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ABSTRACT
This article aims to explain the emergence and assess the politico-military significance of ‘cultural peacekeeping’ (CPK) as a new task for international peace operations. The aim is to provide a conceptual appraisal of CPK and an initial insight into its objectives, opportunities and challenges. The analysis supports the inclusion of a cultural component in the mandates of peacekeeping interventions, even if we must be wary of the inherent difficulties and risk of unintended consequences. These are not to be underestimated, at the risk not only of failing to achieve the mission’s objectives but also of further deteriorating security on the ground and beyond. It follows that CPK should not be mistaken, nor presented to the public, as a minor, light, and inexpensive operation. Quite to the contrary, it is an extremely complex and politically very sensitive politico-military major exercise that needs careful planning and adequate capabilities. Misunderstanding or mismanaging CPK can severely backfire. It is a ‘double-edged weapon’ that must be handled cautiously to avoid the risk of the enemy manipulating it to its own advantage.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Paolo Foradori is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Trento, School of International Studies. From 2009 to 2011, he was Marie Curie fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, California, and until 2014 an associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on international relations, security studies, arms control, and nonproliferation. He has published extensively on those topics. He also worked with the United Nations in Russia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.
Paolo Rosa is Professor of Political Science at the University of Trento, School of International Studies. He is an associate of the EU Non-proliferation Consortium. His main research interests include Foreign Policy Analysis, Italian Foreign Policy, Chinese Politics, and Strategic Culture.
Notes
1 In her words,
The term cultural cleansing refers to an intentional strategy that seeks to destroy cultural diversity through the deliberate targeting of individuals identified on the basis of their cultural, ethnic or religious background, combined with deliberate attacks on their places of worship, memory and learning. The strategy of cultural cleansing that can be witnessed in Iraq and Syria is reflected in attacks against cultural heritage, that is both against physical, tangible and built expressions of culture such as monuments and buildings, as well as against minorities and intangible expressions of culture such as customs, traditions and beliefs. UNESCO, ‘Heritage and Cultural Diversity at Risk in Iraq and Syria’, 3–4 Dec. 2014, www.unesco.org/culture/pdf/iraq-syria/IraqSyriaReport-en.pdf (accessed February 14, 2016).
2 UNESCO, Resolution 48 adopted by the General Conference at its 38th session, Paris, 3–18 Nov. 2015, www.unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002433/243325e.pdf, 41 (accessed March 9, 2016).
3 Ibid., para. 48.6.
4 This strategy is elaborated in Document 38 C/49 ‘Reinforcement of UNESCO’s action for the protection of culture and the promotion of cultural pluralism in the event of armed conflict’, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002351/235186E.pdf (accessed May 27, 2016).
5 Joris D. Kila, ‘Cultural Property Protection in the Event of Armed Conflict: Deploying Military Experts or Can White Men Sing the Blues?’ in Archaeology, Cultural Property, and the Military, ed. Laurie Rush (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012), 41–60, at 43. See also Lyndel V. Prott and Patrick J. O’Keefe, ‘“Cultural Heritage” or “Cultural Property”?’, International Journal of Cultural Property 2 (1992): 307–20; Manlio Frigo, ‘Cultural Property v. Cultural Heritage: A “Battle of Concepts” in International Law’, International Review of the Red Cross 86 (2004): 367–78.
6 Available at: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13637&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (accessed March 1, 2016).
7 Art. II of the Convention defines ‘protection’ as comprising both ‘safeguarding’ (Art. III) and ‘respect’ (Art. IV) for such property.
8 Lyndel and O’Keefe, ‘“Cultural Heritage” or “Cultural Property”?’, 307.
9 For an overview, see Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War (London: Reaktion Books, 2006) and Margaret Miles, Art as Plunder: Origins of Debate about Cultural Property (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Dario Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution (London: Reaktion Books, 2007).
