by Roya Arab

There has been an unhealthy rise in international warfare since the new millennium. The tragic events of 9/11 seem to have eradicated the accountability of western governments for their actions, such as destructive and ill-conceived warfare exported abroad, illegal prisons of torture and the removal of so much Human Rights at home. This summer, 2008, we witnessed the bombing of Georgia by Russia. Their neighbours in Afghanistan are caught up in a seemingly never-ending battle with allied forces. Further west we have the illegal destruction and occupation of Iraq by the USA and UK, regular wars led by Israel on its neighbours, this is besides their siege of Gaza and illegal occupation of the west bank. And, still on the table remains the now hushed, but ongoing threat of a military attack on Iran. We can be left in no doubt about the increasing number of conflicts and level of destruction wrought in these, due to advanced warfare methods and disregard for international laws. Wars whilst posing a great hazard to people and their landscapes, are also endangering significant cultural remains across the globe. In this piece I am going to share excerpts of a conference held on the subject of archaeology in conflict and ask, are we learning anything and have archaeologists the power to protect national monuments and cultural relics of peoples across the globe during and after conflict?

The conference, Archaeology in Conflict (organised by the Centre for Applied Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London), commenced on 10th November 2006, and over a three day period a myriad of papers were presented by numerous parties such as: theoretical and practical archaeologists; NGO representatives in management and on the ground; the police; media; government officials; and a private virtual heritage company (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/caa/programme/index.htm ) A variety of issues were raised from different angles about problems facing the archaeologies of conflict-ridden Palestine, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Iraq, enlivened by the discussions after the sessions. The dynamism of the conference compelled the author to take extracts from the speakers' papers, interspersed with the author's analysis, focusing in particular on the effectiveness of archaeologists in rising to the challenges posed by present day conflict ridden political realities.

10 November 2006

Day One: Palestine

During the first day we were introduced to the reality of working with Palestinian heritage: ‘Palestinian heritage: archival memory and identity work’. Giovanni Fonatana described Palestinian keepers as “waiting for UNESCO’s broader policy ‘not the tentative list’ tentative list (it would be tentative if Palestine existed as a state.)” He discussed the conflict, occupation and territorial fragmentation of the region…the humanitarian crisis and increased risks since lack of monies sent to civil servants after Hamas’s election, including a strike by the Antiquity department…. and the problems of no money and lots of checkpoints. Tim Williams spoke of the "extreme difficulty moving around the occupied territories”. He described, “UN cars passing in three quarters of an hour; a journey that takes Palestinians six to eight hours". He suggested a number of actions such as: the need to "develop the Palestinian state and peoples' capacity; reduce the use of international short stay specialists who may provide visible product but no continuity; mobilise Palestinian expertise; have processes to build sustainable staff; and not just renovate, but create transferable skills".

In the afternoon the theme of ‘Media and Representation’ was added to the earlier session title. Abed Aljubeh, a TV producer and journalist, asserted, "The media can push or destroy political agenda...Palestine is occupied and Israel is the illegal occupying force...western audiences cannot identify with the Palestinians.” Aljubeh asked, “Who is responsible for misrepresentations?” and postulated on several possibilities such as: “superficial media; journalists' selectivity; the powers that schedule; or all the above". One thing seemed certain, that the meta-narrative of the Israeli state is deeply associated to and seeking the physical pasts buried under Palestinian soil. "Central part of Zionism was ‘a land with no people for a people with no land, and the ‘biblical claim’ to the Promised Land” (Aljubeh)

Dr. Greenberg described Israeli tactics in the occupied territories, "In Jerusalem archaeology is part of appropriation...in the last ten years there has been a troubling trend of privatization, with control being given to NGO's...we are seeing the religious right, and messianic ideas of ethnic cleansing...since the 90's the ideologically motivated are wielding archaeology for their own aims…The Antiquity Department have ceded control to the settlers” (Greenberg). He went on to discuss the “corridors of control”, a Hebrew term for creating paths to avoid meeting Palestinians, and the “two level” solution, part of the Geneva Convention, promoting the idea of Jews and Palestinians existing on two levels, not meeting: a mutual disregard.

