Weak security plagues Egypt's archaeological sites -- but no one asks where the money to fix the problem could come from

An interesting article from Khalid Hassan in Egypt Pulse shows that the economic crisis in Egypt, especially acute in the tourism sector, combined with the government's prioritizing of anti-terror (and, one should add, suppression of dissent), is leaving Egypt's site security in tatters, underfunded and outgunned by looting gangs.

The security system within the Ministry of Antiquities is suffering major problems because of the security sector’s neglect in training the ministry’s security guards. The security forces in Egypt are generally unaware of the importance of Egypt’s cultural and civilizational heritage, because of the low level of education within the security institution. Meanwhile, only a limited budget is allocated to the guards in charge of the archaeological sites’ security, and there is not enough funding to train, educate and arm them. 

Even World Heritage-designated sites are being attacked:

The Dahshur site includes the Red Pyramid, Egypt’s first fully constructed pyramid, and the Bent Pyramid. The site was added to UNESCO's World Heritage list in 2009. Yet looting there is organized and persistent.
Wahiba Saleh, a senior inspector at the Dahshur site, told Al-Monitor that security staff there are only equipped with 9 mm pistols and often confront thugs carrying automatic rifles or machine guns.
“The Dahshur site extends over 20 kilometers [12.5 miles] and there are only 10 guards to secure it, which means that each is required to guard 2 kilometers [1.2 miles]. How could it be possible?” she asked.
Saleh said guards at the site are paid a monthly salary of no more than 400 Egyptian pounds ($52), while they are required to protect priceless antiquities. She demanded that the ministry raise their salaries, increase their number to no less than 40 people to secure the site, train them and arm them to confront saboteurs and outlaws.

What is needed is clear: more money. How much more? For Dahshur, without a raise or upgrades to automatic weapons, the amount is $52 x 30 x12 =  $18720 per year. Tack on, say, an AK-47 at $400 each (with a 4 year amortization= $100 per year per rifle x 40 = $4000) and $200 per year for training and educating per guard (=$8000), and you get something like $32,000 additional to protect that site. Double the salaries and the price jumps to about $50K.

$50,000 is not that much money. But that's just one site. There are 12,000 or so site guards in Egypt. Let's assume we double their salaries and double the number, giving half of them automatic weapons. How much would the budget be? 24,000 x 52 x2 x 12 (= $29,952,000) + $400 x 12,000 (=$4,800,000) + $200 x 12,000(=$2.4 million). Total: about $37 million per year. If we quadruple the number of guards as suggested by the inspector quoted above, but for the whole country, the total would be $67 million per year, compared with $22 million now spent.

That's real money. A rounding error in the US budget, a small but real cost in Egypt's $60 billion deficit-plagued budget. On the other hand, given the presumably devastating impact of bad publicity from looting (not to mention attacks on tourists), investing more in site guards -- and perhaps shifting some jobs to site guard positions within the 30,000-strong antiquities ministry (at least, that was the number mentioned under Hawass) might be worth it to bring the tourists back.

But there really isn't any money for raising salaries or increasing numbers. As always, the key problem is FINANCING site protection (and other archaeological policing).

Here's one idea for raising that $67 million: Egypt could start loaning out antiquities in exchange for a fee or contribution. To take the most crude example of how this might work, the antiquities ministry could select 6,700 antiquities from the millions now sitting in museum storerooms, antiquities that 6,700 collectors -- both institutional (for instance, a school district or corporation or mosque) and individual -- would be willing to borrow for a year at $10,000 per artifact.

Obviously the design of such a program would have to be very carefully thought through, and there is a real question of whether there is enough demand from collectors who could meet the criteria for being eligible for such a loan. Estimating demand based on auction sales is next to useless, not only because so much of the market is private and illicit, but also because there are likely many many would-be collectors who avoid Egyptian antiquities for all the right reasons. Such a program would also entail some risk, even with responsible collectors, that the objects might be broken (though the loss this would entail might be mitigated if the objects were some of the untold thousands of near-identical duplicates held by museums. Archaeologists are likely to be adamantly opposed.

Still, it is worth considering as one of the possible ways out of the disastrous financial difficulties Egypt's heritage protectors are suffering from and likely to continue suffering from for quite a long time to come.

Zahi Hawass and the theory of deterrence

Zahi Hawass calls for Egypt's Antiquities Law to be amended to provide for harsher punishment for antiquities crimes, arguing that this will deter looters. But the law, according to the article, already calls for a minimum three year sentence.

