Will the world do nothing to stop extremist groups from destroying some of civilization's most treasured monuments?
The question has confronted Western governments with stark urgency in the weeks since the Islamic State, also called ISIS, released a video of militants smashing ancient sculptures at the Mosul Museum in Iraq. In early March, after reports that extremists attacked the ancient Assyrian sites of Nimrud and Hatra, Iraqi officials pleaded for U.S. airstrikes to stop them. But the United States and its allies have wrung their hands.
Secretary of State John Kerry described the devastation as "one of the most outrageous assaults on our shared heritage that perhaps any of us have seen in a lifetime." Irina Bokova, director general of UNESCO, said: "This is not just a cultural tragedy. It's also a security issue, with terrorists using the destruction of heritage as a weapon of war." The U.N. Security Council condemned the "targeted destruction of religious sites and objects" by the Islamic State and the Nusra Front.
But the United Nations says it is largely powerless to deal
with the threat, and Western governments claim they have more urgent military objectives.
This is dangerously wrong. By loudly deploring this "war crime" and doing nothing, the world may be playing into the extremists' hands. "ISIS is doing it because they can," Amr Al-Azm, an Ohio-based Syrian anthropologist, told me. "They are striking at things the international community holds dear, but is impotent to do anything about."
Since 2011, five of the six UNESCO World Heritage sites in Syria have suffered significant damage; four have been requisitioned for military purposes by different groups in direct violation of international protocols. Tunnel bombs have devastated Aleppo's old city, thousand-year-old minarets have been detonated, medieval forts have been shelled. Parthian and Hellenistic sites have been pillaged.
Then came the Islamic State, which turned such attacks into an explicit strategy. Taking over archaeological sites near its stronghold, the northern city of Raqqa, the group turned local looting brigades into large-scale businesses. And it has used social media to broadcast the carefully choreographed destruction of mosques, cemeteries, libraries and other monuments belonging to any groups or sects it regards as deviant.
"They are picking sites that will have optimal effect in terrorizing populations and chasing them out," Michael D. Danti, an archaeologist at Boston University, told me. Drawing on satellite imagery, reporting by local informants and the extremists' constant use of social media, Danti's colleagues have documented more than 70 acts of cultural annihilation, including a shocking attack at Nimrud.
Why hasn't the international community responded?
Part of the problem is that cultural heritage laws are woefully out of date. The Hague's 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict--which prohibits the targeting of heritage sites or their use for military purposes except in cases of "military necessity"--was essentially designed for traditional wars between states. A second protocol in 1999 added protection in civil wars, but Iraq, Syria and many other countries never signed it, and U.N. officials concede that the agreement did not anticipate deliberate destruction by nongovernmental extremist groups.
Limited to working with sovereign governments, UNESCO can offer emergency assistance to Syria only through the state Culture Ministry in Damascus. But, by some estimates, President Bashar Assad's regime now controls only a third of the country. The rest, including the areas under the greatest threat from the Islamic State, is beyond UNESCO's reach.
While the United Nations has adopted the "responsibility to protect" doctrine to allow for international intervention to stop imminent crimes of war or genocide, no such parallel principle has been introduced for cultural heritage. Even the recent Security Council resolution, which imposed a worldwide ban on the cross-border trade in Syrian and Iraqi antiquities, did not provide a way to stop deliberate acts of destruction.
Western governments have been too slow to help local populations anticipate such attacks. In opposition-held areas of Syria, Al-Azm has set up an informal network of local activists who have been making heroic efforts to sandbag buildings, protect mosaics under layers of glue, hide movable objects and manuscripts, and document any damage that is done. But he says legal obstacles have made it difficult for him to get foreign governments to support his efforts.
In Iraq, the United States spent millions of dollars training site managers and conservators and rebuilding the national museum in Baghdad, which recently reopened. But those efforts have not included contingency plans for attacks by extremist groups.
Any intervention to protect cultural sites must be carried out with great care. If the West were to intervene to protect world heritage sites but do nothing to stop the destruction of shrines and cemeteries that mean the most to local populations, it would do more harm than good. Aid to Syrians and Iraqis to protect buildings, monuments, libraries and museums may need to be distributed covertly.
But amid overwhelming evidence that the Islamic State's barbaric campaign against culture amounts to a war crime, the world must be ready to use force to stop it. Abdulameer Al-Dafar Hamdani, an Iraqi archaeologist now studying at Stony Brook University, notes that the ancient Assyrian cities under threat in northern Iraq, including Hatra, Nimrud, Nineveh and Khorsabad, are in remote areas far from civilian villages. Air power could readily detect insurgents moving toward them, he argues, and a single coalition strike, well away from the sites themselves, would make clear that the West is prepared to protect them.
"It's a military issue," he told me. "For now, it is the only way."
Editorial on 05/03/2015