This theme of separation was followed through by Carson from the NGO ‘Bethlehem Today', which was set up to draw attention to Israel's illegal actions in the occupied territories and focuses on the suffering of the Christian community in the hope of drawing attention to the Palestinian plight. She reported, "the wall has been built 1.5 km inside Bethlehem, now a ghost town...Rachel's Tomb, an important monuments for the Jewish community, was swallowed up by the wall with plans to build a Jewish settlement…and despite being listed, the Crenison vineyard's terraces are to be cut through”. The day ended with the lecture, ‘The Founding Collection of the IoA’ (Sparks) from Petrie's excavation in Palestine. The Late Peter Ucko secured finance to facilitate the curation, cataloguing and display of these precious artefacts, which had lain dormant and ignored for decades. Professor Ucko shared the remarkable biography of this unique collection, culminating in the exhibition of 2007, ‘Petrie's Palestinian collection: A future for the past'.

11th November 2006.

Day 2: Lebanon and Afghanistan

On the second day the themes of ‘Conflicting values, government and legitimacy' and ‘Conflict management and reconstruction - case studies from Lebanon' were covered. Shehadi, Director at the Centre for Lebanese Studies, raised the issue of the "link between politics and archaeology” and described cultural heritage as a hostage to economics, bureaucratic issues and spending time frames. Shehadi believed it was “better to spend badly than not at all”. Shehadi identified the “link between archaeology and nationality” and talked of the lessons Lebanon had learned from the painful experience of repeated conflict and reconstruction. Shehadi also recounted the changing role of archaeology in the varied socio/political scenarios of the past few decades.

Perring, Director at the Center for Applied Archaeology at University College London, went on to recount the civil war and invasion in Beirut from 1975-1989. “Central Beirut, once a social meeting place, became a contested zone...war encouraged divisions...the result after 14 years of war was no funds, no legislative reform and a severe lack of skills". Beirut was eventually repopulated and "archaeology became a new aspect of the new Beirut”, with training putting back skills and engaging people. “Children were digging and capacity building: Archaeology became a component of the reconstruction".

The ferocious Israeli military campaign a few months prior to this conference (summer 2006) put an end to this phase of peace.

Seif in the lecture, “Conceiving the past, fluctuations in a multi-value system”, described a Red Cross ambulance man who was shot at and drove into a museum to save himself at the risk of damaging an iconic relic housed there. He spoke of the "difficulty in asking about heritage in relation to value systems and the conflict of identity on an individual, communal and national level”. In the case of post was reconstruction in Lebanon, Seif was able to negotiate changes in the developers’ practice using the 1993 laws, showing them that archaeology is not a threat, to help to change their value system, “a decade of learning and now we are doing it properly, before we had the money and not the capacity, now we are looking for funds. All this changed in the July war (2006). Lots of houses were destroyed; now there are other values to consider. We will cover and backfill sites, help people to re-establish themselves…cluster bombs and mines will take five years to clear.” Seif. Humanitarian concerns prevail and archaeology is relegated in the face of human suffering.

The afternoon sessions covered case studies from Afghanistan looking at ‘Conservation and sustainable use of resources'. Gascoigne’s lecture, ‘Picking up the Pieces: Looting and Archaeology at Jam, Afghanistan’, described the situation in Afghanistan, which has had two decades of Soviet occupation followed by the western-backed Taliban regime, for whose displacement western armies are now occupying the country where "there is little infrastructure and difficult terrain…looting has also increased in the area, but compared to security, health, education and trade in illegal narcotics, it takes a back seat…Mazar-e-Sharif was dynamited for antiquities, roads are being built through sites….we need to encourage locals to realise archaeology’s long term worth by creating employment...however security issues stunt tourism”

Tourists may be scarce but the same cannot be said for international buyers. Sergeant Rapley, from the Art & Antiques Unit SCD6 Metropolitan Police, outlined difficulties in curtailing the trade in illicit antiquities. He indicated that the "police don't work with customs and excise” and have “no combined policy or theme”.  There are only “five police officers for the whole of UK” and “for returning objects, the legislation of the losing nation has to be proven valid and consistent to our laws”. He described the 2003 Act (Dealing in Cultural Objects Offences Act) as “more beneficial but not retrospective...so you have to prove objects arrived after that date". All this complicates the efforts of the law to restrain wholesale theft and sale of occupied nations.

