blood antiquities: cultural property and the political economy of armed conflict
TRANSCRIPT
Blood Antiquities: Cultural Property and the Political Economy of Armed Conflict
MA Conflict, Security and Development
Dr Neville Bolt
Hameed Richard Beau Rahim
Word count: 14,367
Submission: 26th August 2015
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Declaration This dissertation is the sole work of the author, and has not been accepted in any
previous application for a degree; all quotation and sources of information have been acknowledged.
I confirm that my research did not require ethical approval. Signed: Hameed Richard Beau Rahim Date:
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Abstract
Cultural property includes architectures, monuments, scientific and artistic objects that are important to human cultures and societies, but have been frequently destroyed and looted in wars throughout history. In 1954, the United Nations adopted the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict to mitigate the threat to human cultural history. It had little effect and the destruction and looting of cultural property are persistent problems today.
This paper will argue that economic considerations towards cultural property have influenced the dynamics of armed conflict. There are financial benefits to be gained from the destruction and trafficking of culturally important sites and antiquities, which will be outlined in this paper. Cultural property intertwines with economics and war to produce a distinct and flourishing war economy that consequently gives incentives to prolong, intensify and change the dynamics of armed conflict.
The country case studies focus on conflicts in the post-Cold War era, when rebellions sought to finance themselves independent of superpowers. The Bosnian and Kosovar wars from 1991 – 2001 saw the systematic destruction of Bosnian Muslim heritage sites. Afghanistan’s trade networks have been smuggling valuable antiquities out of the country into the globalised black market, and in Iraq the looting of cultural property led to new security problems. This dissertation shows how cultural property can offer economic opportunities during times of armed conflict and how this has shaped the character of specific conflicts.
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To Khaled Al-Assad, 1934 – 18th August 2015
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Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6 Chapter One - Cultural Property ................................................................................................ 9
Chapter Two – Economic Globalisation and the Antiquities Trade ........................................ 15 Chapter Three – Contemporary Conflicts ................................................................................ 21
Chapter Four – The Political Economy of Armed Conflict ..................................................... 26 Chapter Five - Bosnia .............................................................................................................. 32
Chapter Six - Afghanistan ........................................................................................................ 40 Chapter Seven - Iraq ................................................................................................................ 47
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 57 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 60
Figures ..................................................................................................................................... 65
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Introduction
Cultural property shapes the dynamics of armed conflict. Cultural property is the
physical manifestation of human artistic and scientific practices, and is important for
understanding the history of human cultures. Cultural property also has economic impacts on
societies which are taken advantage of by belligerents in times of armed conflict, either by
trading valuable cultural objects or destroying them. Destruction of monuments and buildings
has always occurred during and after wars and, sometimes, instead of the destruction of human
lives. The inanimate object has taken an important place in the decision-making processes of
belligerents during armed conflicts. This is an interesting and strange phenomenon of human
nature and will be the focus of this paper.
Since the signing of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation’s (UNESCO) ‘Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of
Armed Conflict’ in 1954, there has been an increased awareness on the importance of cultural
property from the international community of nation-states. On their website UNESCO states
their goal to identify, protect and preserve cultural heritage that is of “outstanding value to
humanity.”1 However, what they mean by ‘value to humanity,’ is broad, unclear, and in need
of academic clarification.
Many scholars have sought to the clarify and expand the different important aspects of
cultural heritage and property during armed conflicts. For example, John Henry Merryman,
Jadranka Petrovic and Craig Forrest have worked on the legal aspects of cultural property
ownership and status during war. They have helped to identify why property is stolen and
1 UNESCO, World Heritage, http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/
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destroyed, and why international legal mechanisms have failed or succeeded to protect cultural
property. Others have expanded our understanding of cultural property as symbols of identity
that have been destroyed as part of propaganda campaigns and ideological extremism. Cultural
property has often been targeted by state-led initiatives to remove cultural property on a large
and systematic scale. However, during the 1990s there was an increased focus on the ability of
non-state militants to fund their own rebellions by capturing economically valuable natural
resources like diamonds and oil2. War economies led to the field of political economy of armed
conflict, which considered how economic resources affect the way wars evolve. Here, we are
left with a gap in the study of cultural property – the link between war economies and cultural
property.
This paper argues that cultural property is destroyed and stolen to achieve economic
objectives during wars, and the benefits provided from these influence belligerent’s decisions
to prolong and intensify conflict, and reorient there targets of violence. Chapter One will
outline what we mean by ‘culture’ and ‘property,’ and will give a brief history of cultural
property during war. Chapter Two will look into the economic aspects of cultural property;
how this has been integrated into globalised economic processes; and who is involved in the
process. Chapter Four focuses on the nature of contemporary armed conflicts which can be
categorised into types of political violence, and is important when considering the politics of
cultural property. This chapter will also look into contemporary weaponry and the reasons as
to why this has become such a pervasive threat to cultural property. Before moving onto our
2 See also Phillipe Le Billon, “The political ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts,” Political Geography, 20, (2001). He argued that natural resources can motivate and finance armed conflicts, and the control of local resources can influence the strategies and agendas of belligerents.
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three case studies, Chapter Four will bring together cultural property, economics and war into
the analytic framework of the political economy of armed conflict. By understanding these
linkages, we are able to approach the conflicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq with greater
caution.
Chapter Five will look into the reasons behind the systematic and organised destruction
of Bosnian cultural heritage by the Serbs. Ethno-religious differences worked to motivate the
destruction, and evidence suggests long-term economic considerations influenced military
decisions.
Chapter Six elucidates the criminal trade networks operating in Afghanistan and its
global connections. The trade in antiquities begins with local diggers and traffickers with
international connections, but has been operating in hostile environments in territories under
militant control.
The final chapter will assess how cultural property can cause threats to national security
and military personnel. Iraq used its history to bridge sectarian tensions. But the looting of the
National Museum of Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003 financed sectarian and militant
groups.
This dissertation will not state that cultural property causes rebellions, or that armed
conflict is solely influenced by cultural property alone. More specifically, the bombing of
monuments and architecture, and trafficking of antiquities, leads to economic benefits for
certain belligerents who may redirect and reorient their actions during war. This can cause
individual and collective acts of violence, and lead to different uses of military equipment,
which prolongs and intensifies conflict.
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Chapter One - Cultural Property
Culture is a network of beliefs and practices that is learnt and shared between people in
complex ways.3 The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) understands it as a set of practices that
“only work because several people share it.”4 Cultural heritage can be defined as the evidence
of shared social traditions “which express the way of life and thought of a particular society,
and is evidence of its intellectual and spiritual achievements which embody the notion of
inheritance.”5 More precisely, cultural property is a recent concept that refines our focus
specifically to man-made, material objects, defined by the United Nations (UN) as:
“movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every
people, such as monuments of architecture, art or history, whether religious or secular;
archaeological sites; groups of buildings which, as a whole, are of historical or artistic
interest; works of art; manuscripts, books and other objects of artistic, historical or
archaeological interest; as well as scientific collections and important collections of
books or archives or of reproductions of the property defined above.”6
We must now ask the question, what makes the material object ‘cultural’ and why are
they important to people? Two contrasting arguments have sought to answer this question;
Functionalism and object-centricism. The former argues that the meaning of cultural property
3 MOD, Joint Doctrine Note 4/13: Culture and Human Terrain, The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, (Wiltshire: 2013): 1-2 4 ibid. 5 Lyndel Prott and Patrick O’Keefe, “Cultural Heritage” or “Cultural Property”? international Journal of Cultural Property, (1992): 307 6 UNESCO, http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13637&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
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is assigned by people, for example, only people can make an image that means or refers to the
historical figure of Christ. Therefore, the functions people assign to cultural property have a
primary role in determining cultural significance.7 Object-centricism, on the other hand,
focuses on the value of the object itself, without the value assigned by people. It argues that
the “cultural significance of the object derives from its scientific, artistic, or historic
importance.”8 However, as we will see below, cultural property also has economic significance
that increases and decreases in value depending on who has invested interest in the preservation
or destruction of the object.
Images, objects and buildings can be politically mobilised. For example, the Roman
emperor Hadrian installed a statue of himself and the Roman god Jupiter in Jerusalem after
subduing a Jewish-led insurgency from 132 – 136 BC.9 In this case cultural property was
installed to express a message about the new political organisation of Jerusalem under Roman
administration, by referring to Jupiter, the king of Roman gods, and to Hadrian, the statues
suggested that power was held by Roman citizens.
Cultural property can also be militarised. For example, the image of Christ was attached
to military standards10 and was intended to strengthen troop morale, who believed they were
fighting for Christ, and strengthen the sense of cohesion between thousands of men against a
common enemy. It is therefore evident that political groups seek to mobilise cultural property
7 Jadranka Petrovic, The Old Bridge of Mostar and Increasing Respect for Cultural Property in Armed Conflict, International Humanitarian Law Series, (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Leiden: 2013): 21 8 ibid: 22 9 Steven Katz (ed), The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 4, The Late Roman-Rabbanic Period, (University Cambridge Press: Cambridge, 1984): 106 10 Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of Art, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996): 109
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to influence the network of beliefs and practices shared between people. As a result, political
violence can occur when people believe their ‘culture’ and property are threatened by sets of
opposing beliefs and practices.
Ethnicity will be, inter alia, a key factor explaining the destruction of cultural property
in the contemporary world, and will be weighed in relation to armed conflict, politics and
economics. An ethnic community “is a named human population with a myth of common
ancestry, shared memories, and cultural elements; a link with a historic territory or homeland;
and a measure of solidarity.”11 Ethnicity can be related to the incidence of cultural property
destruction because the image, object and building that represents collective identity can be
used to consolidate political power. The eradication of cultural property would therefore seem
logical if one identity-driven group of people seek to eliminate another that constitutes an
existential threat to their culture.
The destruction of cultural property is not a new phenomenon. During Alexander the
Great’s return to Macedonia in 330 BC through modern-day Iran, he ransacked and pillaged
the ancient capital of Persepolis in retaliation for the invasions of Greece by the Achaemenid
Empire in the late fifth century BC. Although ethnic conflict may explain the motivation behind
the destruction of the city, economic considerations were noted by Diodorus: “the amount of
treasury captured at Persepolis was 120,000 talents… and in his own letter Alexander stated
that there was sufficient treasure and valuable property to load 10,000 mule carts and 6000
11 Michael Brown, “Causes and Implications of Ethnic Conflict,” in Michael Brown (ed.) Ethnic Conflict and International Security, (Princeton University Press, Princeton: 1993): 4
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camels.”12 In this case, ethnicity and economics merged to influence the decision to ransack
and plunder a major Persian city.