10 This has also been recognized by UNESCO, according to which, ‘cultural heritage has increasingly become the direct target of systematic and deliberate attacks since the 1990s’. See UNESCO, Background Note to the International Conference ‘Heritage and Cultural Diversity at Risk in Iraq and Syria, the Protection of Heritage and Cultural Diversity: A Humanitarian and Security Imperative in the Conflicts of the 21st Century’, 3 Dec. 2014, http://en.unesco.org/system/files/iraqsyriaeventbackgroundnoteeng.pdf, 2 (accessed May 19, 2016).
11 In addition to the 1954 Hague Convention its 1954 and 1999 Protocols, other key legal documents include the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970) and the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972).
12 Sigrid Van der Auwera, ‘Peace Operations and the Protection of Cultural Property During and After Armed Conflict’, International Peacekeeping 17 (2010): 3–6.
13 Mary Kaldor, New & Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, 3rd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).
14 Sigrid Van der Auwera, ‘Contemporary Conflict, Nationalism, and the Destruction of Cultural Property During Armed Conflict: A Theoretical Framework’, Journal of Conflict Archaeology 70 (2012): 49–65, at 50.
15 It is difficult to measure the level of cultural heritage destruction conducted by ISIS, as many sites are not accessible to independent experts. For a continuously updated assessment and monitoring of cultural destruction and damage in Syria, see the web page of the UNESCO's, EU-funded, International Observatory of Syria’s Cultural Heritage, http://en.unesco.org/syrian-observatory/ (accessed April 10, 2016). See also the Special Issue ‘The Cultural Heritage Crisis in the Middle East’, Near Eastern Archaeology 78 (2015).
16 Contradictions exist, for instance, between ISIS severe ideological iconoclasm and its involvement in illicit trafficking of cultural objects or its massive use of ‘icons’ in the form of videos and images distributed on the internet for propaganda purposes. This issue will be considered further below when discussing the notion of ‘inconoclash’. This section addresses only intentional cultural heritage destruction, while in armed conflicts, other non-intentional causes of the damage and destruction of cultural property are deterioration and weathering due to a lack of resources for proper maintenance, the suspension of restoration and preservation projects, and improper use, such as, for example, as shelter by displaced people.
17 Ahmed Mubaraz, ‘Why Does ISIS Destroy Historic Sites?’, Tony Blair Faith Foundation, 1 Sept. 2015, http://tonyblairfaithfoundation.org/religion-geopolitics/commentaries/opinion/why-does-isis-destroy-historic-sites (accessed January 21, 2016). See also Gerald R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); James Noyes, The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016).
18 It is worth emphasizing that this view is and has always been minoritarian in the Islamic world. Indeed, the mere preservation of a vast pre-Islamic heritage throughout the Middle East is testimony to the high value that mainstream Muslims attached and continue to attach to cultural heritage, where shrines and other cultural sites have been venerated and respected for centuries. It is also worth recalling that if it is true that ISIS particularly targeted cultural heritage belonging or associated to Shia, Kurdish, Yezidi, and Christian communities, it also attacked items traditionally worshipped by Sunnis such as the shrine of the prophet Jonah in Mosul (July 2014) and the shrine of Imam Nawawi in Syria (January 2015). See Mubaraz, ‘Why Does ISIS Destroy Historic Sites?’, 2015.
19 Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYX_CbwAD8A (accessed January 24, 2016).
20 For a political analysis of iconoclasm that connects religious violence and politics, and especially acts of image-breaking and state-building in both the Christian and Islamic world, see Noyes, The Politics of Iconoclasm.
21 Ambassador Pierre Morel, Director of the Observatoire Pharos, in UNESCO, Background Note to the International Conference ‘Heritage and Cultural Diversity at Risk in Iraq and Syria, The Protection of Heritage and Cultural Diversity: A Humanitarian and Security Imperative in the Conflicts of the 21st Century’, 3 Dec. 2014, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002325/232562e.pdf, 9 (accessed March 23, 2016).