Manhart, from the UNESCO World Heritage Center, spoke of "corruption, sectarianism, and a fragile government needing aid and security”. He went on to describe “officials having serious problems, being shot at and kidnapped”. He asserted that the “major urban sprawl poses challenges to archaeology” and that the 2004 cultural heritage law, nationalising all archaeological sites, was unworkable in the present socio/political climate.

12th November 2006.

Day 3: Iraq

The third day was entitled ‘Archaeology and conflict in Iraq - present problems and future prospects'. John Curtis, the Keeper of Department of Ancient Near East at the British Museum, had been invited to review sites in Iraq after the invasion and spoke of "a military camp right in the middle of the ancient site of Babylon”. He described the damage to the site with the removal of two meters of top soil for sandbags in military trenches, boxes full of antiquities recovered from soldiers and the blowing up of ammunitions near archaeological sites. “In Babylon and other sites it is hard to quantify or qualify the damage". Curtis stressed his opposition to the war, but added that if it had to be, then "there need to be cultural experts imbedded as in WWII". Teijgeler, one of very few embedded archaeologists in Iraq, after a seven-month stay, felt "not successful" in making changes, and related the near impossibility of operating amidst such bloody conflict, alongside "only one international NGO, small Iraqi NGOs and no UNESCO". Elizabeth Stone shared findings from aerial images of southern Iraq taken in 2002 and 2005 used to establish levels and patterns of looting. Al-Husseiny reported the situation on the ground in Southern Iraq describing, “Houses being built on sites, sites being used as shelters for military exercise, and all this is besides the looting”. Farchakh Bajjaly spoke of a dire future and a present where, "archaeological sites are viewed like the lottery, easy because there are no laws or prevention".

Crawford, Chairman at the British School of Archaeology in Iraq, spoke of efforts before the war to safeguard sites being met with little interest by government. The "MOD received list of sites and did not attempt to put the list of sites with coordinates".  The country's heritage had been in a calamitous situation since the war and before that "the sanctions had made it impossible for Iraqi academics to get computers and text books, so there is a huge knowledge and language deficit". Crawford lamented that public funding for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq is to be cut over two years, and cease thereafter. The mission of preserving Iraq's heritage appears highly unfeasible.

Palumbo, the Director of Archaeological Conservation Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia World Monuments Fund, reiterated the importance of "capacity building, emergency assistance and raising public awareness”. He informed the conference that “for the first time a whole country, Iraq, has been placed on UNESCO's endangered list". He went on to speak of the training programmes set up in Jordan for Iraqi archaeologists, including site management, setting up a database and rapid assessment condition forms. Commendable effort, but akin to ointment for a bleeding wound that needs surgery. It seemed somehow symbolic that the conference ended with a talk by Thompson, a representative of GHF, a commercial US company who create (GIS) virtual versions of archaeological sites already - or in the process of - being destroyed.

It was an especially poignant that amidst us, sat and spoke, fugitive Iraqi academics (including Donny George former head of the Baghdad Museum), exiled due to a rise in violence in their daily lives, threats for being academics, and escalating sectarianism. These people represent culturally and religiously diverse peoples who had lived for centuries in the region. They had survived in the secular state of a tyrant Saddam Hussein (at that point backed by the west), who took them to war with Iran and Kuwait, followed by thirteen years of harsh (western imposed) sanctions. Now they suffer daily bloody conflict due to an invasion (carried out by three nations without international authorization), which saw US forces (and later Polish forces) base themselves on one of the most iconic symbols of ancient civilization, Babylon. The maps of sites drawn up by archaeologists for the first Gulf war were ignored by the USA and UK, as were the voices expressing fear of damage to Iraqi cultural heritage. We all watched, live via satellite, with horror as the occupying forces safeguarded all forms of governmental buildings other than the cultural centers, whilst disbanding the Iraqi police and the military, at best seeming like gross negligence and incompetence, and at worst malicious intent. Not since the Bamiyan statues were blown up, the author believes, have we seen such blatant targeting of cultural heritage.

