4    Documenting Cultural Heritage in Syria

PALMYRA

the cradle of ancient civilizations

where monuments inspired by

Greco-Romans and Persians

hold up the sky, and time

stands still, when my hands can’t

reach out or encircle the children

who were unable to flee

or to rebuild the walls of bombed out

houses, are unable to light

candles of hope when night and day

are reversed, and a woman who was a wife

and mother lies on the cobbled street

her blood leaving its marks,

while the blind-hearted man

who destroyed so many names

and faces turns away with his rifle

cocked, believes that he is cleansing

Syria in a holy war, cloaked

in ideology, exchanging

a slogan for his soul.

—Marguerite Bouvard, 2015¹

This chapter explores cultural heritage preservation in Syria, which is embroiled in a civil war that began in 2011.² I have selected Syria for two reasons: it has a rich cultural heritage that is in danger of disappearing due to the current strife—much has disappeared or has been destroyed already—and the country’s ongoing conflicts make traditional preservation strategies impossible. The country is not safe enough to make it possible for conservators, archeologists, curators, and other professionals from elsewhere to lend in-person assistance to Syrians. Nor can a country where human survival is now so precarious expend many resources on cultural heritage preservation. (Yet new strategies are being developed that might prove invaluable in other conflict areas.) To add to an already complex situation, the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—also referred to as IS (Islamic State) and ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria)³—has been pillaging the country to destroy pre-Islamic buildings for symbolic reasons while stealing antiquities and selling them on the black market to fund further terrorist activities. In August 2015 ISIS beheaded Syrian archeologist Khaled al-Asaad for refusing to reveal the location of ancient treasures in Palmyra.⁴ Preserving Syria’s heritage in situ is dangerous. The extent to which this war has seeped into the marrow of artistic expression is shown in figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1

a) Zaher Omareen, Faceless 82, n.d. b) Sulafa Hijazi, Untitled, 2012. c) Khalil Younes, Untitled 5, 2011. Permission of the artists. These images originally appeared in Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, ed. Malu Halasa, Zaher Omareen, and Nawara Mahfoud (London: Saqi Books, 2014).

Figure 4.1 (continued)

While Syria is not the only country in which civil war is raging, its deep and rich culture and its complex history set it apart from others. Furthermore, the complexities of its situation suggest that there will be no peace there anytime soon. Syria provides a worst-case scenario for safeguarding cultural heritage. This chapter will outline Syria’s history and present-day conflicts, illustrate some current approaches to preservation, and suggest new strategies.

Syria abounds in diverse and ancient cultures; two of its cities, Damascus and Aleppo, are among the oldest trading posts and continuously inhabited cities in the world.⁵ Syria was part of the Fertile Crescent, also referred to as the Cradle of Civilization, the birthplace of agricultural communities. Wheat was first cultivated there; crop development led to the creation of early trading posts. The Phoenician alphabet, one of the many hallmarks of this region, was the first Western alphabet and a sign of the advanced nature of civilization there.⁶ Later, the Silk Road passed through several cities, including Damascus, Homs, Palmyra, and Aleppo—which featured the fourteenth-century Al-Madina Souq, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, much of which has been ruined in the current war.⁷ And like some of Syria’s immediate neighbors that are also part of the Fertile Crescent—Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel—its land is punctuated with the remnants of various cultures, religions, and rulers: Assyrian, Egyptian, Roman, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Umayyad, Abbasid, Mongol, Ottoman, and European. Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami say that Syria is “pocked with tells, hills made over millennia of human habitation—the pebbles beneath your feet are not pebbles but the shards of ten million pots manufactured and discarded generation after generation.”⁸

Tragically, “shards” describes Syria’s current situation all too well as a country in pieces—its infrastructure, its very physical presence, is in rubble, figuratively and literally, because of the shelling it has endured from all the warring parties there.

Following the fall of the Ottoman Empire (after 1914) and through World War I and immediately after it, the French and British divided most of the Fertile Crescent between themselves (with the assent of soon-to-be overthrown imperial Russia and the agreement of other European countries). First they authored the (initially) secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 (see figure 4.2);⁹ it later became the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, which the League of Nations passed in 1923. Britain claimed most of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), southern Syria, and Transjordan, while France was given control of the rest of Syria, Lebanon, and portions of southeastern Turkey. Palestine was placed under Britain. The division was strategic: Britain wanted to control the land route to India and to have a cheap and steady supply of oil for its naval fleet, while France sought to preserve its ties to Syrian Catholics, secure an economic base in the eastern Mediterranean, and prevent Arab unrest from spreading to their French North African empire.¹⁰ The Arabs were left out of the discussions, and in fact did not originally know about Sykes-Picot. Significantly, and tellingly, the French and British motivations seem to have had little or nothing to do with the Arabs—their political, social, economic, or aesthetic interests—and everything to do with their own interests, mostly economic. Any long-term thinking would have seen that to suppress a culture the way they did, coming from outside powers, would, in the long run, seriously irritate—and increasingly infuriate—the indigenous culture. The French and British chose what eventually proved to be short-term profit for long-term trouble. Instability was destined to ensue.

