Syria: A Loss of Faith

SYRIA. In the midst of a monumental humanitarian crisis, it is perhaps difficult, or rather uncomfortable, to debate the future of archaeological heritage in the country. But the future of the country after the civil war, and the communities that arise from this awful process, will need a strong economy, and cultural tourism and archaeological heritage will be an essential part of this process.

Syria has been well known as a tourist destination for many years,¹ since Palmyra’s architectural splendour influenced Western designers, or the Taurus Express came to Aleppo and its well-known visitors resided at the Baron Hotel. Major historic sites, such as Aleppo, Crac des Chevaliers, Palmyra — and the less visited but equally spectacular Bosra, Dura-Europos, Apamea, the Dead Cities, Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi — are iconic monuments in this rich cultural region. Anyone reading Ross Burns (1992) wonderful study the Monuments of Syria: An Historical Guide, or more recently Kevin Butcher’s (2003) scholarly Roman Syria and the Near East, cannot fail to be excited by the range and diversity of the archaeological heritage.

But the war is irrevocably changing many of these sites. Some through the fighting² — the battleground of the Aleppo Souks,³ or the bombing of Crac des Chevaliers⁴ — others through large-scale and systematic looting, as at Apamea, or the threats to existing museum collections. These threats present very different challenges.

The built heritage of Aleppo

In a familiar refrain regarding Aleppo (and other sites), ‘if the West is not going to intervene in Syria, it should at least do more to prevent this UNESCO-protected site [...] from becoming a 21st-century version of Dresden’.⁵ But how? How to protect monuments and buried archaeology in the midst of such conflicts? This is not a ‘surgical war’, with invading troops forewarned of sites to avoid damaging and places of cultural significance to secure (Layton et al., 2001; Stone & Bajjaly, 2008). This is a civil war, with unclear partners, complex and shifting battlegrounds, local issues, and non-local fighters. The monuments have values and significance to local communities — the souks of Aleppo are about identity and atmosphere, livelihoods of shops and soap makers, and tourists: but sometimes these very values make them a deliberate target for those hoping to break that sense of identify and belonging — it is hard not see some of the destruction at Aleppo as a conscious choice, rather than as simply the collateral damage of urban warfare.

What could the international community’s response to this be? It is hard to see how protection can be achieved once the conflict has taken hold. The Blue Shield process — the protective emblem suggested by the 1954 Hague Convention⁶ for marking cultural sites to give them protection from attack in the event of armed conflict,⁷ is perhaps a starting point. The Blue Shield organization made an early statement on Syria,⁸ but their excellent work really needs to be laid down before a conflict starts: it is about understanding and recognizing the complexity of values and futures for the heritage, and embedding these into local protocols and approaches that might impact on the conduct of a war and its implementation by the participants. The issuing of a ‘“No-Strike’ list of archaeological sites in Aleppo’ in July 2013,⁹ while laudable, was probably futile given the nature of the struggle that was already underway. What we need is better preparation — easy to say with hindsight, of course — but perhaps a priority for all antiquities services as part of their risk management strategies, and their development of links into local communities.

So, now, are we perhaps better off focusing on the nature and scale of the rebuilding process afterwards? In Aleppo, we will probably be faced with something akin to post-WWII Warsaw: with the desire/need for large-scale restorations, or more likely complete reconstructions. Given the significance of the Aleppo Souks, for example, to communities’ lives and identities, there will be an enormous pressure to reconstruct. There are always concerns regarding the scale and appropriateness of reconstructions, and their impact on authenticity and sense of place. Witness the recent ICOMOS survey on the permissibility and standards for reconstructions of monuments and sites.¹⁰ The preamble to this noted that the Krakow Charter (2000) (which expanded upon the 1982 Dresden Declaration on Reconstruction) stated that:

The reconstruction of entire parts ‘in the style of the building’ should be avoided. Reconstruction of very small parts having architectural significance can be acceptable as an exception on condition that it is based on precise and indisputable documentation. [However] Reconstruction of an entire building, destroyed by armed conflict or natural disaster, is only acceptable if there are exceptional social or cultural motives that are related to the identity of the entire community. (Article 4)

I think the citizens of Aleppo may advance such motives.

A crucial issue will be the scale of documentation to work from. The Aleppo Souks have been much photographed and described, and a considerable amount of documentation exists, although not all of it within archaeological or architectural archives. Collating this information will be a vital starting point and something that could begin now, so as to be best placed to assist reconstruction and rehabilitation in the aftermath of the war. New techniques of digital documentation, in particular 3D laser scanning, would have been so valuable here; but the ability to use existing photography to create accurate photogrammetric data has advanced considerably in recent years and with the scale of photography — including visitor photography of the interiors of the khans and the soap factories — offers some hope for a solid platform of information from which to work. There also needs to be a prepared plan for the rapid documentation of the debris, before wide-scale clearance takes place (which, understandably, is likely to be fairly swift).

In post-war reconstruction, while basic humanitarian issues will take priority, the importance of opening a dialogue with surviving communities regarding the planning of a sustainable future should not be under-estimated (Barakat, 2005). It is crucial that there is a clear vision for post-war recovery, which includes reconciliation and social re-engagement, combined with a positive participatory environment that takes account of issues of community identity, economic reconstruction, and sense of place. All of these must be key elements to any archaeological heritage management programme. We cannot now avert the disaster of Aleppo, but we can help to plan a rapid and effective response to support the community when reconstruction does come.

Looting and the damage to archaeological sites

Looting has been another major impact of the Syrian civil war on archaeological heritage.