22 Mubaraz, ‘Why Does ISIS Destroy Historic Sites?’.
23 UN Security Council Resolution 2199, par. 16, www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/2199%20 (2015) (accessed April 19, 2016).
24 See Robert Fisk, ‘ISIS Profits from Destruction of Antiquities by Selling Relics to Dealers – and Then Blowing Up the Buildings They Come from to Conceal the Evidence of Looting’, The Independent, 20 Sept. 2015, www.independent.co.uk/voices/isis-profits-from-destruction-of-antiquities-by-selling-relics-to-dealers-and-then-blowing-up-the-10483421.html (accessed January 28, 2016).
25 Duncan Mavin, ‘Calculating the Revenue from Antiquities to Islamic State’, Wall Street Journal, 11 Feb. 2015, www.wsj.com/articles/calculating-the-revenue-from-antiquities-to-islamic-state-1423657578 (accessed March 21, 2016). For more prudent estimates, see the report by Ben Taub, ‘The Real Value of the ISIS Antiquities Trade’, The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-real-value-of-the-isis-antiquities-trade (accessed March 30, 2016). In addition to ISIS, in the Iraqi and Syrian context of generalized social and economic disruption caused by prolonged conflict, the breakdown in law and order offers an ideal context for looting, illegal excavations, and the illicit trade of cultural and archaeological items by other groups, militias, and criminal networks. Based on an analysis of satellite imagery, both Kurdish opposition forces and Syrian authorities are heavily involved in looting activities. See Jesse Casana, ‘Satellite Imagery-Based Analysis of Archaeological Looting in Syria’, Near Eastern Archaeology 78 (2015): 142–52.
26 The securitization model has been developed by the Copenhagen School and defines security not as an objective condition but as the outcome of a social process. It claims that any specific subject can be transformed into a matter of security, escalating it from a state of non-politicization – the issue is not a matter for state action and is not included in the public debate – to one of politicization – it becomes part of public policy, requiring government decision and resource allocations – to a final state of securitization, in which the subject becomes staged as a matter of supreme priority that must be urgently addressed by all necessary means, including the possible resort to coercive measures. The concept was originally formulated in Ole Wæver in ‘Securitisation and Desecuritisation’, in On Security, ed. Ronnie D. Lipschutz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 46–86, and was elaborated in a more systematic manner in Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, and Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
27 Press Conference by UNESCO's Director-General Irina Bokova, Paris, 27 Feb. 2015, www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-view/news/unesco_calls_for_mobilization_to_stop_cultural_cleansing_in_iraq/#.Vp32ABaeBEc (accessed May 21, 2016).
28 Statement by UNESCO's Director-General Irina Bokova, in UNESCO, Report of the International Conference ‘Heritage and Cultural Diversity at Risk in Iraq and Syria’, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, 3 Dec. 2014, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002325/232562e.pdf, 5 (accessed April 4, 2016).
29 Statement by the President of the French Republic delivered at the General Policy Debate of the 38th session of the UNESCO General Conference, Paris, 17 Nov. 2015, www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/GBS/38GC/pdf/France2.PDF (accessed March 16, 2016).
30 Remarks by then US Secretary of State John Kerry at ‘Threats to Cultural Heritage in Iraq and Syria Event’, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, 22 Sept. 2014, www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/09/231992.htm (accessed March 25, 2016).
31 Ibid.
32 Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the 38th session of the UNESCO General Conference, Paris, 6. Nov. 2015, www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/1922488 (accessed March 22, 2016).
33 Remarks by Minister of Cultural Heritage Dario Franceschini at the 38th session of the UNESCO General Conference, Paris, 6 Nov. 2015, www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/GBS/EXB/images/Italy_Eng.pdf (accessed March 25, 2016).
34 Statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in UNESCO, Report of the International Conference ‘Heritage and Cultural Diversity at Risk in Iraq and Syria’, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, 3 Dec. 2014, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002325/232562e.pdf, 5 (accessed March 25, 2016).