Figure 4.2

The Sykes-Picot Line Map (1918). Permission of the National Archives (UK)

In fact, attempts by Amir Faysal Ibn Husayn and others in April 1920, at the San Remo Conference, to establish a fully independent Arab state were unsuccessful. The French promised Syria a certain amount of autonomy, but in exchange, Syria had to recognize the independence of Lebanon. The Party of Arab Independence, supporters of Faysal, did not agree with the terms; in their view Lebanon and Palestine needed to remain part of Syria. The party further rejected a Jewish national home in Palestine, a plan put forth in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The San Remo Conference was where the terms of the French Mandate were worked out; it “gave” Palestine and Mosul to the British. Britain, in turn, agreed to evacuate its army from Syria.¹¹

It is noteworthy that the proposals—who got what land; who answered to whom; who ruled and who was to be subservient—were made by powers that had their own interests foremost in the planning. The kind of narrow self-interest exhibited in these dealings was bound to lead to trouble. What is occurring in Syria today—and in so much of the Middle East—is clearly a direct result of ignoring history.

Under Ottoman rule Syria had been made up of a number of subdistricts or administrative units—known as wilayas in Arabic and vilayets in Turkish. For example, Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus were each vilayets. The districts, however, contained more territory than do their modern namesakes. For example, the Damascus region included much of modern-day Lebanon. The Syrian borders were the Taurus Mountains on the north, Aqaba and Sinai on the south, the Syrian desert on the east, and the Mediterranean Sea on the west. Today that land encompasses Jordan, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. The Sykes-Picot Agreement drew lines through the vilayets and thus severed old community ties. Critical to an understanding of today’s conflicts, new national identities and social classes came to “challenge[,] and even replace, the identities of clan, tribe and religion.”¹² Syria was subdivided into five parts: Lebanon, Syria, Jabal al-Druze, the Sanjak of Latakia, and the Sanjak of Alexandretta. Taking discrete and relatively homogenous areas and fairly arbitrarily splitting them up by land mass with no sensitivity to culture was another blueprint for trouble.

Sykes-Picot and, later, the Treaty of Sèvres (August 1920)—which abolished the Ottoman Empire and obliged Turkey to renounce all rights over Arab Asia and North Africa—affected the Kurds. The divisions set forth in Sykes-Picot caused Kurdistan to be divided. However, during the French Mandate, Kurdish national identity was recognized. In fact, the French wanted to prevent an upsurge of Arab nationalism and so supported minority groups. The Treaty of Sèvres granted Kurds and Kurdistan the right to independence—but it was not meant to be; the Turkish war of independence caused the treaty to collapse.¹³ When Syria gained independence from the French, the Kurds lost their minority rights. Today Kurdistan spans four countries: northern Syria, southwest Turkey, northern Iraq, and northwestern Iran. The Kurds have struggled for autonomy for decades in each of these countries. The Syrian government does not consider them to be a national or ethnic minority. With some thirty-two million Kurds worldwide, their identity has remained strong, even against pressure for them to assimilate in Syria and elsewhere. They are the largest ethnic group without a state.¹⁴

The Kurds are not the only minority group that has suffered, and their situation is but one of many destabilizing situations in the Middle East. To preserve cultures and the artifacts of cultures, the region needs to preserve its peoples. But with so many conflicting interests, military conflict has become inevitable, especially given all of the religions and cultures in the region.

The French lost little time in taking over Syria; they deposed Faysal in July 1920. (The British made him King of Iraq the next year.) The French then divided Syria into segments, as mentioned earlier. Lebanon was created as a separate state, becoming its own country for the first time. The plan was favorable to the Maronite, Greek Orthodox, and Catholic Christians, but most—though not all—Muslim groups there preferred to be part of Syria. The French hoped that with these splits, Lebanon would remain a Christian-dominated French power in the Middle East with no desire to become an independent nation. The French similarly followed a divide-and-conquer approach in Syria, creating many separate states. Each state had a local governor supported by a French advisor. The French did little to help Syria transition into an independent country. In fact, France imposed constitutions on Syria and Lebanon that stayed in place until the British forced France to leave Syria in 1946.¹⁵ “The outcome was that Syria emerged … as a unitary state with very little experience of unity.… [The French legacy] was almost a guarantee of Syria’s political instability.”¹⁶

In 1945 the Arab League or League of Arab States was created in Cairo with the collaboration of the Kingdom of Egypt, the Kingdom of Iraq, Lebanon, the Syrian Republic, Saudi Arabia, Trans-Jordan, and North Yemen as member states, in a show of Arab nationalism. (The Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] became a member in 1976; today most Arab countries are members.) In 1948, Syria joined its fellow Arab League members in attacking Israel (unsuccessfully). Other attacks against Israel by neighboring Middle East countries would follow in 1956, 1967, and 1974. Israeli-Syrian relations form just one layer of many internal and external Syrian conflicts.