Would ratcheting that sentence up to five or more years make any difference? That depends. As Gary Becker and Michel Foucault in their very different ways have both noted, deterrence only works if three things are all true: the risk of being caught is substantial; punishment is severe and certain enough to induce fear; and criminals know the risks of being caught and the price they would pay. The key point for Egypt, presumably is that if the risk of being caught continues to be low, then making an already substantial penalty more severe is not going to change the calculations of looters.

We have evidence for this from 1990s Iraq. Saddam introduced the death penalty for looting after the US established no-fly zones that made it impossible to effectively police the archaeological sites and looting soared. Even though ten looters were beheaded on national television, the Draconian penalties did little to slow down the looting.

Markdowns, gluts, and technological innovation: features of illicit antiquities trading in Egypt today

Four important tidbits of information in this brief article:

First, "only stupid people get caught." Clearly this statement must be taken with a grain of salt, reflecting some bluster here on the part of the dealer (and in talking to the press at all the dealer is already showing some lack of discretion). On the other hand, that he feels he can get away with talking to the press -- and even allowing Al Arabiya to film his stock! -- shows how unafraid of getting caught dealers can be.

Second, the risk of getting caught and the consequent costs of selling clandestinely are carried by the seller: "The trader, who allowed Al Arabiya to film his stock of illegal artifacts on sale, said every smuggled artifact loses about 70 percent of its value" -- presumably compared to what it would be worth to the dealer if the artifact were licit. And yet even with this markdown the dealer still finds it worth selling.

Third, the illicit market continues to function, despite lower profitability, not just in normal times but in the special conditions of a glut caused by the breakdown of site security and consequent looting of Egyptian sites:  'An artifact like this one, which I sell now for $718 used to be worth $7186, and it wasn’t easy to find such a piece.'” Prices for illicit antiquities have dropped by 90% - and yet the dealer continues to deal. Presumably the illicit $7000 piece would have been worth $23000 if licit, so the collector now can buy for $700 a piece that might someday or even today if he/she can get away with selling it as licit be worth thirty times its purchase price. 

Fourth, the extraction of antiquities is becoming more efficient thanks (sic) to the adoption of advanced technology in the form of higher-quality metal detectors. Just to give some sense of how clear the industrial tie-in between antiquities looting in Egypt and this equipment, here's a screenshot of the site of the company selling the jeodetector:

Metal detecting is supposedly illegal in Egypt without a permit, by the way.

How Can Antiquities Police Function If the Police in General Are Deligitimated?

Hopes that the military takeover of Egypt's government, whatever its other implications, would at least mean the return of police to Egypt's beleaguered archaeological sites, have not panned out. This sobering report in the New York Times explains why: the military, rather than doing the  dirty work of suppressing protest, has delegated that task to the police.  The result?

Another officer, Maj. Haitham Abbas, complained that the entire force had been tarnished by the response to the unrest, giving the example of a colleague who works in a unit that guards tourists:
“They told his son at school: ‘Your father is a murderer. He kills people in the streets,’ ” the officer said. “He probably never even pulled his gun out.”

UNESCO's actions in response to the looting in Egypt

Edouard Planche, program specialist in the Cultural Heritage Protection Treaties Section of UNESCO's Culture Sector,  has kindly agreed to allow me to repost the comment he made on Derek Fincham's Illicit Cultural Property blog, regarding actions that UNESCO is taking in Egypt:

Following the information given by the Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities, UNESCO published immediately the data of the stolen objects on its website:http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/illicit-traffic-of-cultural-property/emergency-actions/egypt/warning-looting-of-the-malawi-national-museum/.
At national level, the UNESCO field office in Cairo continues to provide support to the museum staff and the Ministry of State for Antiquities to refine the list of looted objects and translate it into English. As of today, through the efforts of the Egyptian authorities, the police has already succeeded in recuperating 121 objects but 911 objects are still missing.
UNESCO is taking the initiative to circulate the most updated information concerning this looting and to inform its partners in order to ensure maximum vigilance on anticipated attempts to illegally export and sell the objects on the market.
UNESCO works closely with IGOs sucha as INTERPOL, the World Customs Organisation, ICCROM, UNIDROIT as well as with selected NGOs such as, for example, ICOMOS, ICOM, the International Committee of the Blue shield and private partners of the art market.