Following widespread reports of looting at archaeological sites, the focus of action has been on moveable antiquities and illicit trade. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) published an Emergency Red List of Syrian Cultural Objects at Risk¹¹ in September 2013, to help identify Syrian objects that are most likely to be illegally bought and sold. In another positive move in February 2014, UNESCO stated that it had started to train customs officials and police in Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan to look for illegal cultural objects coming out of Syria,¹² while the Syrian Government has made efforts to secure museum collections.¹³ Once again, the response has taken time to develop: the looting of archaeological sites was clearly a problem since at least early 2012 (see below). This demonstrates, once again, the difficulty for the international community in reacting to events.

As an archaeologist, the loss of artefacts is deplorable: but the damage to the archaeological sites, and deposits destroyed to remove those artefacts (ripping them from their context), is even more heart-breaking. Unrepeatable knowledge, to paraphrase Sir Mortimer Wheeler, is being irretrievably lost. The scale of damage to archaeological sites has been staggering.¹⁴ The satellite images of Apamea have been extensively publicized.¹⁵ The scale of the looting, with closely packed holes across the town (Figure 1), is probably the result of looters looking for mosaics (this is the centre of the urban area, meaning that the material culture is unlikely to be spectacular). The destruction has been systematic and brutal. But it is interesting to note that the pitting was initially confined to ‘protected’ grassland areas (Figure 1b) and had not spread into the surrounding agricultural land (farmed and managed by people within the community); six months later the looting holes had started to encroach into those areas (Figure 1c), but still on a much reduced scale. The implications are clear.

FIGURE 1. Satellite images of Apamea from Google Earth™. (a) 20 July 2011; (b) 4 April 2012; (c) 28 September 2012. Note the scale of pitting, and the density of coverage, in less than a year between images (a) and (b).

The international measures outlined above, useful as they are, deal with the problems of the material once it has become ‘moveable’: they do little to face the problems of wide-scale destruction of archaeological deposits. As with the built heritage, the problem seems to be that measures to control this, imposed after a war has started, are seldom effectual. The failure lies in our inability to engage local communities and diversify the economic impacts of heritage tourism in times of peace. We need to start earlier: planning documentation and building engagement; and we need to plan now for the post-war reconstruction — to make archaeological heritage a vital part of the rebuilding process, that responds in a timely fashion. It is too late to get our act together months or years later. Rebuilding these shattered communities will not wait.

Notes

1 BBC News ‘History brings tourists to Syria’, April 2008. Online at: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7346100.stm> [accessed March 2014].

2 Exacerbated by the use of historic sites for military purposes: see UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova’s statement on 20 February 2014 online at: <http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/1108> [accessed March 2014].

3 Numerous news articles, such as the excellent Robert Fisk ‘Aleppo's poor get caught in the crossfire of Syria's civil war’, Independent, Tuesday 4 March 2014. Online at <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/robert-fisk-aleppos-poor-get-caught-in-the-crossfire-of-syrias-civil-war-8076945.html>; Charles Glass ‘Aleppo: How Syria Is Being Destroyed, The New York Review of Books, 20 December 2012, online at <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/dec/20/aleppo-how-syria-being-destroyed/>; Rachel Davidson’s piece ‘5 Historical Monuments Have Been Destroyed Forever During Syria’s Civil War’, November 2013, online at: <http://www.policymic.com/articles/71193/5-breathtaking-monuments-have-been-destroyed-forever-during-syria-s-civil-war> [all accessed March 2014].

4 For example, see the Aljazeera coverage at <http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/07/201371310630457364.html> [accessed March 2014].

5 L. Beehner, ‘“It Is Our Soul”: The Destruction of Aleppo, Syria's Oldest City’, The Atlantic, 4 October 2012. Online at <http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/it-is-our-soul-the-destruction-of-aleppo-syrias-oldest-city/263255/> [accessed March 2014].

6 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. Available at <http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13637&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html>. The First Protocol was adopted in 1954 (<http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=15391&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html>, while the Second Protocol was introduced in 1999 (<http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=15207&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html> and came into force in 2004. [All accessed March 2014].

7 The Blue Shield organization: <http://www.ancbs.org/cms/index.php/en/home> [accessed March 2014].

8 Blue Shield statement on Syria: see <http://www.ancbs.org/cms/images/17-05-2011_blueshield_pressrelease_syria_en.pdf> [accessed March 2014].

9 Heritage for Peace (a Spanish NGO) and the UK National Committee of the Blue Shield: issued 4 July 2013 <http://www.ancbs.org/cms/images/H4P_aleppo_press_release_final_edit_4_July_2013.pdf> [accessed March 2014].

10 For the background to this, see <http://www.icomos.org/en/what-we-do/disseminating-knowledge/newsletters/704-icomos-debate-on-permissibility-and-standards-for-reconstructions-of-monuments-and-sites-online-survey> [accessed March 2014].

11 Emergency Red List of Syrian Cultural Objects at Risk. September 2013. See <http://icom.museum/resources/red-lists-database/red-list/syria/> [accessed March 2014].

12 See <http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/illicit-traffic-of-cultural-property/emergency-actions/syria/> [accessed March 2014].

13 For example, see the UN News Centre report online at: <http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp/story.asp?NewsID=47085&Cr=syria&Cr1=#.UxYuiIW9cic> [accessed March 2014].

14 For example, see Jocelyne Zablit’s piece ‘Experts Sound Alarm: Looters Tear Up Syria Archeological Treasures’ in Middle East Online, May 2012 at: <http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=51591>; and, more recently, Megan Gannon’s ‘Widespread Damage to Syria’s Ruins Seen from Space’, LiveScience, January 2014 at: <http://www.livescience.com/42670-syrian-war-satellite-images-archaeology.html> [both accessed March 2014].

15 See the Trafficking Culture report in April 2012 ‘Looting at Apamea recorded via Google Earth’ online at: <http://traffickingculture.org/data/looting-at-apamea-recorded-via-google-earth/> [accessed March 2014].