M. E. McMillan points out that Syria’s quest—after it had gained independence from France—was to reclaim its former lands. This has prompted the Syrian government “to intervene in Lebanon’s civil war (1975–1990), to ally with the Shi’a group Hizbullah, and to stay on as an occupation force until they were forced out … following the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri, on Valentine’s Day 2005.”¹⁷

Syria has had continual internal strife since the end of the French Mandate. In 1949, three military coups initially failed to give Syria stable leadership. The coups led to the rise of the socialist Ba’ath Party—and to the rise of the army that has continued to be a central part of the Syrian government. By 1957, a well-organized Syrian Communist Party seemed poised to take over the country. Fearful of a takeover, Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli and Prime Minister Khaled al-Azem met with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, seeking an alliance with Egypt. As a result of those talks, in 1958 Syria merged with Egypt to become the United Arab Republic. However, it was an unpopular move in Syria because Nasser ultimately wished to absorb Syria, not to merge with it. Thus in 1961 the Syrian army staged a coup d’état that ended the union with Egypt and restored the Syrian republic.

A coup d’état in 1963, also known as the 8 March Revolution, put the Ba’ath Party in power. The coup was staged by the military committee of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Ba’ath Party. Michel Aflaq, one of the founders of the Ba’ath Party, supported the coup. From then until now, Syria has been a military-run state whose leaders have exercised repressive power.

In 1966, radical Ba’athists overthrew the existing government. This shift ultimately allowed Hafez al-Assad, who had been minister of defense and commander of the armed forces, to seize power in November 1970. He was elected president in March 1971, and remained so until his death in 2000. His election further cemented military rule in Syria. Assad was a member of the Alawites, a sect of Shi’a, who are indigenous to Lebanon and Syria. He soon clashed with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

Hafez al-Assad was an authoritarian ruler who brutally repressed all opposition. At the same time, he sought to regain Syria’s former territories and establish stability in the region. While these goals may seem antithetical, they were not for Assad. He did not want Lebanon’s civil war to spill over into Syria, and he knew that some Lebanese would welcome his interference. In 1976, when Assad intervened in the Lebanon civil war, he had many reasons for doing so:

•  the land had originally belonged to Syria

•  Israel and its Lebanese Christian allies wanted to establish a Christian mini-state in southern Lebanon that would act as a buffer to Muslim extremists

•  he sought any opportunity to aggravate Israel (which had taken the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War in 1967)

•  Iraq, Syria’s enemy, had joined the Lebanon unrest by supporting Christian and other militia

•  The presence of European and Israeli forces in Lebanon threatened Syria’s sense of security.¹⁸

However, Assad’s ultimate goal was self-preservation, which he was willing to achieve by any means. Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami point out that the Syrian army first prevented a Palestinian victory in Lebanon and then slaughtered Palestinians in the Lebanese camps.¹⁹

In 1979, Assad recognized Iran’s new government after the Iranian revolution, and the next year he supported Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. (That early support has borne fruit; in 2013, Iran provided Bashaar al-Assad a $3.6 billion credit line, separate from military aid.²⁰) The following year, in 1980, an assassination attempt against Hafez al-Assad resulted in brutal repression of those who opposed him. Two years later in 1982, there was another Syrian revolt, by the Muslim Brotherhood. Assad managed again to quash the uprising and the government killed many thousands in revenge. None of Assad’s efforts were instrumental in furthering peace in Syria. While he could repress rebellion, his brutal and murderous repression ultimately engendered instability.

In the meantime, Hezbullah (The Party of God) was emerging in Lebanon in the 1980s as a political force. The party pledged allegiance to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Hezbullah used suicide bombs as a weapon of choice against Western targets, such as the suicide truck bomb that killed 241 U.S. Marines and 60 French soldiers in 1983. Hafez Assad began a complex relationship with Hezbullah that has continued under his son Bashaar.

The senior Assad’s desire to take power in Lebanon remained. In 1990 he deposed General Michel Aoun and extended Syria’s military authority in Lebanon. On June 10, 2000, Hafez al-Assad died, after thirty years in power. Parliament revised Article 83 of the constitution to reduce the minimum age of the presidency from 40 to 34—the age of Hafez’s son Bashaar. On July 17, 2000, Bashaar was elected president. A brief period of “reform” was followed by a newly repressive government. In 2011, following on the heels of the Arab Spring movement,²¹ a revolution began in the streets among Syrians from all backgrounds. It was inspired by the social and economic disparities that had existed for decades under the two Assads. Nevertheless, Bashaar is still in power and he continues to quash the country’s many opposition groups—and his efforts have the generous support of the Russians and Iranians.

What is now a civil war began as a series of protests. On February 17, 2011, 1,500 people demonstrated in Damascus after traffic police beat up the son of a local merchant. The Interior Minister went to the scene and asked whether the participants were holding a demonstration; when they said no, the crowd was left alone.²² However, a second Day of Rage was organized for March 15. Social-economic inequality and widespread political oppression in Syria inspired people to protest Assad’s repressive regime. Thousands turned out for the second demonstration. Protests continued around the country and it wasn’t long before clashes ensued. In April protests spread to some twenty cities. By the end of April, the Syrian army had begun military attacks on the towns. By the end of May, thousands of people had been arrested, and many were killed. Nonetheless, the protests continued to grow; in July large ones took place in Hama, where in 1982 the Muslim Brotherhood had organized an armed uprising.²³ However, Hafez al-Assad was able to repress the Brotherhood.