Cultural destruction has also been enacted by pre-modern societies between native
American tribes. Archaeological evidence and the written accounts of a mid-sixteenth-century
expedition, led by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, found that walls “safeguarded
monuments used by highly ranked people to buttress claims to positions of exalted status, such
as charnel structures containing the remains of revered ancestors… warriors thoroughly
desecrated the structures whenever they gained access to their enemies’ settlements.”13
Political power was justified by the public display of monuments that referred to a tribe’s
collective sense of common ancestry. As a result, a warring tribe could destroy this monument
to symbolically destroy their sense of identity.
Systematic appropriation of cultural property was a component of the Nazi regime’s
cultural and ethnic cleansing policy. The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce was headed under
Alfred Rosenburg, a prominent Nazi politician, who organised the appropriation of thousands
of cultural objects from occupied territories. Approximately twenty percent of European art
was looted by the Nazi regime, and 100,000 works were still missing as of 1997.14 At the
Nuremburg Trials, Rosenberg was found guilty of cultural property crimes, crimes against
humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. This judicial event was significant because “other
12 Arrian, The Anabasis of Alexander, or the History of Wars and Conquests of Alexander the Great, E. J. Chinook (trans.), Cornell University Library, (George Bell and Sons, 1893): 178 13 George R. Milner, Warfare in Prehistoric and Early Historic Eastern North America, Journal of Archaeological Research, vol. 7, no. 2, (1999): 124 14 Greg Bradscher, http://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/records-and-research/documenting-nazi-plunder-of-european-art.html
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nations imposed responsibility on an individual official of the offending belligerent power for
acts against cultural property.”15
The Nuremberg Trials were followed by internationally recognised regulations to
protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts. The Hague Convention for the Protection of
Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was signed in 1954 by 121 countries and
came into force under the UN’s Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in
1956. It was the outcome for the necessity for justice against cultural property crimes and
“recognised that cultural property has suffered grave damage… and by reason of the
developments in the technique of warfare, it is in increasing danger of destruction.”16
Recognition of the importance of heritage was extended to include “all peoples of the world,”17
regardless of differences in religion, ethnicity, or any other identity-driven social division.
However, the Hague Convention encountered several theoretical and practical flaws that
continue to prevent success in mitigating the destruction and looting of cultural property.
First is the the international/national paradox of cultural property law. Despite being
protected by international law, cultural property is under the legal ownership of nation-states,
and “through its sovereign right to designate its own cultural treasures… determines the scope
of application of international instruments.”18 This means that “no State or international
organisation [such as the UN], is authorised to intervene in domestic matters in order to
guarantee the protection of cultural property.”19 The UN is a political forum and cannot
15 John Merryman, “Two Ways of Thinking About Cultural Property,” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 80, no. 4, (1986): 836 16 UNESCO, Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. 17 ibid. 18 Petrovic, 2013: 17 19 ibid: 18
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intervene in military affairs without the consent of its five permanent members and four other
member states.
The second dilemma in the success of the Hague convention is the doctrine of military
necessity, which “balances between the need to achieve a military victory and the needs of
humanity”20 or the protection of cultural property. Under this doctrine “cultural property can
be targeted as a legitimate military objective when one party to the conflict operates from
within or closely situated to a building or site that is designated as having cultural or historical
significance.”21 In fact, military laws may be manipulated by belligerents to put their enemy in
difficult positions, and military laws are often unable to adequately protect cultural property.
Cultural property is evidence of the social, artistic, and scientific heritage of identity
groups, but when they engage in military conflicts, the destruction of this evidence is an
effective way of removing physical signs of the enemy’s existence. Although the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) tried to establish an
international convention to mitigate the destruction of heritage, it is a reoccurring problem.
Cultural property also has economic significance to explain the motivations behind its use and
abuse in times of armed conflict. The next chapter will look at the effects of economic
globalisation on cultural property and the illicit antiquities trade.
20 Craig Forrest, “The Doctrine of Military Necessity and the Protection of Cultural Property during Armed Conflicts,” California Western International Law Journal, 37:2, (2007): 181 21 Ashlyn Miligan, “Targeting Cultural Property: The Role of International Law,” Journal of Public and International Affairs, 19:5 (2008): 96
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Chapter Two – Economic Globalisation and the Antiquities Trade
“Economic globalisation constitutes integration of national economies into the
international economy through trade, direct foreign investment (by corporations and
multinationals), short-term capital flows, international flows of workers and humanity
generally, and flows of technology.”22 Today’s interconnectedness of economics across the
globe has also introduced new security threats at regional, national and international levels, to
both people and their cultural heritage. However, globalisation has always existed and we must
be wary not to characterise it as a new phenomenon – the Silk Road connected China to Europe
before the Hellenistic era, and many ancient artefacts from Afghanistan (dating from the first
to fifth centuries BC) have been studied for their combination of Classical Greek and Indian
visual styles.23 This section will identify the linkages between globalised economic factors and
the outbreak of conflict. We will then look into the economics of cultural property, which can
counter the negative effects of economic globalisation, but can also sustain organised crime
and the illicit trade in antiquities during times of armed conflict.
Fitzgerald identified three economic factors that contributed to the outbreak of conflict
– all of which pose security risks to cultural property. The first is “the widening disparities in
income or wealth within a society… [that leads to] a collective sense of injustice and
resentment”24 by some of the disadvantaged groups. Cultural property may be targeted as a
22 Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization, Oxford University Press, (Oxford: 2007): 3 23 cf. Alfred Foucher and Sir John Marshall were prominent scholars of Gandharan art in Afghanistan. They argued that Greek colonies in Afghanistan influenced the artistic production of local Buddhist art, often called ‘Greco-Buddhist Art.’ 24 Valpy Fitzgerald, War and Underdevelopment: Volume 1: The Economic and Social Consequences of Conflict, (Oxford Scholarship Online: 2011): 207
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replacement to violence against people, and the destruction of heritage can be a powerful
message in communicating this collective sense of injustice.
The second factor is the uncertain economic future of particular groups in terms of real
incomes, asset ownership and access to resources, which can lead to aggressive behaviour in
wealth accumulation.25 Looting of cultural property from the Iraqi National Museum took place
after military intervention, and people turned to criminal behaviour simply to feed their
families.
The third factor of economic globalisation that contributes to the outbreak of conflict
is “the weakening of the economic capacity of the state to provide public goods, which
undermines the legitimacy of the existing administrative system.”26 People may seek the
refuge of dissident political groups offering security and jobs, however, these groups may have
to evade the police and legal regulations, leading to an increased participation in clandestine
activities in the black market. Museums may be neglected in receiving state funding which
leads to a breakdown of a people’s sense of inclusion with their nation’s history and heritage,
looting becomes a viable activity and cultural sites may be unmaintained.
The valorisation of cultural heritage can create new jobs in a society.27 ‘Direct jobs’ are
found in heritage-related institutions from the private and public sectors, which may include
Ministries of Culture, monuments and museums managed by local authorities, and private
collectors. In France, there are 28,561 jobs in the public sector and 15,319 in the private
sector.28 “Indirect jobs are created by work related to conservation (general maintenance and
25 ibid. 26 ibid. 27 Xavier Greffe, “Is Heritage an Asset or a Liability?” Journal of Cultural Heritage, (2004): 301 28 ibid.
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renovation) and depend on agencies in charge of managing monuments,”29 as a result,
academic research in cultural heritage can broaden its expertise by producing specialists in
conservation and maintenance, and the subsequent appeal and perceived importance of cultural
heritage can lead to jobs in heritage security and technological specialists in conserving cultural
artefacts, for example, many universities offer specialised degrees in this field. Cultural
heritage and property have a ‘gravitating effect’ on population density. “Regions become more
attractive to live in and to establish firms in… foster[ing] entrepreneurship and innovation,
which may result in increased employment and income.”30 In effect, the valorisation of cultural
heritage diversifies an economy.
How does cultural property change its economic significance when regional security
breaks down? Organised crime is an activity of groups seeking to exploit their territory’s
endowment in natural (diamonds, timber, oil) and cultural resources (ancient artefacts).
UNESCO has estimated that the illicit trafficking of antiquities is “superior to US$ 6 billion
per year according to research conducted by the United Kingdom’s House of Commons on
July 2000... and from illegal excavation to final sale, the value of the most beautiful
masterpieces increases 100 fold, greater than that of drugs.”31 However, there is a lack of
reliable evidence on the scale of the illicit antiquities trade because it is a fluid network with
“interchangeable participants collaborating together without a formal hierarchical structure.”32
29 ibid. 30 Einar Bowitz and Karin Ibenholt, “Economic Impacts of Cultural Heritage – Research and Perspectives,” Journal of Cultural Heritage, 10, (2009): 4 31 UNESCO, “The Fight Against the Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Objects and the 1970 Convention: Past and Future,” UNESCO (2011): 2 32 Peter Campbell, “The Illicit Antiquities Trade as a Transnational Criminal Network: Characterising and Anticipating Trafficking of Cultural Heritage, International Journal of Cultural Property, (2013): 114
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Official statistics on the scale of antiquities trafficking must not, therefore, be taken as
definitive.