Meanwhile, Iraq in the grips of conflict loses its highly educated diverse peoples, whilst its archaeology is looted for bread and exported by a mafia like international antiquities market. Sadly the large number of cuneiform texts being exported implicates certain archaeologists as party to the sorry affair. The matter of archaeologists' lack of power was raised at the conference, and gatherings such as these were put under scrutiny for their inability to make an active difference. During the final question time the author asked if anyone had prepared a course of action for safeguarding Iranian cultural heritage in the face of continued threats of military action, gaining little response. Since the conference John Curtis has prepared a map of important sites, and like Iraq, the whole country is one big archaeological site (Kennedy 2007).

It is necessary to have conferences such as these where important issues are raised, but action must follow. Yet again one can see the rising significance of archaeology in modern socio/political and economic struggles, yet conversely the lack of the archaeologists' agency. There is an urgent need for archaeologists to become more active in the political arena, and counter the ever-rising modern day threats to cultural heritage during and post conflict, as we witness growing disregard for international codes of ethics. Regulations in regard to cultural heritage have been developing since the 17th century when rules stated that one could steal but not trash, with theft outlawed in 1899 after the Napoleonic campaigns. Laws were codified in The Hague by 1907, and rules on air warfare were drafted in 1926 (per voca, O'keefe 2007). During World War II, the US and UK set up ‘monuments, fine arts and archives’ office, and representatives were sent in with the army to advice on sites to avoid (ibid). In relation to Rome, ‘Eisenhower spoke of fighting in a land that's given birth to a civilization that's ours and how the cultural heritage must be safeguarded'; even the Germans took great pains to protect Florence during their retreat (ibid). Since then many new laws have been developed to safeguard heritage by UNESCO, and other international bodies, however, these etiquettes and international laws for the protection of cultural heritage have become meaningless over the past decade, especially in the Near East.

The Near East is suffering enormously at the hands of Western occupying forces, whose actions are having a devastating affect on the region's population, nature and culture, whilst increasing grass roots terrorist groups world wide through exportation of state terror to the region. And sadly, it would seem that despite the Near East providing the West with most, if not all, of the tools of civilization, including farming, metallurgy, writing and state societies, somehow ancient sites east of Greece are not considered to have given birth to the West's civilization and therefore not as important as archaeological sites in Europe, which they predate. This incomprehensible imbalance in value afforded to different nations’ cultural heritage must be redressed.

Archaeology has been an arena of conflict from the moment it was realised what artefacts and ecofacts could possibly reveal about human pasts and identity, spun into tales to sanction nation states, ownership of lands and meta-narratives. However, for a war/invasion (not supported by the UN, and considered illegal by many) to lead to the placing of a whole country on UNESCO's endangered list warrants more proactive involvement from the archaeological community in bringing the perpetrators to international courts of law. Furthermore, there must be more efforts made to enforce the correct codes of military engagement, prior to military attacks to prevent such wholesale destruction of human kind's heritage.

In the author's view, the callous behaviour of the US and UK forces in Iraq amounts to gross negligence and malicious intent and should be subject to international law. Admittedly, if we cannot hold governments to account for illegal destruction of a whole nation, our chances of securing judgment against them for crimes against cultural heritage are slim. However, we must do something.

Two years on from this conference are we any closer to being able to safeguard archaeology in conflict? The answer is no. Archaeologists seem unable to counter the increasing dangers facing archaeological sites and data, especially in the Near East. Archaeologists need to rise up to the challenges posed by modern day realities; we need to find a voice in the political arena, as the necessity to confront "moral questions facing archaeology" (Ucko 1990) gain momentum and urgency.