35 UNESCO, Resolution 48 adopted by the General Conference at its 38th session, Paris, 3–18 Nov. 2015, www.unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002433/243325e.pdf, 41 (accessed April 7, 2016).
36 Laurie Rush and Luisa Benedettini Millington, Carabinieri Command for the Property of Cultural Property: Saving the World's Heritage (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015), 1.
37 See http://www.unesco.org/new/en/member-states/single-view/news/unesco_director_general_protecting_culture_is_a_moral_responsibility_and_a_security_issue/#.Vwz-kxy22Jg (accessed February 28, 2016).
38 Document 38 C/49, para. 48.1, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002351/235186E.pdf (accessed March 28, 2016).
39 Resolution 2199, adopted under the binding Chapter VII of the UN Charter, seeks to place limited trade controls on Syrian and Iraqi cultural heritage items with a view to securing their safe return. In particular, the Security Council has determined that
all Member States shall take appropriate steps to prevent the trade in Iraqi and Syrian cultural property and other items of archaeological, historical, cultural, rare scientific, and religious importance illegally removed from Iraq since 6 August 1990 and from Syria since 15 March 2011, including by prohibiting cross-border trade in such items, thereby allowing for their eventual safe return to the Iraqi and Syrian people and calls upon the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, Interpol, and other international organizations, as appropriate, to assist in the implementation of this paragraph. (para. 17)
40 Peter G. Stone and Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly (eds), The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008).
41 UNESCO, Report of the International Conference ‘Heritage and Cultural Diversity at Risk’, 23.
42 See Yvette Foliant, Cultural Property Protection Makes Sense: A Way to Improve Your Mission (Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence (CCOE), The Netherlands, 2015), 15, www.cimic-coe.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CPP-Makes-Sense-final-version-29-10-15.pdf (accessed February 16, 2016).
43 See, for instance, the Preamble of the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, http://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext/ (accessed February 2, 2016).
44 This quote is taken from a statement issued at the High-level Ministerial Meeting ‘Protecting Cultural Heritage – An Imperative for Humanity’, which took place on 27 September 2015 on the sidelines of the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly on the initiative of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Italy and Jordan with the participation of principals from UNESCO, INTERPOL and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime as well as ministers from a number of UN Member States. See press release at www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=51994#.VqC8bRaeBEe (accessed February 4, 2016).
45 On the ‘unifying value’ of culture and arts, it is interesting to recall the episode of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in 2001, which caused worldwide outrage with appeals against their destruction that brought together on this specific issue very diverse countries, with very different national interests and foreign-policy priorities, such as the United States and its Western allies, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE.
46 Piero Ignazi, Giampiero Giacomello, and Fabrizio Coticchia, Italian Military Operations Abroad. Just Don’t Call It War (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012). For a recent analysis of the Italian contribution to cultural peacekeeping and of the significance of cultural protection in the country's foreign and security policy, see Paolo Foradori, ‘Protecting Cultural Heritage During Armed Conflict: The Italian Contribution to Cultural Peacekeeping’, Modern Italy 22 (2017): 1–17.
47 This is clearly a paradoxical and distorted outcome, inasmuch cultural heritage becomes privileged over the people who generate the culture. On the other hand, one should not underestimate the indissoluble connection between human beings and their cultural products. In a rather bold but effective analogy, Stephen Stenning illustrates this connection referring to Hollywood movies that, when seeking to terrify their audiences with apocalyptic scenarios, tend to use the destruction of iconic buildings and structures as their climactic image. As he put,
it is because they [iconic buildings and structures] speak of the destruction of an entire city, a society, a nation, a civilisation, and a way of life. The destruction represents not just the destruction of those immediately living alongside these monuments, but of entire generations. See Stephen Stenning, Destroying Cultural Heritage: More than Just Material Damage, 21 Aug. 2015, https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/destroying-cultural-heritage-more-just-material-damage (accessed March 16, 2016).
