down markets for the trade of goods. Isakhan outlined a role for UNESCO in leading national museum cooperation to care for objects in a time of war. He also suggested that people in the countries affected are rarely asked themselves what heritage they most care about being conserved.

This was part of a series of events around our current exhibition In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain. Next month’s talk Conflict City – Jerusalem will look at the politics of heritage preservation in Israel/Palestine.

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