Securing Heritage in Crisis Situations: Some Thoughts on the Egyptian Scientific Institute and Sri Lanka's Volunteer Heritage Police

As with the Cairo Museum, security cameras, fences, and personnel were apparently not enough to protect the Egyptian Scientific Institute:

T

hese treasures are guarded by security personnel 24 hours a day, along with surveillance cameras positioned throughout the library’s interior and exterior. An advanced system can extinguish fire in seconds, and an electric fence lines the premises.

Here's more evidence, if it were needed, that normal security systems are not designed to deal with the kinds of security challenges posed by crisis situations.

The lesson should be clear: cultural authorities everywhere should be thinking now about worst-case scenarios and developing contingency plans. The starting point might well be to take advantage of the institution's own employees. That is a lesson the late Donny George might have taught (he and a few other colleagues returned when they heard about the looting of the Iraq Museum and spent several days holding the fort before the Americans finally showed up). It is somewhat surprising to learn that 2300 people work for the Egyptian Scientific Institute. That is a large crew, and it is too bad that some of them were not conscripted to form a human chain around the Institute, as Egyptian citizens did at the Cairo Museum.

But it is the country's citizens themselves who could and should provide the primary resource to be called upon during emergencies to protect their nation's heritage. And not just emergencies: Sri Lanka's National Heritage Ministry, for instance, is setting up a volunteer force to assist the police in guarding monuments against antiquities looters. Developing non-governmental organizations devoted to protecting heritage is something that should be high on the agenda of foundations, international organizations, and cultural officials in-country.

"We had no idea it was a library"

The CNN story on the burning of the library in Egypt contains a telling vignette:

At least one demonstrator was unaware that the structure was a library containing historical documents.
"We had no idea it was a library. We love our country. Why were the military thugs on the rooftop of the building in the first place, throwing debris and rocks at us? They destroyed it, not us, and now they will use it to turn public opinion against us and label us thugs," said Ahmed Ali, a student and activist involved in the clashes.

"Since when are buildings or manuscripts more important than the lives of humans?" he added.

The demonstrator's comments hold several lessons one hopes will be learned by heritage protection advocates:

1. There is no guarantee that protestors, patriotic as they are, will know that the buildings they are fighting over are cultural institutions. Organizations that want to avert the disaster that befell the library need to make sure that their buildings are prominently labelled, and heritage protection advocacy groups should be handing out leaflets marking buildings as offlimits.

2. The 1954 Hague Convention requires the marking of cultural buildings in war zones with Blue Shields, but that provision would probably not apply to the kind of conflict occurring in Cairo or elsewhere between citizens and government forces rather than between militaries. The law of war has not caught up with the realities of war today, which involves irregular conflicts much more often than traditional war did. The International Committee of the Blue Shield, which might have taken proactive measures as suggested in #1 above, is hamstrung by its need to operate on a government to government basis, so it either needs to persuade the UN to broaden its mandate or other international and non-governmental organizations need to step in to make sure combatants are informed about the risks they are taking with cultural heritage when they confront each other near or on the grounds of cultural institutions.

3. The Egyptian military should be held accountable for a war crime if its soldiers attacked the demonstrators from the roof of the building, assuming that the 1954 Hague Convention applies. But if the soldiers were attacked first, the Convention (at least so far as I, a non-lawyer, understand it) would be moot. And if the soldiers were trying to drive the protestors away from the building to keep it from burning, they would be acting heroically not illegally.

4. Buildings or manuscripts are not more important than human beings, which is why the 1954 Hague Convention recognizes that military necessity can allow buildings to be destroyed if there is no way to avoid doing so in the midst of a fight. But this is all the more reason why, since both sides in this conflict recognize that manuscripts are important, steps should have been taken by both sides in advance to ensure that there was no need to choose between protecting lives and protecting culture.

After Iraq National Archives, after Baghdad Museum, after Cairo Museum, Why Was Egypt's Library Not Secured?

The burning of the Egyptian Scientific Institute in the midst of the chaos in Cairo is a cultural disaster on a par with the worst acts of destruction of heritage in recent years, arguably worse than the losses to the Iraq Museum (since stolen artifacts can still be recovered, whereas the burned original manuscripts are gone forever). Whether the fire was started by a Molotov cocktail or, as some have asserted, was set by the soldiers inside the building, is not yet clear, and may never become clear. What is clear, however, is that the burning of this library reflects yet another abject failure of heritage policy to protect heritage when it is most at risk.