48 At a much lower scale, other parties in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts are involved in cultural heritage damage and destruction for military purposes or income generation. However, it is only ISIS that pursues an intentional, explicit and well-advertised, ideologically based iconoclastic agenda.
49 Louise Arimatsu and Mohbuba Choudhury, ‘Protecting Cultural Property in Non-international Armed Conflicts: Syria and Iraq’, International Law Studies 91 (2015): 641–98, at 682.
50 The literature on the protection of cultural property during armed conflict is vast. For an overview, see Roger O’Keefe, The Protection of Cultural Property in Armed Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
51 Van der Auwera, ‘Peace Operations’, 14.
52 As a measure of the vast scope of a possible CPK in Syria, one should consider that the country hosts some estimated 10,000 archaeological sites. See Ali Cheikhmous, ‘Syrian Heritage under Threat’, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies 1 (2013): 351–66, at 352.
53 Discussing ISIS propaganda uses of cultural heritage destruction, the Lebanese-French archaeologist Joanne Farchakh argues that
There are no stories on the media without an ‘event’. First, Daesh gave the media blood. Then the media decided not to show any more blood. So it has given the archaeology. When it doesn’t get this across, it will go for women, then children. See Fisk, ‘ISIS Profits from Destruction of Antiquities by Selling Relics to Dealers’.
54 Joris D. Kila, ‘Cultural Property Protection in the Event of Armed Conflict: Deploying Military Experts or Can White Men Sing the Blues?’, in Archaeology, Cultural Property, and the Military, ed. Laurie Rush (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012), 41–60.
55 Laurie Rush, ‘Archeology and the Military: An Introduction’, in Archaeology, Cultural Property, and the Military, ed. Laurie Rush (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012), 1–4.
56 Yannis Hamilakis, ‘The “War of Terror” and the Military-Archaeology Complex: Iraq, Ethics and Neo-Colonialism’, Archaeologies 5 (2009): 39–65.
57 At the very least, CPK will not easily escape the accusation of ‘mission civilisatrice’ on the part of Western powers, whose past history of colonial rule, imperial domination and ‘colonial archaeology’ will be promptly highlighted by the iconoclasts. On the nexus between peacekeeping/building and the mission civilisatrice, see Roland Paris, ‘International Peacebuilding and the Mission “Civilisatrice”’, Review of International Studies 28 (2002): 637–56.
58 See Beenish Ahmed, Time Is of the Essence to Save Ancient Syrian Sites, and the UN Is Considering ‘Monuments Men’, 13 Nov. 2015, http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/11/13/3721808/unesco-monuments-men/ (accessed February 2, 2016).
59 Ömür Harmanşah, ‘ISIS, Heritage, and the Spectacles of Destruction in the Global Media’, Near Eastern Archaeology 78 (2015): 170–7, at 176.
60 Bruno Latour, ‘What Is Iconoclash? Or Is There a World Beyond the Image Wars?’ in Iconoclash: Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002), 14–37.
61 Harmanşah, ‘ISIS, Heritage’, 14.
62 In addition to the references in footnote 26, see Barry Buzan, People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).
63 Laurie Rush, ‘Cultural Property Protection as a Force Multiplier in Stability Operations. World War II Monuments Officers Lessons Learned’, Military Review, Mar.–Apr. (2012): 36–43.
64 Simon Mackenzie and Penny Green, ‘Criminalising the Market in Illicit Antiquities: An Evaluation of the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003 in England and Wales’, in Criminology and Archaeology: Studies in Looted Antiquities, ed. S. Mackenzie and P. Green (Oxford: Hart, 2009), 145–70.
65 For an interesting collection of national military responses to cultural heritage protection during both armed deployments and peacetime, with case-studies from seven armed forces, see Rush, Archaeology, Cultural Property, and the Military.