Protests escalated to armed conflict, and Bashaar used violent means—including cluster bombs and chemical weapons—to repress those who were against his regime. Over the past five years, the war has been fought among a variety of factions: the Syrian government, Free Syrian Army fighters, Salafi jihadist groups, the Kurds, ISIS, and many others. In 2015 the Kurdish YPG (the People’s Protection Units) joined forces with Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, and Turkmen groups to form the Syrian Democratic Forces.²⁴

An overview of the various religious and ethnic groups in Syria provides further context for the country’s ongoing struggles. In the mid-1990s, Nikolaos van Dam reported that over 80 percent of the country was Arabic-speaking and nearly 70 percent of the Arabic population was Sunni Muslim—Sunnis were nearly 58 percent of the whole population. The major religious minorities were Alawis (including the Assad family), Druzes, Isma’ilis, and Greek Orthodox Christians—who constituted the most significant Christian community.²⁵ The primary ethnic minorities were the Kurds, Armenians, Turcomans, and Circassians. Further distinctions can be made: the Kurds, Turcomans, and Circassians were predominantly Sunni; the Armenians were mostly Christians, and so on. Thus some groups represent ethnic and religious minorities, some only ethnic, some only religious. Religious minorities can be further divided into Arabic- and non-Arabic-speaking groups.²⁶

Population figures are not easy to come by today. After five years of civil war, at least 250,000 Syrians have died and millions have fled from the country. The United Nations estimates that the population was 24.5 million before 2011, and that it is now 17.9 million.²⁷ A 2013 article by Max Fisher in the Washington Post reproduces a map of Syria created by the Columbia University Middle East Institute Gulf/2000 Project²⁸ which creates ethnographic and cultural maps of several Middle Eastern countries. It includes many groups not included in van Dam’s list including Copts and Assyrians. There are separate enclaves as well as mixed communities.

Fisher points out that the maps have strategic implications for where Bashaar al-Assad is strongest (the Alawite regions) and weakest (the Kurdish regions). Thus, one can trace the killings that are along sectarian lines. He further suggests that the Syrian war

began for political reasons—people protesting dictatorship, the dictatorship overreaching in suppressing those protests by force, things spiraling out of control until it’s civil war—but that the fighting is causing people to retreat to sectarian identities and antagonisms, to make the old divisions deeper and more vicious. Sectarian conflict, after all, can have its own self-reinforcing logic: Alawites are bonding together in part because they fear, not without reason, that they’ll be slaughtered in Sunni revenge killings if Assad loses. Sunnis see Alawite militias forming and thus perceive all Alawites as their enemies, so they start attacking members of that religious sect, which makes other Alawites more likely to form in-group militias. And on. [sic]²⁹

The conflicts are even more complicated than that because there are outside groups involved in the war as well. Bashaar al-Assad has received support from Hezbullah, the Lebanese Shiite militant movement that started in the early 1980s in the midst of the civil war in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hamas, the Sunni Palestinian group, has trained and armed Syrian rebels. The two groups have long been allies against Israel, so they have “agreed to disagree” about Syria.³⁰ Add to these the terrorist groups that have risen in recent years, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, and you have a lethal mix of groups all with their own motivations for being in Syria.

The war has now gone on for more than six years. What do we know about those civilians who could not escape from Syria? The Violations Documentation Center is a network of activists inside Syria that records the names of victims and the cause of their deaths. Outside Syria, the United Nations estimates that 13.5 million people need humanitarian assistance. And Physicians for Human Rights has “documented 336 attacks on at least 240 medical facilities across the country. The attacks resulted in the deaths of 697 medical personnel” between March 2011 and November 2015.³¹ The situation is grim.

As of this writing, Syrian forces have attacked the Kurds in al-Hasakah (northeast Syria) who have been trying to retake territory—the Kurds’ semiautonomous region—from ISIS, as Bashaar al-Assad tries to gain control of all of Syria. Meanwhile, the Russians and Iranians are coordinating their efforts to support Assad. Russia (and formerly the Soviet Union) and Iran have deep and long-standing ties to Syria. The civil war in Syria is becoming a proxy war with a number of international players.

A brief summary of Syria’s history cannot do justice to its complexities and nuances. However, it does suggest that the political situation will not be resolved soon. Ayse Tekdal Fildis, M. E. McMillan, and other scholars rightly suggest that the problems now plaguing Syria will be of long duration. The Sykes-Picot Agreement is just one of many ill-considered plans made by outsiders who wanted to control parts of the Middle East for their own gains. Significantly, Britain and France failed to facilitate the creation of a post-imperial government that might have prevented the ethnic, religious, and tribal divisions that plague Syria today. Unfortunately, history may repeat itself with the involvement of foreign powers that are again trying to control Syria’s future.

What is to be the fate of the Syrians? and of their cultural heritage? Assad’s forces as well as ISIS have been practicing genocide; what about the cultural genocide that is also taking place?

*   *   *

In chapter 3 we considered the concept of genocide, and the person who coined that term, Raphael Lemkin. To Lemkin, the term denoted the large-scale massacre of people, and also the destruction of their culture. Clearly, his conception of genocide encompassed cultural genocide as well. For reasons of political expediency, the Genocide Convention of the United Nations defined the term more narrowly than did Lemkin. But he continued to write about cultural genocide for the rest of his life.