Antiquities have two monetary uses, a) “they can circulate as commodities on the
antiquities market”… and, b) can function as tangible assets when they are bought as
investments – “solely on the belief that their monetary value will appreciate over time,
whereupon they will be sold at a profit.”33 Antiquities are lootable resources that can be stolen
and dug up by people seeking economic enrichment, those most likely to loot are, according to
MacGinty, “young men from socio-economically marginalised sectors, the politically
mobilised, and those already affiliated with militant groups.”34
The motivations behind looting can be categorised as economic; symbolic, strategic
and selective.35 Categorising the motives is important when we consider them in their political
and wartime context in the next chapter. Economic looters may need to provide food for their
families: decades of war in Afghanistan led to state collapse and landmines posed security risks
for subsistence farmers, looting was an effective way of making money. Symbolic looting
occurs when people gain personal enrichment from the ownership of objects of historical and
cultural importance: Hermann Goring, a leading Nazi politician, amassed a personal art
collection of looted degenerate and Jewish art, books, and artefacts.36 Strategic looting refers
to the systematic plunder of economic valuables and cultural property by a regime – the
Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce appropriated Jewish-owned property, and the Serbian
regime looted and destroyed property belonging to Bosnian Muslims during the Yugoslav Wars
33 Neil Brodie, “The Antiquities Market: It’s All in a Price,” Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice, (2014): 36 34 Roger MacGinty, “Looting in the Context of Violent Conflict: Conceptualisation and Typology,” Third World Quarterly, 25:5, (2004): 862 35 ibid: 866 36 Anne Rothfeld, http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2002/summer/nazi-looted-art-1.html
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1991 - 2001. Selective looting, MacGinty’s fourth category, selects properties based on
identity-driven politics such as ethnicity and religion, which can be implicated into wider
strategies of ethnic cleansing.
Looted antiquities must move transnationally to meet international demand in
‘collecting nations’ with independent art stores and major auction houses. Christie’s, Bonhams
and Sotheby’s have offices in Paris, London and Brussels, and New York.37 After antiquities
are looted, they are sold to middlemen with international contacts in transit countries such as
Switzerland and Dubai, they are then ‘legalised’ by laundering the objects with official
documents that claim false provenance. Surprisingly, if antiquities are purchased in good-faith
in civil countries, the purchase is no longer legally construed as stolen.38 Some art dealers and
collectors are aware of the illicit nature of the artefacts, but transactions continue because of
these legal loopholes.
Major auction houses may prefer to circumnavigate the law to maintain organisational
secrecy. In 2002, a South Arabian stele (Fig. 1) in Sotheby’s collection was discovered to have
been stolen from the Aden Museum during the 1994 Yemeni civil war.39 The stele was returned
to Yemen without the involvement of INTERPOL or other law-enforcement agencies.
Sotheby’s private venture demonstrates that their first “obligation was to the consignor… or
37 Art collecting is now growing in other countries, Qatar’s al-Thani family have been purchasing major works of great cultural and economic value. This paper will focus on the flow of illegal trade between zones of armed conflict with an abundance in cultural heritage towards the major western art markets, but recognises the already well established art markets in other countries. 38 Blythe Bowman, “Transnational Crimes Against Culture: Looting at Archaeological Sites and the Grey Market in Antiquities, (2008): 9 39 Neil Brodie, “Auction Houses and the Antiquities trade,” in S. Choulia-kapeloni (ed.) 3rd International Conference of Experts in the Return of Cultural Property, (Athens: 2014): 66
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perhaps their own sales commission.”40 Art crime is a global activity that feeds off insecurity
in resource-rich countries, and is sold to wealthy clients in first world countries who often avoid
interactions with security and police and consequently make information about the black
market and criminals harder to collect.
Economic globalisation has brought about huge structural changes in modernising
societies and these have often led to the outbreak of conflict. Economic globalisation can
support a society’s valorisation of its culture by attracting tourism, entrepreneurship and
innovations in business and scholarship. However, an endowment in cultural property makes
looting and destruction of cultural property more likely to be monopolised by smugglers and
traffickers, who supply the high demand for antiquities in western art markets. The following
chapter will question the character of contemporary wars, and how cultural property is
implicated in the new character of wars.
40 ibid.
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Chapter Three – Contemporary Conflicts
Contemporary wars, according to Mary Kaldor, are shaped by identity-based politics
within an increasingly interconnected and globalised environment. It is important to understand
the nature of wars today before looking at our case studies of Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq,
where cultural property affected the dynamics of armed conflict. This section looks into
identity politics and its connection to territory, which excludes others ethnic, racial and
religious groups. There are three categories of political violence carried out by identity groups
and the weapons available to them today have led to more opportunities to destroy architectures
and monuments. Contemporary conflicts have led to increased threats to cultural property and
are primarily motivated and informed by notions of identity.
Identity politics are “movements which mobilise around ethnic, racial or religious
identity for the purpose of claiming state power.”41 It has often been the basis for political
violence after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, for example the competing identity groups
during the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s were based upon intertwining differences in ethnicity
and religion (Bosnian Muslims; Serbian Orthodox Christians; and Croat Roman Catholics).
This type of conflict involves population displacement from an area of land, because territories
can ‘belong’ to politicised identity groups. For example, northern Jerusalem is inhabited by
Haredi Jews who “strictly adhere to religious commands, voluntary segregation and special
dress.”42 Their religious institutions – synagogues, yeshivas and ritual baths – are part of the
cultural heritage of the Jewish people and create a “defended territorial enclave within which
41 Mary Kaldor, New Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012): 79 42 Shlomo Hasson, “Territories and Identities in Jerusalem,” GeoJournal, 53:3, (2001): 313
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they can produce and reproduce what they regard as the ‘holy community’ without being
threatened by the behavioural patterns and conduct of the surrounding secular society.”43 In
effect, cultural property can be used to territorially divide ethno-religious factions.
Mary Kaldor identified the types of political violence in the post-Cold War era that are
based upon differences in identity, they include systematic murder; ethnic cleansing; and
rendering areas uninhabitable.44 The first intentionally targets a civilian population through
genocidal killings and massacres. The removal of a group of people may be caused by state
propaganda, or unresolved ethnic hatred, as is commonly attributed to the Bosnia war, more
than thirty Muslims were burned alive inside a village mosque in Hanifici.45
The second type of political violence is ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of
identity groups. This can be a systematic strategy authorised at governmental levels and
enacted by state security forces and local militias. The Serbs enacted a policy of ethnic
cleansing by forcibly removing Bosnian Muslims from towns and cities during the 1990s. The
intended effect was to also remove incentives for the Bosnian Muslims to return, and had
economic benefits for the Serbian population. Ethnic cleansing also opens up the opportunity
for looting of property, whether cultural or not, of the exiled identity group.
The third type of political violence is the rendering of areas uninhabitable.46 By
destroying the heritage of an identity group, the exiled community have little reason to return
to their former homes and their economic livelihoods may be unable to compete in the new
social structure of the ‘cleansed’ society. During the Bosnian war, many historic marketplaces
43 ibid: 314 44 Kaldor, 2012: 104-5 45 Andras Riedlmayer, “Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1996,” Bosnia-Herzegovina Heritage Report, (2002): 23 46 Kaldor, 2012: 105
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were bombed by Serbian militia and traditional economic activities, such as traditional
carpentry, handicraft production and the sale of cultural objects were difficult to start again.
Political violence intertwines with identity politics to target cultural property, which sustains
the activities of ethnic, religious, or racial groups. The tactics of political violence often target
cultural property through destruction and looting, and have become a widespread and more
pervasive risk.
The weapons that are used to damage and destroy cultural property are widely available
and destructive, especially in the post-Cold War era. These include “small arms and light
weapons – revolves, rifles, machine carbines, automatic weapons, grenades,”47 rocket-
propelled grenades (RPGs) and high-explosive artillery. Architectures of cultural importance
are not constructed to sustain damage from explosives and high-impact ammunitions, because
architectural features such as columns, relief carvings, and masonry are delicate and easily
damaged, even by weather erosion. Bombs have been “fused to penetrate some metres beyond
the point of impact before exploding,”48 and can cause the total collapse of buildings, the domes
of mosques and slender church towers and minarets. Explosives have become so powerful that
they do not need to be fired directly at a building: during World War II ‘earthquake bombs’
(weighing ten metric tons with a 5600 kg high-explosive charge), caused ground waves that
shifted the foundations of buildings sixty metres away, dislodging the frame of the structure,
and causing it to collapse.49 The destructive potential of modern weaponry in the twentieth
century has put more human lives and cultural property at risk.
47 A. Noblecourt, Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, (Paris: UNESCO, 1958): 44 48 ibid: 46 49 ibid: 47
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Arms proliferation has made this security risk more widespread. “There were ten
manufacturers of small arms in the former Soviet Union in the 1960s, but by 1999 this figure
had grown to sixty-six in the ex-Soviet territories.”50 Explosives and weapons were widely
available after the fall of the Soviet Union and easily fell into the hands of non-state militant
actors such as local militias and dissident groups cooperating with arms dealers. Victor Bout
supplied weapons to the Angolan insurgent group the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (UNITA) through a series of international contacts in Dubai.51 These
weapons end up in the hands of militant groups, who create hostile environments necessary for
looting cultural property, and furthermore, cultural property can be sold to traffickers in order
to buy weapons.
Improvised explosive devices (IEDs, normally made from non-military components52),
allow combatants to target buildings without needing to request high-impact military
equipment (tanks, artillery, airstrikes). For example, a combat unit would need to request
permission from a senior officer to target a culturally important building if it was being used
by the enemy. A commander would then invoke the law of Military Necessity to engage the
enemy using the building to endanger the lives of his men. IEDs have can be constructed by
anymore, and its materials can even be bought through the internet. The widespread availability
of explosive devices has “democratised military equipment”53 in contemporary conflicts.
Identity groups have easy access to weapons and explosives through pre-existing criminal
networks that stretch across borders. They can also pursue military objectives contravene to
50 Abdel-Fatau Musah, “Privatisation of Security, Arms Proliferation and the Process of State Collapse in Africa, Development and Change, 33:5, (2002): 920 51 https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/202/41483.html#IX: 141 52 AAP-06, NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions, (2013): 2-1-2 53 David Kilcullen, “Out of the Mountains: The coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla | Talks at Google,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVUI9U4WQ6E: 25:50
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national and international military laws established by the UN, leading to a pervasive security
threat to regional stability. This has diversified the political ecology of armed identity groups,
and poses a security threat to cultural property in culturally diverse societies.
The interconnections between politics, economics and art have influenced the dynamics
of armed conflict. Cultural property can be understood as the psychical manifestation of
identity politics and is often targeted in strategies of political violence. Military equipment used
to destroy monuments and architectures has been ‘democratised’ in contemporary conflicts and
has increased the threat of destruction and looting of cultural property. Cultural property is a
weapon and victim of political violence, and has increased the number of ways militant groups
seek to harm their adversaries. In the next section, we will look into the interaction between
armed conflict and economics, to finalise our understanding of how cultural property is
predated upon by competing war-time actors, and how this can change the dynamics of armed
conflict.