It is not as if this eventuality was unpredictable. After the Cairo Museum was robbed in the midst of similar chaos last January, the Egyptian government, and the military leaders who run the country, should have been able to work with international heritage protection agencies and organizations such as UNESCO, the Blue Shield,and others -- including the many, many Egyptian citizens who care deeply about their heritage (and showed it by joining hands to cordon off the Cairo Museum in January) -- to put in place contingency plans to keep cultural institutions secure during periods of unrest. Last but not least, the US government, which subsidizes Egypt's military to the tune of billions, ought to have demanded the Egyptians secure their cultural institutions and sites as a condition of aid. But of course, since we have no carabinieri-like forces ourselves to do this sort of thing, and little interest ourselves in securing cultural sites apart from major tourist attractions such as the Baghdad Museum or Babylon, chances are that no one from the Pentagon was even thinking about the problem, even after the looting of the Cairo Museum.

That was in January. Did the fate of the Cairo Museum provide a wakeup call that site security needed to be an urgent policy priority? It was not until mid-October, after months of bureaucratic chaos, that the government announced it had set up a committee to develop security plans, so the answer is most likely no. Nor did any citizens' groups evolve out of the noble ad hoc handholding at the museum.

The result? If this CNN report is accurate, the military did not set up a perimeter around the building. Instead, a small number of soldiers stood on the building's roof and goaded the protestors:

The library was a scene of intense confrontation Saturday.

A dozen men dressed in military uniform were positioned on the library roof and threw cement blocks and rocks on the protesters and sprayed them with water hoses to push them away from the building.

But protesters hurled back rocks as well as Molotov cocktails. Then a massive explosion erupted, apparently originating from inside the building, and black smoke billowed.

Firefighters were busy putting out another fire in a nearby building.

Protesters were bleeding from rocks thrown at them.

What is to be done going forward, beyond the important immediate task of salvaging the remnants of the library?

First, the courage, energy, and passion that Egyptian citizens have shown in responding to the disasters at the museum and now at the library needs to be channeled into civic organizations that can be mobilized proactively next time around.

Second, UNESCO needs to either shift resources from conservation and development or supplement them with additional funding focused on securing cultural sites during periods of political unrest.

Third, the United States needs to exercise some leadership and influence, where it has leverage or ties with militaries in countries undergoing transitions or crises, to induce them to do the right thing.

Fourth, NGOs and foundations that support cultural heritage conservation need to begin thinking about how they can work directly with nascent heritage site protection NGOs in-country.

US Customs Introduces Online System for Alerting Authorities to Illegal Importation

If I were an antiquities dealer this would make me a lot more worried than ever before about importing dodgy artifacts. Hat tip to Paul Barford.

Calling All Coin Collectors: Please Explain Again Why the FIndspots of Coins Don't Matter Much

http://news.yahoo.com/old-coins-force-think-jerusalems-western-wall-121242557.html

Profile of State Department's Archaeologist in Afghanistan

Excellent profile of Laura Tedesco, who as the State Department's archaeologist in Afghanistan is doing even more dangerous duty than her colleagues in Iraq, the only other country, as the article notes, where the State Department has posted an archaeologist. It takes great courage and commitment to put one's body on the line as archaeologists in both countries have done, and they deserve our gratitude for that.

As a matter of policy, it is interesting to compare the approach taken in the two countries. In Iraq, the focus has been on redeveloping Babylon and restoring the Iraq Museum as heritage tourism destinations, with little attention paid to the massive destruction of other sites by looting or encroachment. In Afghanistan, in contrast, the focus has been on one extraordinary recently deiscovered archaeological site, at Mes Aynak, that is certain to be destroyed, even though it could in theory have become a major tourist attraction if it did not sit atop mineable natural resources worth far more than tourism could ever generate. Tedesco is coy about how much is being spent on salvaging what can be saved from Mes Aynak, but admits it runs into the millions. It is worth asking how much might have been saved from being destroyed by antiquities looters in Iraq if the policymakers at the State Department and in the Pentagon had recognized that there was an equivalent need to protect Iraq's threatened archaeological heritage, and not just to exploit the part of it that would generate tourist revenues.