Lemkin spent decades working on Introduction to the Study of Genocide, a book of which only thirteen of the proposed sixty-three chapters were completed. The fragments were published only a few years ago—some fifty years after his death.³² He undertook his research at the same time that he was meticulously documenting the imposition of Nazi occupation laws throughout Europe during World War II, which resulted in his exhaustive study, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.³³ The juxtaposition is revealing: Lemkin was documenting the Nazi occupation while simultaneously trying to place Nazi genocide in a broad historical, legal, economic, and cultural context. He was also trying to further clarify his concept of genocide (see chapter 3). By documenting the long history of genocide from an interdisciplinary perspective, Lemkin hoped that people would understand its components—national, racial, religious, and ethnic—which derived from his premise that “genocide is an organic concept of multiple influences and consequences.”³⁴ For Lemkin, research and documentation made it possible to remember—and learn from—the injustices of the past.

Documentation was a key component of his work. When Lemkin moved to the United States in 1941, he was surprised that “denial was still the prevailing sentiment in the United States” for Hitler’s crimes.³⁵ Americans were slow to believe the extent of the Nazi occupation—Lemkin needed to prove it to them. He did so successfully with Axis Rule. However, he never completed the Introduction to the Study of Genocide, which he envisioned as a companion work.³⁶ Nor is it likely that he could have done so; the scope of the project was probably too large, Lemkin lacked the time and money to work on the book full time, and he died at age fifty-nine.

Lemkin’s dogged and thorough approach to uncovering injustice is relevant today. Documentation is still a critical tool in exposing human rights and cultural heritage abuses, but it is now easier to document in “real time,” and with new technologies. What is the role of documentation in the ongoing civil war in Syria?

*   *   *

[W]hen a nation or a group is destroyed it is prevented from making cultural contributions.

—Raphael Lemkin³⁷

Palmyra was built with stone and mortar. It will be rebuilt with computers and drones.

—Karen Leigh³⁸

The documentation of heritage dates back to ancient times. Thanks to the scribes in Assyria—who recorded on clay tablets voluminous information about their culture—we are as knowledgeable as we are about the ancient Near East. Fast-forward nearly four thousand years to the same region of the world: documentation continues to be important for the safeguarding of culture. Now there are many ways to document information, though not all will be as durable as clay tablets have been. But what we might lose in the long run—permanent records—we have in the short run, thanks to our many modes of communication such as smartphones and email. The inherent paradox of our ubiquitous digital technologies is that a great deal of what they capture will disappear, a topic covered in chapter 7. For now, we will focus on how the current panoply of technologies, combined with social networking, can capture Syrian heritage.

One way to try to preserve cultural heritage that is endangered—or that has already been damaged—is by marking heritage sites. The International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) grew out of the 1954 Hague Convention (see chapter 3). One of the recommendations of the convention was to mark heritage sites with a depiction of a blue shield that would designate protected objects and buildings (see figure 4.3). The ICBS was founded in 1996

Figure 4.3

The Blue Shield. Courtesy of the International Committee of the Blue Shield

to promote the protection of cultural property (as defined in the Hague Convention) against threats of all kinds and to intervene strategically with decision-makers and relevant international organisations to prevent and to respond to natural and man-made disasters. … ICBS works for the protection of the world cultural heritage by coordinating preparations to meet and respond to emergency situations as well as post-crisis support. And it promotes good standards through risk management training and awareness-raising campaigns for professionals and the general public. Its unrivalled body of expertise allows the organisation to collect and share information on threats to cultural property worldwide, thus helping international players to take the appropriate measures in case of armed conflict or disaster.

ICBS intervenes as an advisor and cooperates with other bodies including UNESCO, ICCROM and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Finally in emergency situations, ICBS encourages the safeguarding and the restoration of cultural property, the protection of threatened goods, and helps the professionals from the affected countries to recover from disasters.³⁹

Thus, marking sites is one form of documentation. But documentation also includes other activities such making lists to compile inventories. The information must be accurate, accessible, and secure to whoever is responsible for securing the endangered heritage. In his “War and Heritage: Using Inventories to Protect Cultural Heritage,” Peter Stone describes and analyzes the complex challenges he faced in Croatia in the 1990s, and in Syria today.

We also need a debate about how widely these lists should circulate. In a conversation I had in 1999 with the minister of culture for Croatia, he noted that on the eve of war in the former Yugoslavia, Croatia had, as required by the 1954 Hague Convention, produced a list of property to be protected and sent it to UNESCO. He told me that in the fighting that followed, every site on the list was targeted by opposition forces. While debate about protecting cultural property during conflict mostly relates to unintended damage, in the Balkans conflict cultural property was targeted as part of a political strategy. We will never know (but can probably guess) whether the sites would have been targeted if the list had not been produced. Identifying sites on a list at least provides evidence to the world judiciary for the trials of those responsible for intentional damage—as indeed happened in the prosecutions for the targeting of the World Heritage Site of Dubrovnik.…

A third issue is when and by whom lists are produced. The publication of a definitive list for Syria was delayed, while fighting continued, as four different lists—produced by four different groups with differing levels of contact with Syrian experts—were compared and collated. The different lists had different English spellings and therefore different records of the same sites. Some lists had good GPS data; others less good. Some had explanations of the importance of sites; others did not.⁴⁰

Despite these obstacles, the consensus is that a system of creating lists of heritage sites and marking them is in most cases more beneficial than harmful.