Zahi Hawass's Most Important Accomplishment: High-Res King Tut

Way back in 2008, I was invited to a conference being held in Alexandria, Egypt, about cultural heritage policy. There was a lot of talk about economic development through tourism, and a lot of quieter complaining about the damage tourists were doing to overvisited sites, and about inadequate budgets to enable the Supreme Council for Antiquities to do all it needed to do to protect, secure, and conserve its massive portfolio of sites and to improve its mostly dilapidated museums. One thing no one was talking about at that meeting was the possibility of tapping the vast revenue potential represented by image rights (except for trademarking the Pyramids, a pretty silly idea). I had run a conference several years earlier on the policy challenges of videogames and had learned that even then 3-D image-capturing was already beginning to be done, with the pilot project I recall being a 360-degree camera sweeping around the interior of Saint Peter's in Rome. It was not hard to imagine a huge demand by videogame makers and film makers for computer-generated graphics built out of laser-captured imagery allowing one to go into King Tut's tomb (imagine Spielberg wanting to make another Indiana Jones film and knowing he could have the "real" interior of the Pyramid of Giza if he paid a licensing fee). I raised this idea at the meeting, to resounding silence.

Little did I know that Zahi Hawass had already made a deal, back in 2002, for something like what I was suggesting. Only a decade later, the imagery is beginning to be made public. Here's a story about it. What's missing from the story is the economic boon the imagery represents. For that, one needs to go to the report by the company doing the work for the SCA. The key sentence is buried deep in the report, but is reassuring: "The copyright of the data will belong to the Supreme Council of Antiquities."

This might be the best thing that Zahi Hawass accomplished. It should pay dividends forever, and is a win-win-win: fragile tombs can be closed to save them from further degradation by overtouristing; licensing of image rights will bring in a substantial and permanently renewable revenue stream; and the ability of millions of people to see, in movies and videogames, the incredible beauty of Egyptian antiquity as never before shown to them will also act as a powerful advertising tool to spur future tourism.

Who Are the Looters? An Example from El Hibeh

Egyptologist Carol Redmount, who has led efforts to draw attention to looting at the site of El Hibeh in Egypt, reports on the facebook site "Save El Hibeh Egypt" that 

apparently two or three months ago several MSA inspectors went to visit El Hibeh and were threatened by Abu Kotia, the 'criminal" who has been overseeing the looting of Hibeh. He told them if they returned to Hibeh he would kill them. Then, about two weeks ago, Abu Kotia was shot (by whom I'm not sure) and wound up in the local hospital, where he died. I'm still trying to get further details. I very much hope that this means the looting at Hibeh has or will stop, but who knows at this point. If and when I get more details I will post them. I have heard rumors of items from Hibeh being for sale in Cairo and Luxor, but I haven't been able to confirm any of them. 

The lack of investigative journalistic coverage of this extremely scary story is almost as depressing as what the story itself tells us about who the looters are (hint: not just otherwise nice people driven to dig by poverty who could easily be convinced to go legal if only they were given a stake in sustainable tourism). As is the case in every other country where there is a lot of money to be made by digging and trafficking antiquities, mafiosi will bring violence to bear if and when needed to keep their business going. 

What that means is that securing sites from looters is not a task to be left to antiquities inspectors alone -- it requires real police with adequate authority and the training, weapons, transport, surveillance and communications gear to keep the bad guys away or arrest them. As I have said before on many occasions, however, most countries -- and especially Egypt given its drastic loss of tourism revenues during the past year -- do not have the resources to pay for better policing. The monies needed could, on the other hand, be generated by a "sin" or "pollution" style tax imposed on licit purchases of high-priced Egyptian antiquities in the US, Great, Britain, and other countries. 

Someday, I believe some such tax will be recognized by dealers, collectors, and museum directors as their best hope to transform relations between themselves and countries like Egypt that rightly see the illicit trade and the violence that accompanies it as the fault of those who collect -- even with a "clean hands" approach, since the enormous sums paid for licit pieces signal criminals that similar but unprovenanced objects must be worth enough to justify looting.

In the meantime, what can concerned Egyptians, Egyptologists, and heritage protection advocates do to help stop the bad guys? Investigative journalism is clearly too dangerous right now, or there would have been reporting done on what is clearly a highly colorful story. We need to do our own reporting, insofar as that is possible without putting lives in danger. Is there any way to empower Egyptians who live near the sites to anonymously crowdsource monitor (i.e., get Google or some other tech leader to design and then provide Egyptologists in Egypt with lots of cellphones designed to enable uploading of photos, phones that could be disseminated to local Egyptian citizens)?