26
Chapter Four – The Political Economy of Armed Conflict
Cultural property is an economic resource that is often sold and destroyed during times
of armed conflict. We will look into two theories of conflict that link resource management to
conflict. The Greed thesis argues that natural resources cause civil wars and we will look at the
Angolan civil war to assess its influence on the policies of the UN Security Council (UNSC).
The political economy of armed conflict looks at how economic considerations prolong,
intensify and change the character of armed conflict, as they did during the Tuareg rebellion in
Mali. Finally, we will outline the different categories of war economies and how economic
motivations influence the decisions of key actors to interact with cultural property whilst
engaged in war.
Collier’s and Hoffler’s Greed Thesis pinpoints the cause of contemporary civil wars to
economic predation of natural resources. They characterise civil war as an internal conflict
with at least “1000 combatant deaths per annum where both government forces and an
identifiable rebel organisation have suffered at least 5% of the fatalities,” in their examination
of 161 countries and 78 civil wars from 1960-1999.54 Collier and Hoeffler concluded that
“opportunities for primary commodity predation, [timber, oil, diamonds, minerals, precious
stones, and antiquities] cause conflict, and that the grievances which this generates induce
diasporas to finance further conflict.”55 The survival of a rebellion depends on the extent of
profits gained from resource predation. These profits will be spent on the upkeep of its soldiers
54 Laurie Nathan, “The Frightful Inadequacy of Most of the Statistics: A Critique of Collier and Hoeffler on Causes of Civil War,” Crisis States Research, (2005): 2 55 Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” The World Bank Development Research Group, (2000): 27
27
and military equipment – readily available after the fall of the Soviet Union and policies of
trade liberalisation. Rebellions are characterised as a distinctive form of organised crime56 that
operate on a large scale and mobilise popular grievances. These grievances are produced by
military commanders to achieve strong troop cohesion. Such grievances identified by Collier
and Hoeffler are inter-group hatred; political exclusion; and vengeance (“the desire to revenge
atrocities committed during a previous conflict”57).
The Greed Thesis was influential for policy-makers in the international community but
failed to counter the methods of rebel self-financing. UNITA procured weapons to fund their
insurgency by selling diamonds parcels worth millions of dollars to dealers in Antwerp and to
the De Beers Group, an international diamond mining and trading company. The UN Security
Council Resolution 1173 (adopted in 1998) was a set of economic sanctions requiring UN
member states to “prohibit the direct or indirect import from Angola to their territory of all
diamonds that are not controlled through the Certificate of Origin regime.”58 However, in 2000,
the Fowler Report identified that UNITA were circumnavigating the sanctions by taxing local
diggers and middlemen in remote regions of Angola. UNITA bribed government officials for
false documents of provenance, and sold diamonds in neighbouring countries such as Burkina
Faso, Zaire, and Rwanda where “protection [was] given to them personnel by the authorities.”59
Economic globalisation has made it easier for rebel groups to operate under international
sanctions and to stretch their network across countries and continents.
56 ibid: 4 57 ibid: 13 58 UNSC, http://www.un.org/press/en/1998/19980612.sc6530.html: 12 (b) 59 Robert Fowler, “The Fowler Report,” https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/202/41606.html#three, (2000): 4.82
28
The political economy of armed conflict a new field of theory that considers the
interaction between politics and economics during an armed conflict. Scholars began to
consider “resource exploitation [as] a means to finance insurgencies driven by socio-economic
and political grievances.”60 The way natural resources are managed, more specifically, affects
the “longevity, internal logic, and the ferocity” of civil wars and have been affected by the
“greater ease of access to economic and financial resources that belligerents have enjoyed since
the 1990s.”61 A political economy analysis stresses the importance of economic motives and
opportunities in shaping the dynamics of grievance-driven armed conflicts.
The political economy of armed conflict can reinforce understandings of identity.
Market expansion “may accentuate ethnic problems by increasing inequality, polarisation,
dislocation, social fragmentation and the attendant group anxieties.”62 When a country moves
into a market system from a traditional economic system, some groups may be unable to adapt
to the new skills, access to information, or technologies that have come about.63 This was most
evident in the Mali’s Tuareg rebellion, which was a reaction to economic marginalisation and
ethnic tensions. The Mali government was dominated by the ethnic Mende people, and started
a series of modernisation policies to respond to the disastrous droughts and increasing land
area of the Sahara Desert during the 1970s and 1980s. This environmental threat prompted
Mali to use the Forest Service, a paramilitary organisation, to issue permits and fines on
60 Karen Ballentine, Heiko Nitzsche, “Beyond Greed and Grievance: Policy Lessons from Studies in the Political Economy of Armed Conflict,” International Peace Academy, (2003): 3 61 Mats Berdal, “Beyond Greed and Grievance – and not too soon…” Review of International Studies, 31, (2005): 692 62 Pranab Bardhan, “Method in the Madness? A Political-Economy Analysis of the Ethnic Conflicts in Less Developed Countries,” World Development, 25:9, (1997): 1387 63 ibid.
29
nomadic Tuareg herders and farmers.64 Alongside this, droughts in the 1980s and the
embezzlement of international aid by government officials caused many young Tuareg men to
“migrate to neighbouring countries in the Maghreb, especially to Algeria and Libya, where
they were exposed to revolutionary discourses.”65 Many joined Colonel Qaddaffi’s army and
were trained in real combat in Palestine, Lebanon and Chad.66 In 1990, fifty Tuareg rebels
sieged a prison in Menaka, northern Mali, stealing weapons, twelve four-wheel-drive vehicles,
and freed six Tuareg prisoners.67 Economic considerations in war collide with identity politics
to initiate, sustain and change the dynamics of conflict.
If cultural property can be framed as an economic resource and a symbol of identity,
how is it implicated into war economics? Cultural property is often protected and idealised by
identity groups as a symbol of its historical importance and strength, whilst providing jobs and
attracting businesses. Warring parties may feel excluded from economic, social, and political
life, interpreting cultural property as the physical manifestation of this exclusion. Cultural
property comes to be looted on basis of its monetary value on the black market, and is destroyed
to negatively impact the enemy’s morale. When systematically destroyed, entire segments of
the population can be permanently displaced.
Johnathan Goodhand proposed a useful taxonomy of war economies in which cultural
property can be included throughout. The taxation of illicit antiquities over borders can be
64 Tor Benjaminsen, “Does Supply-Induced Scarcity Drive Violent Conflict in the African Sahel? The Case of the Tuareg Rebellion in Northern Mali,” Journal of Peace Research, 45:6, (2008): 829 65 ibid: 832 66 ibid: 830 67 ibid.
30
controlled by commanders and rebels in the ‘combat economy’ seeking the destruction of
cultural property to anger their enemy and prolong conflict. Private entrepreneurs and
traffickers from the ‘shadow economy’ may have incentives to prolong conflict because it
allows them to smuggle high-value goods, such as antiquities, out of the country and into
western markets without fearing prosecution. ‘Coping economies’ include poor families and
communities who may seek to feed their families by looting archaeological sites and museums
for antiquities to sell to war profiteers. Although not in their interests to prolong a conflict,
looting and subsistence digging relies on and prolongs insecurity provided by combat and
shadow economies. Cultural property appears throughout the war economy as a high-value
economic and cultural resource that has both monetary and tactical value.
The political economy of armed conflict is useful for understanding how economic
considerations affect the decisions of war-time actors to prolong, intensify, and change the
dynamics of armed conflict. The Angolan civil war clearly demonstrates the importance of the
diamond industry in funding UNITA’s insurgency, and the Tuareg rebellion shows us how
economic scarcity led to a mass exodus to countries that fostered revolutionary ideologies and
military training. Cultural property, which is represents the identity of ethno-religious groups,
and can stimulate an illegal economy through trafficking which relies on insecurity and the
destruction of traditional livelihoods such as farming and provision of public services. The
following sections will be case studies of the conflicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. The
destruction of cultural property in Bosnia affected the economic structure of Bosnia, looting
contributed to the strength of insurgent groups in Afghanistan, and created additional threats
to military troops. By using a political economy approach to understand how belligerents use
31
cultural property during times of armed conflict, this paper will provide a useful link that will
aid approaches to war in culturally rich and diverse countries.
32
Chapter Five - Bosnia
Bosnia is populated by a diverse range of identity-based groups that have constructed
monuments and buildings of great cultural and historic importance today. Islam played an
important role in organising societies and bringing Muslims together before the outbreak of
war in 1992. The Bosnian War (1992-95) and the Kosovo conflict in 1999 are often cited as
examples of ancient ethnic hatreds where identity-based factions competed for ethnically and
religiously homogenous territory. However, there were economic considerations in the military
decisions of the Serbian army and its politicians, evidence for this lies in the systematic
destruction of culturally important buildings.
The population of Bosnia and Herzegovina spans a diverse range of ethnicities,
religious groups and political factions that have built a shared cultural heritage. Migrants from
the Ottoman territory transformed small settlements like Sarajevo into large cities “on the trade
routes between the Bosphorus and Western Europe,” where they built mosques, baths and other
public institutions.68 The Emperor’s Mosque, completed in 1565 AD in Sarajevo, was the first
mosque to be built in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and provides an historical example of Ottoman
influence in Balkan territory. Bosnia also absorbed ethnic groups from distant territories,
Sarajevo “sheltered Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain”69 at the end of the fifteenth century
AD. Austro-Hungarian architecture was constructed after their occupation of Bosnia and
68 Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, (Reaktion Books: London, 2006): 37 69 ibid.
33
Herzegovina, important structures include the Gimnazija Mostar, an example of Moorish
Revival Architecture and was a school to both Muslim and Catholic students.70
Bosnia and Herzegovina held thousands of important literary documents on Balkan
history. Sarajevo’s Oriental Institute kept manuscripts in “Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and
aljamiado (Bosnian Slavic written in Arabic script) dating back to the Middle Ages; and
archive of 7000 Ottoman documents [and] primary source material for five centuries of
Bosnia’s history.”71 Clearly, Bosnia’s cultural heritage is a diverse mix of ethnicities, religious
groups and neighbouring empires, all of which produced important monuments, architectures
and documents that have been studied by academics and visited by tourists.