References

Kennedy, M. March 6 2007 Iran's priceless antiquities in line of fire, Guardian Newspaper.

O'keefe R. 15 February 2007 The protection of cultural property in armed conflict Deputy Director, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law Cambridge University. Lecture at the IALS

Ucko, P.J. 1990. The politics of the past. Forward, in Gathercole P. & Lowenthal, D. (eds), 1990:ix-xxi. Unwin Hyman: London.

Conference programme available at, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/caa/programme/index.htm

Papers referred to in this paper:

Al-Husseiny, Abbas. (Chairman, State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, Republic of Iraq) ‘The archaeological heritage of the south of Iraq in conflict’

Aljubeh, Abed. (TV producer/Journalist) ‘Conflict and Palestine as represented in the media’

Carson, Charlotte. (Open Bethlehem Initiative) ‘Bethlehem today: A state of emergency’

Crawford, Harriet. (Chairman British School of Archaeology in Iraq, Hon Visiting Professor UCL, Research Fellow, McDonald Institute Cambridge) ‘The British School of Archaeology in Iraq: the work of one NGO’

Curtis, John. (Keeper of Department of Ancient Near East, British Museum) ‘The issue of Babylon: causes, effects and lessons’

Farchakh Bajjaly, Joanne. (Journalist and Archaeologist, Lebanon) ‘Antiquities Market, poverty and ignorance: the needed trinity for the destruction of a civilisation’

Fonatana, Giovanni. (programme specialist, UNESCO officials Ramallah, Palestine) ‘Learning from Ramallah. Palestinian case-studies between hope and despair’

Gascoigne, Alison. (McDonald institute for Archaeological Research and Co-director, Minaret of Jam project, Cambridge University) and Thomas David (Co-director, Minaret of Jam Project, La Trobe University Melbourne) ‘Picking up the pieces: looting and archaeology at Jam’

 
Greenberg, Rafi,. (Senior lecturer, Department of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University) ‘Archaeology as a tool of control over disputed territory: the case of East Jerusalem’

Manhart, Christian. (Chief of Section for Communication, Education and Partnerships, UNESCO World Heritage Centre) ‘Strategy for rehabilitation of cultural heritage in post-conflict situations’

Palumbo, Gaetano. (Director of Archaeological Conservation Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia World Monuments Fund) and Agnew Neville (Principal Project Specialist, Getty Conservation Institute) ‘Building professional capacity for preventive conservation: the GCI-WMF Iraq cultural heritage initiative’

Perring, Dominic. (Director, Centre for Applied Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, UCL) ‘Archaeology and the post-war reconstruction of Beirut’

Rapley, Vernon. (Art and Antiquities unit SCD6 Metropolitan Police, London) ‘The last line of defense’

Seif, Assaad. (Archaeologist, Ministry of Culture/ Directorate General of Antiquities, Lebanon) Conceiving the past, fluctuations in a multi-value system

Shehadi, Nadeem. (Director, Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford, and Middle East Expert, Chatham House, The Royal Institute of International Affairs) ‘Title to be confirmed’

Stone, Elizabeth. (Professor Near Eastern Archaeology, State University New Stony Brook) ‘Patterns of looting of archaeological sites in southern Iraq’

Sparks, Rachael. (Lecturer and Keeper of Collections, Institute of Archaeology, UCL) Collecting the past: Sir Flinders Petrie in the field.

Teijgeler, Rene. (Research and Management Cultural Heritage, The Netherlands) ‘Embedded Archaeology: does it work?’

Thompson, Josie. (Head of Iraq Programme, Global Heritage Fund) ‘The Iraq heritage programme, sponsored by GHF, OI and ISBAH’

 
Williams, Tim. (Senior Lecturer Managing Archaeological Sites, Institute of Archaeology, UCL) ‘Power and Politics in capacity building’

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