The ICBS has representatives from five organizations: the International Council on Archives, International Council of Museums, International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, and Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations.

Two declarations have been issued over the past twenty years to further amplify the role that heritage professionals can play in response to natural and human-made disasters: the Radenci Declaration on the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Emergencies and Exceptional Situations (arising from meetings held November 12–16, 1998); and the Seoul Declaration on the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Emergency Situations (meetings held December 8–10, 2011). The Radenci seminar was held in Radenci, Slovenia, to train personnel to provide aid following armed conflict or natural disasters. One of the case studies presented was on war damage in the former Yugoslavia⁴¹ (in 1999 ICBS organized missions to Kosovo in association with UNESCO and the Council of Europe).⁴²

The Radenci and Seoul Declarations came about because threats to the preservation of cultural heritage have been “exacerbated by an increasing frequency and intensity of disasters, and its full range of collateral effects.”⁴³ The war in Syria continues to have collateral effects. ICBS promotes preservation, but in addition to training volunteers in disaster response and sponsoring conferences, what other steps can be taken to protect world heritage?

UNESCO launched The Emergency Safeguarding of the Syrian Cultural Heritage Project on March 1, 2014, a three-year endeavor. It is supported by the European Union with the additional assistance of the Flemish government and Austria. The project, based in Beirut, has three aims: to monitor and assess Syrian cultural heritage through continuous documentation, to mitigate the destruction and loss of Syrian cultural heritage, and to sponsor international communication and awareness-raising efforts through technical assistance.⁴⁴

The first of these—monitoring and assessing cultural heritage—may be doable, though doing so places the monitors in danger. How can anyone be safe in a country with constant bombardment and so much instability? The second aim—mitigating destruction and loss—is even more problematic, for the same reason. The recurring idea that conventions and laws mean nothing to aggressors, who will do what they like—bomb whatever they wish to destroy and steal whatever they want—to achieve their aims, makes it practically impossible to mitigate loss. And the third aim, to sponsor international awareness-raising, may also be doable, but to what purpose? Being aware of the problem does not solve it, nor does it stop the destruction and loss of cultural heritage. As noted a number of times in this book, understanding the problem of the loss of cultural heritage is not difficult; being able to do something about it may be impossible, especially in war zones in which combatants play by their own rules.

One approach to preserving heritage is to photo-document it. That way, even if the original disappears, or is destroyed, there will be a record (which itself must be preserved). The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) has been microfilming and digitizing medieval manuscript collections in monasteries since 1965. They began their work in Europe and later moved on to North Africa and the Middle East. They catalog the images and archive the digital data. HMML began digitizing manuscripts in Syria in 2004 and continued to film there until 2012.⁴⁵ Such partnerships can assure that materials, archives, and objects are documented before they are damaged or destroyed, but these projects are expensive—and not all of them are sustainable. HMML receives support from a number of foundations. Also, this solution presumes a stable situation in which the preservation actions can be carried out. But what about trying to preserve works of art or architecture in volatile zones? It is risky at best and downright deadly at worst. The technology is there for such preservation; it only needs conditions that allow us to use it.

CyArk is a nonprofit organization in California that digitally captures world cultural heritage sites “through collecting, archiving and providing open access to data created by laser scanning, digital modeling, and other state-of-the-art technologies” (www.cyark.org). It was founded by Ben Kacyra, an Iraqi-American civil engineer, as a response to increasing threats to heritage sites all over the world. CyArk collaborates with a number of cultural heritage organizations. Recently CyArk has partnered with Yale University’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage and the International Council on Monuments and Sites on Project Anqa, an emergency program for recording high-risk heritage in the Middle East and North Africa. It deploys “teams of international professionals, paired with local experts to digitally document at-risk sites in 3D before they are destroyed or altered.”⁴⁶

Spatial archaeometry studies the properties of archeological materials. Geospatial and satellite imagery can be used to observe an archeological site from a great distance; drones can be used to record information about a site at close range.⁴⁷ These technologies can be used to assist governments in the protection of their heritage by mapping looting patterns, or providing proof of pillaging. Such technologies can reduce the illicit trade in antiquities, and provide useful data for security experts. The problem, however, is that mapping looting patterns and giving proof of pillaging is post hoc: the looting and pillaging are already done. Documenting it does not nearly guarantee that what has been looted will ever be returned.

Additionally, the whole notion of halting looting is complicated by the widespread locations of vulnerable sites, countries’ reluctance to fund anti-looting programs, their inability to identify looted materials and to stop the looters, and other problems. All of the conventions in the world do not constitute international, enforceable laws. They are merely guidelines. To stop looting, countries need to remove the incentive to loot: profit. As long as profit can be had from the theft of heritage objects, looting will continue. That is why collaborative and proactive activities hold the most promise.

Another motive, however, is at play—an ideological one: religion. In the name of one’s deity, a person (we can call him “a fanatic”) can justify the destruction of anything. Removing this motive is futile, for it means asking people to deny their more deep-seated beliefs—to deny their faith. Preventing the destruction of cultural heritage may be hopeless. So it is especially important that we document the signs of cultural heritage that we wish to preserve. Again, collaborative initiatives are critical.