Islam was particularly active in Bosnia during the twentieth century and developed its
own traditions in contrast to neighbouring Serbs and Croats. In 1965 Esad Cimic, a sociologist
from Sarajevo, conducted interviews with 500 people and found that “60.38% of the Muslims
in his sample professed to be believers, compared with figures of 74.23% for Catholics and
39.1% for Orthodox.”72 Religious identity was often based on ancestral origins, therefore, one
is classified as Muslim, Orthodox or Catholic if born into a family of the same religion,
regardless of whether they practice their belief or not. This makes it difficult to measure the
religious identity of a population, but organised religious activities do indicate the influence of
religion on communities.
70 Cathie Carmichael, A Concise History of Bosnia, (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2015): 184 71 Andras Rieldmayer, “Killing Memory: The Targeting of Libraries and Archives in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” MELA Notes, (1994): 1 72 David Dyker, “The Ethnic Muslims of Bosnia: Some Basic Socio-Economic Data,” The Slavonic and East European Review, 50:119, (1972): 243
34
Religious activities demonstrate the extent of Islam’s involvement in everyday life. In
the same study by Esad Cimic, the
“Muslim clergy organised religious festivals on a large scale; religious education of
children, and religious assemblies. Religious services were held in private homes [and]
in regular places of worship. During religious holidays, more than ninety private homes
were transformed in places of worship, to facilitate the greatest possible number of
religious services.”73
Islam was involved in the private and public life of Bosnian Muslims by organising
communal events and giving individuals the opportunity to offer something back to society.
This may have led to a strong emotional attachment to the home and land of Bosnia, increasing
the sense of national unity and ‘togetherness.’ The cultural heritage of Bosnian cities may have
developed this attachment to place, because people are able to share personal memories of
social events that are important in tightening social cohesion.
Religious nationalism contributed to the outbreak of war in 1992. “Serb Orthodox
bishops, church-affiliated journals and intellectuals were charging Kosovar Albanians [who
were Muslims] with mass rape, annihilation of Serb shrines and genocide.”74 Milosevic, the
Serbian president from 1991 – 1997, monopolised on Serbian discontent by controlling the
news broadcasting services, and filling the ranks of the army, the secret police and other
73 Dyker, (1972): 244 74 Michael Sells, “Crosses of Blood: Sacred Space, Religion, and Violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sociology of Religion, 64:3, (2003): 311
35
governmental positions with Serbian nationalists.75 The exclusion of Bosnian Muslims from
political participation led to the establishment of the Kosovo Republic led by Ibrahim Rugova,
which also arose as a reaction to “socioeconomic underdevelopment, massive unemployment,
and widening inter-ethnic inequalities.”76 This contributed to the tensions between identity
groups, who believed that their existence and cultural heritage was being threatened by their
adversary.
The Serbian government began to covertly arm their security forces in the build-up to
the war in 1992. Two officials from the Yugoslav State Security (SDB) – Simatovic and
Stojicic – “travelled regularly to Bosnia to organise the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and
deploy weapons and ammunition.”77 The flow of arms into Serb-controlled security forces gave
them a clear military advantage over Bosnian Muslim forces, the Serb leader Radovan Karadzic
expected a victory within six days, and the International Peace Research Institute “calculated
that Bosnian government forces were out-gunned nine-to-one by Serb forces.”78 The prospect
of loot and selling stolen goods on the black market attracted many Serbian fighters to join
local militias. There was a hierarchy of looters where “elite troops of Arkan’s Tigers [a Serbian
voluntary paramilitary unit] enjoyed preferential access to the most valuable assets (such as
cars, gold, and money). Next in line were the Serbian Cetnik Movement and the White Eagles,
who took large appliances. The leftovers went to local militias and smaller Serbia-based
paramilitaries.”79 This type of looting falls into Macginty’s categories of economic and
selective looting because Bosnian Muslim property was specifically targeted for theft.
75 ibid: 314 76 Karen Ballentine and Heiko Nitzsche, (2003): 9 77 Peter Andreas, “The Clandestine Political Economy of War and Peace in Bosnia,” International Studies Quarterly, 48:1, (2004): 34 78 ibid. 79 ibid: 35
36
However, there is evidence is suggesting that strategic looting and destruction of cultural
property was planned by the Serbian government as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign.
The Serbian forces destroyed Bosnian cultural property on a systematic scale.
Riedlmayer conducted a survey on the extent of cultural heritage destruction from 1992 – 1996.
From the 19 municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Islamic religious heritage sites
included in the survey were mosques, Sufi dervish lodges, shrines of saints, clock towers,
madrasas (theological schools), libraries and religious archives.80 Riedlmayer found that “92%
of the mosques surveyed were heavily damaged or destroyed… Close to 60% (161) of all
mosques surveyed were built during the Ottoman era (early-15th century to 1878) or under
Austro-Hungarian rule (1878 – 1918)… More than 96% were either heavily damaged or
destroyed.”81 Explosive devices were “placed inside the mosques or inside the stairwells of
minaret”82 (towers where the call to prayer is made, indicating the time to pray), which suggests
that the Serb forces had adequate time to safely plan and implement the destruction of historic
buildings. Armed conflict was, therefore, intentional and methodical in the targeting of cultural
property.
Although the destruction of cultural property was carried out by local militias,
paramilitaries and the army, the geographical coordinates of cultural property may have been
provided by political institutes in Serbia. Ferhad Mulabegovic, (the post-war director of the
Institute for the Protection of Cultural, Historical and Natural Heritage of Bosnia and
Herzegovina), claimed that “maps were made in the Geo-Political Institute of Belgrade… [and]
80 Andras Riedlmayer, “Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1996, Bosnia-Herzegovina Heritage Report, (2002): 9 81 Andras Rieldmayer, (2002): 10 82 ibid: 11
37
all statistical information on people, culture and heritage were kept in Belgrade because in the
former Yugoslavia each institute sent information [there].”83 Serbian commanders and
politicians had the coordinates of each building on their maps of Bosnia and could send this
information to artillery units surrounding Bosnian cities on the hills. Armed conflict involved
the use of historical documents to pinpoint the location of culturally important buildings in
Bosnia, and the coordination between the Serbian state and military units is evidence of an
organised type of political violence that intended to ethnically cleanse Bosnian cities of Muslim
inhabitants. We must now investigate the economic consequences of the architectural
destruction to fully understand the motives behind ethnic cleansing.
“The primary motive behind ethnic cleansing is asset transfer.”84 As we saw in Chapter
Three, ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion of identity groups from territory is a tactic
political violence. Cultural property can support the economic livelihoods of people, old
marketplaces and bazaars can be dominated by particular ethnic groups, and traditional
craftsmanship can encourage tourism to selective areas. In the following cases, cultural heritage
sites were targeted without having military justification (there were no enemy troops in the
area), and the destruction of buildings took place after the Serbs had forcibly displaced the
Muslim population, pointing to economic motives behind the decisions of military
commanders and politicians.
In 1999, Muslims were discouraged from returning to their homes after their
marketplaces were razed to the ground. Serb paramilitaries burned down the Market Mosque
83 Robert Bevan, (2006): 40 84 Hugh Griffiths, “A Political Economy of Ethnic Conflict: Ethno-nationalism and Organised Crime, Civil Wars, 2:2, (1999): 62
38
and Old Market in Vushtrri (both constructed in the 15th century), they looted and burned fifty
shops in the old bazaar next to the mosque.85 Vushtrri was home to a bustling commercial
economy with 1500 registered private businesses, Kosovar Albanians are predominantly Sunni
Muslims and numbered 68,840 in 2014, while Kosovar Serbs numbered only 384. According
to an eye witness, who was from a family of local muezzins (people appointed to recite daily
call to prayer), he was leaving Vushtrri because “there is nothing left for [him] there.”86
Also, Peja’s old market was burned down by Serb police and civilians, and valuable
goods from Catholic Albanian silversmiths, specialising in filigree work, were stolen.87
Targeting marketplaces belonging to Muslims and other minority groups (Catholic Albanians)
suggests economic considerations influenced the military decisions of Serb militias and
politicians. Ethnic cleansing consequently restructured the socio-economics of Bosnian,
Kosovar and Herzegovinian towns and cities.
Destroyed mosques in Bosnia in Serb-controlled towns were turned into rubbish tips,
bus stations, parking lots, automobile repair shops, or flea markets. For example, the 200-year-
old Zamlaz Mosque in Zvornik, destroyed in 1992, “was replaced by a four-storey block of
flats and shops.”88 Armed conflict, motivated by identity politics, took the form of ethnic
cleansing to destroy Muslim-owned cultural and commercial sites, which were replaced with
Serb-owned businesses and infrastructure. A political economy of armed conflict emerges
when we frame cultural heritage in an economic context, Bosnian Muslims used their cultural
heritage to stimulate their commercial economies, and Serbian forces targeted buildings to
render the cities and towns uninhabitable for internally displaced Bosnians.
85 Andrew Herscher and Andras Riedlmayer, “Monument and Crime: The Destruction of Historic Architecture in Kosovo,” Grey Room, 1, (2000): 116 86 ibid. 87 ibid: 121 88 Andras Riedlmayer, (2002): 14
39
The policy of ethnic cleansing was a planned effort from political elites, who supplied
geographical coordinates for the bombing of historic sites to the local militias and Serb artillery
units. The Serbs also destroyed the marketplaces of Bosnian Muslims that brought the people
together to buy and sell commodities. Ethnic cleansing can be framed as asset transfer and
suggests that economic considerations may have influenced certain military decisions in the
Bosnian and Kosovar conflicts. To conclude, cultural property became one of the targets of a
systematic attempt to expel identity groups from a territory that was superseded by Serbian
businesses and buildings.
40
Chapter Six - Afghanistan
Afghanistan is an important example of the effects of trade liberalisation on the
economy of a country that has experienced decades of war. This section will trace the flow of
antiquities from Afghanistan to their destinations in western art markets, and will identify the
key actors at each stage of the process. This trade is monopolised by insurgent groups that have
solidified power through their control of trade networks in hostile environments. Finally, we
will examine how the Haqqani network has been controlling transborder trade in Afghanistan
since the Taliban came to power in 2001. These factors of trade, armed conflict, and an
abundance of cultural property will merge together, demonstrating how the antiquities trade
thrives in times of armed conflict.