Other Initiatives

The American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), which was founded in 1900, promotes the study of the Near East through a number of programs and partnerships. In August 2014, ASOR began its Cultural Heritage Initiatives program to document, monitor, and report on cultural heritage damage in Syria. This program is an international collaboration with participants from Syria, Iraq, the United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Lebanon, and Jordan. It has developed seven strategies:

•  increase public awareness about the destruction of sites in Syria

•  facilitate in-country documentation to “identify and document destruction as it occurs in real time”

•  use satellite remote sensing to monitor sites, analyze past images for changes over time, and verify and monitor current damage at cultural heritage sites

•  create a cultural heritage inventory to build a map and inventory of items that includes archeological sites, museums, libraries, archives, and other historic sites

•  develop emergency response networks, working with locals to teach them how to safeguard heritage

•  work on long-term preservation projects that will draw on the current initiatives and can take place once the situation in Syria is stable, and

•  maintain a cultural heritage bibliographical database that includes sources on cultural heritage sites in Syria in Arabic, English, German, French, and Italian, and other languages in which sources are found.⁴⁸

One small organization is worth mentioning: Yazda: A Global Yazidi Organization. The Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority in northern Iraq and Turkey, were recently the victims of ethnic cleansing by ISIS. They were forced out of their homeland in the Sinjar District of the Nineveh Governorate, Iraq, and have subsequently fled to parts of Kurdistan (including Syria) as well as to Europe. Yazda has a genocide documentation project that will become a historical record of the attempted extermination of Yazidis. It is important to document such history as close to its occurrence as possible, if it is to be captured and preserved.⁴⁹

A war as complex as the one in Syria calls for an array of preservation strategies. Preservation in a peaceful place is challenging enough. The many difficulties discussed in this chapter would seem to make preservation initiatives impossible. Given that personal safety and health must be of preeminent importance to Syrians, home-grown preservation initiatives are truly miraculous. That people are willing to put their lives on the line to preserve elements of their culture demonstrates the importance of heritage in our lives. Preservation is not easy; it requires funding and coordination. For how long will external funding be available for Syrian preservation initiatives?

This chapter has described just a few of the many initiatives currently under way. It remains to be seen how much of Syria’s cultural heritage will be preserved. Given current conditions there, such preservation is a truly monumental endeavor.

Notes

1.  Permission granted by the author, who holds the copyright. Published in Sukoon 3, no. 2 (Summer 2015) at http://www.sukoonmag.com/responsive/wp-content/uploads/Sukoon-Mag-Issue-6-S-2015.pdf (accessed October 11, 2017).

2.  An excellent source is Syria Untold, “an independent digital media project exploring the storytelling of the Syrian struggle and the diverse forms of resistance. We are a team of Syrian writers, journalists, programmers and designers living in the country and abroad trying to highlight the narrative of the Syrian revolution, which Syrian men and women are writing day by day.” See http://www.syriauntold.com/en/about-syria-untold (accessed August 15, 2016).

3.  The sources I cite use the terms equally. Less commonly used is Daesh or Da’ish, the acronym in Arabic. The group IS/ISIL/ISIS uses al-Sham instead of Syria. Al-Sham refers to ancient Syria, a large region in which people could travel freely, not post-World War I nation-state Syria with its smaller borders. It is likely that ISIS uses al-Sham instead of Syria because it disputes Syria’s current borders.

4.  This was widely reported in the news. My sources included The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/18/isis-beheads-archaeologist-syria (accessed August 2016); and The Art Newspaper, http://theartnewspaper.com/news/news/italy-s-museums-honour-archaeologist-murdered-by-isil (accessed August 2016).

5.  Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (London: Pluto Press, 2016), 1. According to UNESCO World Heritage Site information, “Aleppo has stood at the crossroads of trade routes across Syria since at least the 3rd millennium B.C., when the city was first mentioned in ancient Syrian manuscripts”; see UNESCO, “Aleppo,” Silk Road: Dialogue, Diversity & Development, http://en.unesco.org/silkroad/content/aleppo (accessed August 15, 2016).

6.  See Encyclopaedia Britannica, “The Phoenician Alphabet,” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Phoenician-alphabet (accessed August 2, 2016).

7.  The souk was largely destroyed in September and October of 2012; for an account of it, see Kevin Rushby, “Remembering Syria’s Historic Silk Road in Aleppo,” The Guardian, October 5, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/oct/05/aleppo-souk-syria-destroyed-war (accessed August 17, 2016).

8.  Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami, Burning Country, 1–2.

9.  For a thorough and engaging account of Sir Mark Sykes and François Georges Picot—and for the unfortunate legacy of their work that would follow—see M. E. McMillan, From the First World War to the Arab Spring: What’s Really Going on in the Middle East? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 69–75.

10.  Ayse Tekdal Fildis, “The Troubles in Syria: Spawned by French Divide and Rule,” Middle East Policy Council 18, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 1, http://www.mepc.org/troubles-syria-spawned-french-divide-and-rule (accessed August 18, 2016).

11.  Ibid., 2.

12.  Ibid., 1; and Adeed I. Dawisha, Syria and the Lebanese Crisis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 17.

13.  Kerim Yildiz, The Kurds in Syria: The Forgotten People (London: Pluto Press, 2005), 14.

14.  Ibid., 23.

15.  Fildis, “The Troubles in Syria,” 3–6.

16.  Ibid. 6.

17.  McMillan, From the First World War to the Arab Spring, 83.

18.  Craig S. Davis, The Middle East for Dummies (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, 2003), 257.

19.  Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami, Burning Country, 13.

20.  Ibid. 198.

21.  Arab Spring refers to the wave of protests—violent and peaceful—that started in Tunisia in December 2010. It soon spread to other countries in the Arab League. In Egypt, the protests were put down. The initial wave of protests had subsided in most places by mid-2012. Thus far, only Tunisia has transitioned to a democratic government.

22.  Yassin-Kassab and Al-Shami, Burning Country, 36.

23.  Ibid., 51.

24.  See, for example, Jonathan Steele, “The Syrian Kurds Are Winning,” The New York Review of Books 62, no. 19 (December 3, 2015) (review of Michael M. Gunter, Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War [London: Hurst, 2015]), http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/03/syrian-kurds-are-winning (accessed August 19, 2016).

25.  Nikolaos van Dam, The Struggle for Power in Syria: Politics and Society under Asad and the Ba’th Party (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 1. (I used the 1996 edition, repr. in 1997, to draw comparisons between the mid-1990s and now.)

26.  Ibid., 1.

27.  See BBC News, “Life and Death in Syria: Five Years into War, What Is Left of the Country?” March 15, 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-841ebc3a-1be9-493b-8800-2c04890e8fc9 (accessed August 18, 2016).

28.  Max Fisher, “The One Map that Shows Why Syria Is So Complicated,” The Washington Post, August 27, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/08/27/the-one-map-that-shows-why-syria-is-so-complicated (accessed August 19, 2016).

29.  Ibid.

30.  Giorgio Cafiero, “Hamas and Hezbollah Agree to Disagree on Syria,” Huffington Post (January 31, 2014; updated April 2, 2014), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/giorgio-cafiero/hamas-and-hezbollah-agree_b_4698024.html (accessed August 15, 2016).

31.  BBC News, “Life and Death in Syria: Five Years into War, What Is Left of the Country?” March 15, 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-841ebc3a-1be9-493b-8800-2c04890e8fc9 (accessed August 24, 2016).

32.  Lemkin on Genocide, ed. by Steven Leonard Jacobs (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012), 59–401. Page x explains Lemkin’s originally proposed text.

33.  Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress. 2nd ed. (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2008). The book was first published in 1944 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International Law.

34.  Lemkin on Genocide, 3 and 4.

35.  Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, xviii.

36.  Lemkin sought support for his research, and his book proposal is included in Lemkin on Genocide, ed. Steven Leonard Jacobs.

37.  Ibid., 3.

38.  Karen Leigh, “Hope for Palmyra’s Future,” The Wall Street Journal, April 5, 2016, Arts in Review, D5.

39.  From the International Committee of the Blue Shield website: http://www.ancbs.org/cms/en/about-us/about-icbs (accessed August 28, 2016).

40.  Peter Stone, “War and Heritage: Using Inventories to Protect Cultural Property,” The Getty Conservation Newsletter 28, no. 2 (Fall 2013), http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/newsletters/28_2/war_heritage.html (accessed August 29, 2016).

41.  Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff and George MacKenzie, “Archives in Times of War: The Role of IFLA and ICA within ICBS (International Committee of the Blue Shield),” in A Reader in Preservation and Conservation, IFLA Publications 91, ed. Ralph W. Manning and Virginie Kremp (München: K. G. Saur, 2000; repr. 2013), 151.

42.  Ibid., 154–155.

43.  ICBS, The Seoul Declaration on the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Emergency Situations, http://icom.museum/uploads/media/111210_ICBS_seoul_declaration_final.pdf (accessed August 28, 2016).

44.  For more information see https://en.unesco.org/syrian-observatory (accessed August 28, 2016).

45.  Michèle V. Cloonan, Allison Cuneo, and Father Columba Stewart, “Update on Syria,” Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture 45, no. 2 (2016), DOI 10.1515/pdtc-2016-0015. See also the HMML website, http://www.hmml.org/about-us.html (accessed August 28, 2016).

46.  Makenna Murray, “Building Digital Preservation Capacity in the Middle East through Training: Discussing Training in Lebanon and the Future of Project Anqa with CyArk Field Manager, Ross Davison,” July 28, 2016, http://www.cyark.org/news/building-digital-preservation-capacity-in-the-middle-east-through-training (accessed August 28, 2016).

47.  Sarah Parcak, “Archaeological Looting in Egypt: A Geospatial View (Case Studies from Saqqara, Lisht, and el Hibeh),” Near Eastern Archaeology 78, no. 3 (2015): 196–203.

48.  Kurt Prescott, “Seven Things You Should Know about ASOR’s Syrian Heritage Initiative,” n.d. American School of Oriental Research. http://asorblog.org/2014/09/10/6-things-you-need-to-know-about-asors-syrian-heritage-initiative (accessed August 24, 2016).

49.  Jeanie Chung, “In the Fray,” interview with Matthew Barber, The University of Chicago Magazine 108, no. 2 (Winter 2016): 21.