Militant and insurgent groups in Afghanistan have financially benefitted from the
control and maintenance of transborder trade networks. Smuggling became a prime activity of
independent merchants operating in Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain, the Afghan Transit
Trade Agreement (ATTA) was signed in 1950 between Afghanistan and Pakistan and
permitted goods to be imported tax-free via Pakistan (Karachi) into landlocked Afghanistan.
By the 1970s the ATTA was being misused by smugglers: “goods arriving in Afghanistan via
Pakistan were smuggled back to the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) of Pakistan
where they were sold in open bazaars.”89
The Soviet invasion in 1979 exacerbated the criminalised economy. Food production
fell by half to two-thirds as the Soviet counterinsurgency devastated the rural economy, which
89 Von Conrad Schetter, “The Bazaar Economy of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Approach,” Sudasien-Informationen 3, (2004): 10
41
weakened local elites whose control depended on rural resources, and led to the migration of
Afghans into monetary economies in Iran and Pakistan.90 Financial support from Saudi Arabia
and America to Pakistani helped to increase the extent of the smuggling, and military
equipment and food was trucked through the Afghan-Pakistan border to support the
Mujahideen’s holy war against the Soviet-backed Afghan government. This involved the use
of pre-existing and privatised truck-driver teams driving through the Khyber Pass, border
police found it difficult to control traffic through this mountainous road and increased the
opportunity to transport illegal goods.91 On these insecure borders “weak state control provided
an opening for men of prowess – pirates, bandits, warlords or ethnic chiefs – … to act as brokers
between the centre and the periphery.”92 The trade of valuable goods could be controlled and
taxed by militant groups, and illicit antiquities often passed through areas under their control.
How many antiquities are in Afghanistan, and who are they valuable to? The history of
Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries spans thousands of years and is of interest to
archaeologists, historians, and museums around the world. The Indus Valley civilisation, for
example, produced many small figurines such as this one from Mehrgarh (Fig. 2), modern-day
Baluchistan (a province bordering Afghanistan’s south-eastern Kandahar province) and dates
back to c.3000 BC. The Greco-Buddhist school of art produced many sculptures that have been
studied by scholars for their synthesis of Classical Greek and Indian artistic styles.
Valuable antiquities of historical importance have been found by accident, suggesting
that they are numerous and still unexcavated. The oldest extant Buddhist manuscripts were
90 Barnett Rubin, “The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan,” World Development, 28:10 (2000): 1792 91 ibid. 92 Jonathan Goodhand, “Bandits, Borderlands and Opium Wars: Afghan State-Building Viewed from the Margins,” DIIS Working Paper, (2009:26): 8
42
found in caves in Bamiyan province (central Afghanistan) by locals fleeing Taliban forces in
1993-5.93 And in 1995, a farmer from a remote village in central Afghanistan found a stone
box containing “twenty gold coins, gold and glass ornaments and a diamond.”94 Armed conflict
often leads to predatory behaviour towards antiquities, which are transferred through many
hands before ending up in museums and art collections in wealthy nations.
Why dig for antiquities? Subsistence diggers in Afghanistan are often forced into this
activity by the necessity to feed their families, if we consider the Soviet counterinsurgency
during the 1980s that involved bombing villages, and the laying of landmines by Afghan
Mujahideen, farming was a risky occupation for locals. Finding a piece of gold or a statue in a
remote area could easily be sold to smugglers active since the ATTA in 1950. Looting is more
favourable when state security breaks down, an Afghan farmer was interviewed saying that he
would be arrested if the police at checkpoints in Mazar-i-Sharif found him with a large
antiquity.95 Illegally excavated antiquities can offer large profits for Afghan farmers in remote
areas of Afghanistan, and can encourage cooperation between looters. A group of farmers
found a platter with images of animals, although no other information was provided, it was
sold for $600 and the money split between them.96 This was a highly profitable sale for the
locals considering the economic collapse of the Afghanistan in the 1990s. The Soviet-backed
Afghan government led by Najibullah (1987 – 92) increased expenditures by enlarging its
security forces and offering subsidies to defecting commanders, “the government financed the
resulting deficit by printing money [which increased] food prices by factors of five.”97 Cultural
93 Jens Braarvig, “Traces of Gandharan Buddhism,” Hermes Publishing, (Oslo, 2010): xviii 94 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/whos-stealing-afghanistan-cultural-treasures/ 95 ibid. 96 ibid. 97 Rubin, 2000: 1793
43
property offered local farmers a source of income when armed conflict destroys agricultural
production and industries.
After antiquities are looted, they are sold onto middlemen in cities and towns who
transport them to border towns in Pakistan, where they can be shipped to transit cities. Dubai
receives vast quantities of cargo from Pakistani ports. Furthermore, corruption has allowed this
activity to go unchecked and increase the size of monetary transactions because “there are no
restrictions on the transfer or outflow of cash from Afghanistan” to Dubai and violators are
rarely punished for laundering their money in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).98 From Dubai,
the laundered Afghan artefacts are ‘legalised’ with false documents of provenance, omitting
details of previous ownership. When antiquities arrive in western art markets they have the
appearance of legality and are frequently sold to antique stores and auction houses fetching
high prices. For example, a stone figure of the emaciated Buddha, found in Eastern Afghanistan
or north-western Pakistan, dating from the second century AD, was sold in 2013 for US$
47,500 by Bonhams in New York.99 The structure of the antiquities trade has its origins in
zones of armed conflict, where looting provides a quick profit to impoverished locals and
farmers. From there, antiquities pass through a series of transactions that seek the highest
bidder. The structure of the trade is fluid and without a hierarchy or organisational head figure.
This makes it difficult to enforce international laws aiming to mitigate the trade of illicit
antiquities which is sometimes controlled by insurgent groups, like the Haqqani network, and
may offer a source of funding that encourages incentives to prolong conflict.
98 ICG, “The Insurgency in Afghanistan’s Heartland,” Asia Report 207, (2011): 23 99 Bonhams, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/20903/lot/23/
44
The Haqqani network may be profiting from the exodus of antiquities from
Afghanistan. A word of caution is advised before we look into the Haqqani network, the
secretive nature of the auction houses makes it hard to verify where antiquities come from, they
are often said to have belonged to a private collection in a peaceful coutnry to distract attention
from their source. Owing to the sheer number of artefacts in Afghanistan, the profits available,
and the control of transborder trade by militant groups, we may argue, with caution, that
antiquities have provided funding to insurgencies.
One example clearly shows, however, that cultural property is being trafficked in large
quantities. In 2012 Pakistani police seized a large container in Karachi with 400 artefacts. Forty
percent were genuine, and 100 were Buddhist sculptures worth millions of dollars, according
to Qasim Ali Qasim, director of archaeology and museums in Sindh province.100 This report
suggests that traffickers were organised in collecting and transporting the antiquities. It is
therefore necessary to assess the influence of the Haqqani network in trade and transport
throughout Afghanistan.
The Haqqani network is a criminal organisation and a “semi-autonomous component
of the Taliban.”101 It has played a key role in the fight against the incumbent Afghan
government and international organisations operating in Afghanistan. During the Taliban rule
over Afghanistan (1996 – 2001), Jalaludin Haqqani served as the minister for Tribal and Border
Affairs, which allowed him to “establish a network to collect rents from local businessmen and
tribes in Loya Paktia, and traders in the Pakistani district of Parachinar.”102 Haqqani was careful
to maintain good public relations with locals by balancing the collection of rents with the
100 CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pakistan-struggles-to-control-smuggling-of-buddhist-antiquities-for-black-market-trade/ 101 Gretchen Peters, “Haqqani Network Financing: The Evolution of an Industry,” Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, (2012): i 102 ibid: 21
45
provision of public services, health care, and microloans.103 Haqqani’s network also threatened
large businesses and international governmental organisations, such as development projects
funded by the Northern Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), with violence if protection fees were
not paid.104 Profits made from antiquity trafficking could be funding the Haqqani network
because of their control over the insecure trade routes between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Armed conflict may be prolonged because the profits gained from taxing trade offer incentives
to the Haqqani network and its militant Islamic allies to continue to foster insecurity by
attacking police officers at checkpoints, in turn offering looters and traffickers with larger
artefacts a safe passage through roads and cities. Police forces are often unable control the flow
of antiquities because trading takes place in areas outside of their control along the Afghan-
Pakistan border. If antiquities are funding the Haqqani network and other insurgent groups in
Afghanistan, Collier’s and Hoeffler’s greed model of war may be useful in understanding how
this will effect armed conflict. The profits derived from taxing trade may encourage insurgents
to prolong armed conflict. However, because antiquities can be accessed directly by rebel
cadres (rather than through a chain of command), it can “create discipline problems [amongst
the insurgent group’s ranks] that make it difficult for leaders to impose a settlement towards
peace.”105 Here, the nature of antiquities as tradable assets gives individuals access to illegal
funds and can encourage further aggressive and predatory behaviour for wealth accumulation.
Free trade liberalisation policies between Afghanistan and Pakistan have increased the
extent of smuggling and trafficking of cultural property. Several contextual factors have
contributed to this, they include the monetisation of the economy after the soviet invasion and
103 ibid: 22 104 ibid: 42 105 Karen Ballentine and Jake Sherman, 2003: 267
46
the destruction of farms by Soviet counterinsurgency operations. Armed conflict produces the
incentives to loot for impoverished afghans, and traffickers benefit from insecurity and lack of
effective border police who may confiscate looted cultural property. Transit cities like Dubai
are the next stop of antiquities towards western art markets, here they are laundered and given
false documents of provenance before being sold for tens-of-thousands of dollars in wealthy
nations. The trade in looted cultural property may be funding insurgencies who tax traffickers
and local traders in Afghanistan. Armed conflict could be prolonged because profits gained
from insecurity and circumnavigating the police forces encourage participants to repeat this
activity.
47
Chapter Seven - Iraq
Iraq is home to hundreds of thousands of historically and culturally important artefacts
that are currently stored in museums and unexcavated archaeological sites throughout the
country. Iraqi politicians have used their country’s history to consolidate their power, but this
has proved difficult owing to the diversity of culturally distinct identity groups with competing
political interests. High levels of poverty, internal ethno-religious tensions, and external
interventions have been factors leading to instability in the country. Although the looting of
the National Museum of Iraq in 2003 has been extensively reported on and studied, this paper
contributes to this subject by identifying the groups that economically benefitted from the
looting, and how it has affected the nature of conflict in the country. Firstly, we will assess the
importance of cultural property in the consolidation of power. Secondly, identify the categories
of looters in the National Museum of Baghdad. Thirdly, examine how antiquities have funded
insurgencies and influential religious leaders. Fourthly, we will look at the advantages and
dangers the Museum posed to military units in the Iraq War of 2003. The last section will
connect the media backlash to the legislations made by the USA’s government, and the
continued demand for Iraqi antiquities in western art markets.
Cultural property can be used to legitimise a government and its policies. For example,
Saddam Hussein, the President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003, used the cultural history of Iraq to
reference and compare his own rule of Iraq. In this billboard from 1990 (Fig. 3), Saddam
Hussein stands celebrating the fall of Jerusalem with Saladin, a famous Kurdish Sunni military
general in the twelfth century AD, and Nebuchadnezzar, an Assyrian King of the Babylonian
empire during the sixth century BC. The billboard was located next to the ancient city of
48
Nineveh, with archaeological evidence dating from before the sixth century BC. Many Iraqis
would have seen and read this billboard everyday, which was a public advertisement that
allowed Iraqis to share a collective understanding of the nature of their government and its
relation to Iraqi history. Saddam Hussein was advertising a political message to the Iraqi people
that portrayed him as the most legitimate and capable ruler of Iraq.
Cultural heritage was used to mediate between sectarian tensions. Iraq has a diverse
ethno-religious community composed mainly of Arab Sunnis and Shias (both sects of Islam,
but with differing beliefs on the nature of political and religious leadership), but also Assyrians,
Iraqi Turkmen, and smaller groups of Arab Christians, and Yazidis, who number 650,000
today. Conflicts have been based upon these ethno-religious differences, 1943 – 1945 saw the
Second Barzani Revolt waged by the Barzani Kurds against the Kingdom of Iraq. The First
Kurdish Iraqi War (9161 – 1970) was a separatist conflict fought between by the Kurds against
the Republic of Iraq. Hussein, coming into presidency in 1979, used his official genealogy to
‘prove’ his descent from Ali, the nephew of prophet Muhammad. Shia Muslims believe that
political leadership in Islamic countries should be based on the genealogical descent from the
Prophet Muhammad. Hussein legitimised his rule with the Shias accordingly, despite being a
Sunni himself. Hussein publically referenced himself in comparison with Saladin the Kurdish
general,106 thereby satisfying the Kurdish minority who have been fighting separatist conflicts
in Turkish and Iraqi territory. Cultural heritage was used as a political tool to quell sectarian
tensions, and became a propaganda tool used to influence public opinion about the ethno-
religious alliances of the Iraqi nation.
106 Benjamin Isakhan, “Heritage Destruction and Spikes in Violence: The Case of Iraq,” in Joris Kila (ed) Cultural Heritage in the Crosshairs: Protecting Cultural Property During Conflict, (Leiden: Brill, 2014): 224
49
The political importance placed on cultural heritage led to laws prohibiting looting of
archaeological sites. The Iraqi Antiquities Law of 1975, and the signing of UNESCO’s
Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer
of Ownership of Cultural Property in 1970, both demonstrate the recognition by political
leaders of the importance of Iraq’s cultural heritage. However, several factors led to the
deterioration cultural property protection. The second and third Gulf Wars severely reduced
the funding for maintaining cultural property. For example, the walls of the Nabu Temple at
Nimrud were cracking and falling down107 because accessibility to the temple was difficult
owing to the nearby U.S. no-fly zone and the adjacent semi-autonomous Kurdish regions,
which diverted the priorities of the Iraqi state away from maintenance and protection of cultural
property.108 Foreign economic pressures further deteriorated the state’s capacity to provide
pubic goods and services, the UN’s economic sanctions in 1990 and the bombing campaigns
of the United States of America’s collation in 1991 (Operation Desert Storm) caused high
unemployment, a drop in living standards, and increased poverty-related health problems.109
In 2002 there was a sudden pool of criminals released into society after Hussein granted
amnesty to all prisoners in Iraq. This gesture was “designed to thank the people for the 100
percent ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum on his continued rule.”110 However, the lack of jobs and
the high levels of poverty would have motivated this new pool of criminals to resort to
predatory behaviour. Poverty, a worsening security situation caused by separatism and external
107 Friedrich Schipper, “Protection and Preservation of Iraq’s Archaeological Heritage,” American Journal of Archaeology, 109:2, (2005): 257 108 ibid. 109 Neil Brodie, “Scholarship and Insurgency? The Study and trade of Iraqi Antiquities,” Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, (2011): 16 110 David Blair, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/1410858/Saddam-empties-Iraqs-jails.html
50
intervention, and the release of former convicts contributed to the motivations to loot the
deteriorating archaeological sites and museums of Iraq.
The National Museum of Iraq contained tens of thousands of historically important
objects dating back thousands of years. The famous Golden Lyre of Ur was found in royal
graves near Baghdad and is estimated to be 4500 years old. Unfortunately, many ancient
artefacts were destroyed or stolen during the looting of the Museum between 10 – 12 April
2003, and of the 10,000 to 14,000 objects still missing, 1,731 have been recovered in local
amnesty programs; and 1,679 recovered through international seizures and local raids.111
Two categories of looters can be identified: unprofessional looters and organised
groups. The former tended to unsuccessfully knock down large statues to drag them away,
stone sculptures scratched the floor indicating that makeshift equipment was used to transport
heavy artefacts.112 These looters may have been searching for items to sell on the market in
order to feed their families or as a financial resource to keep them safe during the onset of
continued violence. It is possible that ‘symbolic looting’ could have motivated locals to loot
because 1,731 objects were recovered in local amnesty programs it is possible that some Iraqis
looted simply to display these valuable artefacts in their homes. Organised groups operating
during the looting of the Museum had knowledge of the locations of the most valuable pieces.
In an exhibit of cuneiform bricks written in ancient Sumerian, Akkadian and Old Babylonian,
the most valuable cuneiform bricks were taken and the lesser ones left behind.113 Selectively
implies criminal organisation and an in-depth knowledge of art-market economics. The profits
111 Zainab Bahrani, “Iraq’s Cultural Heritage: Monuments, History, and Loss,” Art Journal, 62:4, (2003): 17 112 Matthew Bogdanos, “Thieves of Baghdad,” in Peter Stone and Joanne Bajjaly, (eds) The Destruction of Cultural Property in Iraq, (Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2008): 117 113 ibid: 116
51
gained from looting were attractive to many Iraqi civilians, one Iraqi sold 700 cuneiform tablets
for $20,000, which was half the monthly salary of an average government employee in 2003.114
After the Iraqi army was disbanded under the Coalition Provisional Authority Order 2 on the
23rd May 2003, the loss of a long-established security force may have given local Iraqis a bleak
outlook on the future of their country, creating the incentives for short-term profit-seeking
activities.
The value of Iraqi antiquities has caused violent confrontations between traffickers. In
1998 a gang of smugglers stole a golden statuette from the National Museum into Jordan,
passing it onto a trafficker who had sold the item for $1 million.115 The looters were to receive
10% of the final sale, but accused the trafficker of cheating them. Over the next few weeks
“thirteen people were killed, including the trafficker, two gang members and 10 seemingly
innocent people.”116 The antiquities trade is a dangerous activity that has no single authority to
enforce security, this means that individual and small gangs often use violence when a
disagreement takes place over highly valuable antiquities. Predatory behaviour towards
cultural property constitutes a security threat not only to regional security but to all actors
connected to the trade in transit countries and, possibly, in western ‘collecting’ nations.
Cultural property has been found in raids against terror groups. In 2005, north-western
Iraq, US Marines arrested five terrorists in underground bunkers that were filled with
“automatic weapons, ammunition, black uniforms, ski masks, night-vision goggles and 30
vases, cylinder seals and statuettes that had been stolen from the Iraq Museum.”117 This
114 Brodie, 2011: 4 115 ibid: 17 116 ibid. 117 Matthew Bogdanos, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/opinion/the-terrorist-in-the-art-gallery.html?_r=0
52
suggests a tangible link between terrorist cells and cultural property. The sophistication of the
military equipment found in the bunker alongside the antiquities may suggest a financial link
between them. Antiquities could be used to procure military equipment by insurgent groups
seeking to destabilise security in a country, which would only require a few combatants and
well-placed explosives in a public space.
Religious leaders have monopolised on armed by taxing the antiquities trade. Al-Fajr,
a town in Dhi Qar province, had an active antiquities trade since 1995, and according to Iraqi
archaeologist, Abdul-Amir Hamdani, constitutes eighty percent of the towns economy.118 Al-
Fajr is a Shia-populated area loyal to the Muslim cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, who issued a fatwa
in 2003 requiring looters to “provide one-fifth of the value of their plunder to the local Sadrist
office.”119 The impact of the fatwa was to “frighten and alienate the Shia establishment and
property-owning classes form the Sadrists” who considered Muqtada’s supporters as violent
thieves120 and possibly former criminals released by Hussein. Muqtada openly opposed the
Coalition Provisional Authority that had been set up after the US invasion to replace Saddam’s
Baath party. He created a small militia – the Mahdi Army – to enforce security in Sadr City
and taxed the plunder of looters in Al-Fajr. Muqtada could have used these new funds to supply,
equip and maintain his small militia, which could challenge the incumbent government’s
security forces and its judicial systems.
Culturally important institutions had tactical advantages for military units in Iraq. The
Iraqi Army used the National Museum’s position as a firing position, its façade was aimed
118 Brodie, 2011: 20 119 ibid. 120 Patrick Cockburn, Muqtada Al-Sadr: The Shia Revival and the Struggle for Iraq, (Simon and Schuster: New York, 2008): 130
53
towards the traffic circle “offering an unobstructed field of fire on the high-speed avenue
approach that ran in front of the compound.”121 Additionally, the road that led to the Al-Ahrar
Bridge across the Tigris was used by Iraqi snipers to provide a “flanking shot on any USA
armed forces moving through the marketplace to reinforce any battle in front of the
Museum.”122 Cultural property buildings are often constructed in urban environments with
large, open spaces in front the façade, giving the impression of monumentality and importance.
This aesthetic consideration in architectural design, however, can be used during armed conflict
as a tactical device to yield advantages in viewpoint (for snipers), and in physical protection
(artillery units may avoid destroying a culturally importance building for fears alienating a
group that collectively cherishes it). The advantage of using the National Museum of Iraq as a
fortress was its perceived symbolic importance. When the Iraqi Special Guard fired upon US
military forces sent to the area, they responded by firing a tank round at the sniper position,
blasting a circular crater in the wall of the Museum entrance. Eventually, the tank commander,
Lieutenant Balascik, pulled out of the area owing to the difficulty of launching an assault in a
culturally and politically sensitive area.
Protecting the Museum would have endangered US military personnel lives. During the
looting (10th – 12th April 2003), Donny George, an Iraqi archaeologist, was ignored by Task
Force 1-64 Army Tank Unit after requesting that they protect the museum. However, tanks
cannot be used for defensive purposes, by sitting still and guarding an area tanks can easily be
blown up by a single antitank RPG round. Furthermore, committing ground troops would have
been criminally irresponsible on the part of the commander, “whose obligation is to protect the
lives of the men under his command.”123 If ground troops were used to defend the museum, an
121 Bogdanos, 2008: 110 122 ibid. 123 Bogdanos, 2008: 114
54
escalation of the intensity of conflict would have been likely, and supporting artillery rounds
and explosives would have been needed if the USA forces were threatened by enemy units.
This would have invoked the law of Military Necessity and caused collateral damage to the
museum, the artefacts inside it.
However, the US military has taken steps to avoid the unintentional destruction of
cultural property in armed conflicts. In 2006, the COCOM Cultural Heritage Action Group
(CCHAG) developed educational playing cards (Fig. 4). These were distributed to soldiers to
offer advice and instructions on key issues of cultural property protection on the battlefield.
These include guideline of what is an antiquity is, why they are important, and the
consequences of buying and selling them (fig. 4). Although simplistic, the cards offer important
advice that may help foreign forces mitigate undue damage to the cultural heritage of a country.
Considering today’s emphasis on ‘winning-hearts-and-minds,’ a fundamental strategy of
contemporary counterinsurgency, respecting a country’s cultural heritage aimed to improve
relations between locals and foreign troops. Additionally, respect shown to cultural property
may help to foster friendly political relations between the intervening military force and the
new government.
Media broadcasting of the looting of the National Museum of Iraq challenged public
support for the Iraq War and led to the introduction of new policies. The New York Times
features dramatic articles on 13th of April 2003 titled “Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum Of Its
Treasure,”124 and “Art Experts Fear Worst in the Plunder of a Museum.”125 Donald Rumsfeld,
124 John Burns, NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/world/a-nation-at-war-looting-pillagers-strip-iraqi-museum-of-its-treasure.html 125 John Wilford, NYT, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/world/a-nation-at-war-treasures-art-experts-fear-worst-in-the-plunder-of-a-museum.html
55
the US Secretary of Defense 2001 – 2006, dismissed the extent of looting, saying that “the
images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over. And it’s the same
picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase.”126 Evidently, the US
administration was not prepared to deal with the looting and did not have a plan to protect the
Iraq’s historic artefacts. However, Congress responded to the loss of Iraq’s cultural heritage by
putting forward House Resolution 2497, and Senate Bill 1291, which sought to “provide for
the recovery, restitution, and protection” of Iraq historic artefacts and monuments.127
Auction houses in western art markets sold Iraqi illicit antiquities despite international
regulations. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 661 established an
economic trade embargo against Iraqi in 1990 which prohibited the trade of antiquities. The
embargo was recognised in Christie’s catalogue (12th December 1990) but continued to sell
illicit antiquities. The value of Mesopotamian cylinder seals in Christie’s London auction house
was gradually increasing year by year from 1981 until 2002, when they rapidly declined.
Therefore, “until 2002 Christie’s had a financial interest in maintaining the sales of cylinder
sales despite the UNSCR trade embargo.”128 The sale of illicit antiquities, as we saw in Chapter
Two, is possible in the western art markets due to the secrecy of the transactions made, legal
loopholes, and the provision of false documents of provenance. These factors supplied the
demand for Iraqi antiquities, and have allowed looters and organised criminal gangs to supply
art collectors from areas experiencing armed conflict.
126 ABCNews, http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=128469 127 Matthew Thurlow, “Protecting Cultural Property in Iraq: How American Military Policy Comports with International Law,” Yale HR and Development Law, (2005) : 178 128 Brodie, 2008: 3
56
Cultural property has been used by political groups and leaders to bridge sectarian
tensions based on the politics of identity. However, cultural property has been extensively
looted by locals and organised criminal gangs. The causes can be attributed to contextual
factors of economic decline and hostile environments. Antiquities can be sold to procure
military equipment for insurgent groups leading to an increased possibility of terrorist attacks.
Looting has been taxed by religious leaders to fund their factions and challenge the authority
of the incumbent government. Cultural property has also threatened the lives of US military
troops because of the tactical advantages it gave to the Iraqi army and the problems in
committing troops to defensive operations. Efforts have been made to educate and train soldiers
in cultural heritage protection, but, as we have seen, cultural property can equally be damaged
and destroyed by soldiers, and can be used to threaten soldier’s lives. In foreign countries, the
media backlash was unexpected by key American leaders, and led to new policy reforms. To
conclude, the economic value of cultural property and way these artefacts are financially
managed and traded has benefitted certain wartime actors, who have interests in the
continuation of armed conflict.
57
Conclusion
This dissertation has used the the political economy of armed conflict to research the
linkages between war, economies and art. This analytic framework has helped us understand
how economic considerations towards cultural property have affected the decisions of local
people; criminals and gangs; militias; soldiers and politicians, to change the dynamics of armed
conflicts. These decisions often manifest as destruction, looting and trafficking, and influence
how scholars and policymakers characterise and respond to war.
Chapter One clarified the ‘cultural’ aspects of immaterial objects. We found that
cultural property destruction and plunder are not new to wars, but have occurred time and time
again. The UN attempted to protect, preserve and identify cultural heritage sites around the
world, but has been ineffective due to flaws and loopholes in international, national and
military laws. In Chapter Two we discovered that culture can diversify an economy during
times of peace and stability, but it can also offer economic opportunities during armed conflict
and create incentives to continue fighting. In Chapter Three, we looked into the nature of
contemporary wars, where political violence is often driven by identity politics with weapons
becoming easier to acquire and able to significantly damage the structures of buildings and
monuments. This chapter functioned to frame cultural property in a hostile and threatening
climate, with a variety of state and non-state militants covertly acquiring weapons to initiate
ethno-religious conflicts. In Chapter Four, the political economy of armed conflict can be, inter
alia, influenced by cultural property, which is implicated in the interests of military
commanders, criminal traffickers, coping families and local civilians. Cultural property can
influence the decision-making processes of each strata of the war economies, and changes the
character of armed conflict.
58
In Bosnia, the destruction of cultural property was on a large scale and authorised by
Serbian heads of state. The consequences of the widespread destruction of heritage sites
stopped many Bosnian Muslims from returning back to their neighbourhoods, which were
sometimes replaced with Serbian businesses and apartments. Here we framed ethnic cleansing
as ‘asset transfer’ to help us understand the economic benefits of destroying an identity group’s
cultural heritage to certain belligerents.
The growth of criminal smuggling networks in Afghanistan allowed traffickers to
transport valuable antiquities out of the country towards art markets in wealthy nations. The
Soviet War criminalised the Afghan economy which began to rely more on trade and
smuggling for basic goods and military equipment. The trade in antiquities may have funded
the Haqqani network which controls local economies in villages and towns along the Afghan-
Pakistan border. Taxing an illegal economy affects the governments ability to provide security
to remote regions and strengthens the ability of militant groups to fuel insecurity by procuring
weapons.
In the final chapter we looked at Saddam Hussein’s use of Iraqi history to legitimise his
regime, and found that he used it to successfully bridge sectarianism and ethno-religious
tensions. But the subsequent looting of archaeological sites and the National Museum of Iraq
demonstrates that antiquities can fund insurgencies and be taxed by influential religious
leaders. Muqtada Al-Sadr taxed looters and may have used those funds to strengthen his Shia
militia to challenge the incumbent government’s ability to provide security, potentially eroding
the political sovereignty of the Iraqi state. Furthermore, cultural institutions were used for
defensive purposes by the Iraqi Special Guard and could have led to severe damage to the
museum. American soldiers could have lost their lives by protecting the Museum from looters
59
and the Iraqi Army. Finally, the international attention on the looting of the National Museum
influenced policy-makers and media broadcasters in foreign countries, and auction houses
continued to sell Iraqi antiquities in the 1990s, despite international trade embargoes,
contributing to the strength of criminal networks across the globe.
Cultural property has become an increasingly important and problematic issue in
international security and political affairs, but the insights provided by this dissertation can aid
our approach to the new problems of the twenty-first century. The Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS), is an insurgency that rose to prominence in mid-2014, and has been destroying
and looting antiquities throughout the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria. In July 2015, they
released an execution video of twenty-five Syrian soldiers performed in Palmyra on the Roman
theatre, built in the second century AD. And, at the time of writing this paper, ISIS executed
Khaled Al-Assad, the head of Syrian antiquities in Palmyra. Although relevant, I have not dealt
with ISIS because of the difficulty in gathering reliable evidence. Also, new and unexpected
tactics are being employed by the group could lead to hasty and inaccurate conclusions. The
increasing importance of cultural property in the processes of contemporary armed conflicts
have given belligerents a powerful political weapon that can be doubled as an economic
resource. The problem of blood antiquities (antiquities sold to fund insurgencies) may open up
a new field of academic and institutional work on the securitisation of culture.
60
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Figures
Fig. 1. A carved South Arabian stele, alabaster, South Arabian Peninsula, third to first century BC, Aden Museum.
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Fig. 2. Figurine from Mehrgarh, Baluchistan, Pakistan, ceramic figurine, c. 3000 BC, held in
Musée Guimet, Paris.
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Fig. 3. Billboard depicting Saddam Hussein celebrating the fall of Jerusalem with Saladin and Nebuchadnezzar, photograph taken in May 1990, Nineveh, Iraq.
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Fig. 4. Archaeological Awareness Playing Cards, United States Department of Defense, COCOM Cultural Heritage Action Group, deck of playing cards, 2006.