The American Academy in Rome meeting -- What Brian Rose Could Be Telling Museums They Ought to Do

I was unhappy not to be able to attend the recent American Academy conference, due to a previous speaking engagement. As this article about the meeting makes clear, it was a very timely meeting, and the organizers, Brian Rose and Laurie Rush, deserve kudoes for pulling it together.

The article provides only a very partial account of what went on, and one hopes that the organizers will be posting at least some of the papers and presentations for those of us who could not make it to Rome to get a fuller picture of what was said. The article was written for Cleveland.com and so takes a rather parochial view of the issues based on the Cleveland Museum's insistence that it will continue to buy antiquities. That elicits from Brian Rose the suggestion that "Rather than collect, museums ought to forge agreements with source countries to share cultural riches...."

Of course, most museums are now already already doing that or moving in that direction. The problem is that despite this shift in museum policy, site looting continues to plague countries rich in antiquities. In Turkey, for instance, as Rose tells the interviewer,

thieves use road building equipment at night to smash open stone chambers in ancient burial mounds and to remove treasures buried for centuries. Turkey simply can’t prevent the activity, he said.

What is to be done, then? Given that the reporter has been asking him about museums, one might have hoped that the answer would be, the museum world (and the dealers and collectors who are part of it) needs to do more to help Turkey et. al. But instead, Rose merely suggests -- or at least the reporter only reports him suggesting -- that "source countries should train soldiers to preserve cultural sites during wars and revolutions and instill pride over patrimony by educating children about national heritage." Those are both excellent ideas, but neither is particularly well suited to address the kind of looting that goes on in Turkey and other countries at peace. What is needed to stop peacetime looting is not soldiers but antiquities police and site guards. Education campaigns are sure to do some good, but the economic incentives for looting are not going to be trumped by pride in one's national cultural patrimony (Turks are already very proud of their national heritage, as are most Americans for that matter, yet looting of archaeological sites still goes on there and here).

In any case, neither training for soldiers, nor education campaigns for children, nor antiquities police and site guards, can be provided in these countries without additional financial resources. Preventing looting costs money. The article on the meeting misses this key point -- an especially odd oversight, since the reporter moves immediately from quoting Rose lamenting how hard it is for Turkey to prevent looting to naming "another serious challenge" that an Italian archaeologist working in Turkey, Roberto Nardi, has identified: "that of raising the money needed to preserve antiquities."

Rose should be saying the same thing. And he should be saying it to those who have the money: the museums, collectors, and dealers, whose money right now is destroying rather than preserving antiquities, by driving the looting of sites. What Rose could have told the interviewer was: "Museums should be doing more than sharing cultural riches, they ought to forge agreements with wealthy collectors and dealers to get the US government to tax antiquities purchases to raise money for anti-looting efforts in source countries." Why the former head of the AIA, who has done so much both institutionally and personally to raise awareness of the problem of antiquities looting, does not have a more forward-leaning position on what museums should be doing puzzles me.

Brookings Fellow on Libyan Heritage Policy Overlooks the Biggest Threat Ahead: Antiquities Looting

William Y. Brown, a nonresident Brookings Institution Senior Fellow who is former Science Advisor to the U.S. Interior Secretary and President of the Bishop Museum, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Woods Hole Research Center,weighs in with a number of policy suggestions for how to make the best use of Libya's heritage in the post-Ghaddafi era. Among other ideas, Brown urges Libya to follow the example set by developed nations and

earmark funding for museums and land preservation efforts with fees on income or activities. For example, the Land and Water Conservation Fund in the United States was established for acquisition of important public lands and is funded by companies engaged in offshore oil and gas activity. Libya might consider such a heritage fee levied on its own oil and gas production.

Given that oil and gas are where the money is,such a fee would make good sense, though it has to be pointed out that the economic logic taxing the users of land and water (the offshore oil and gas companies) to pay for conserving land and water does not translate to users of oil and gas resources paying for conserving heritage. The exploiters of heritage are those who would profit from heritage tourism, and those who profit from selling antiquities. Logic would dictate taxing both those markets,if it could be done. But the heritage tourism market is not yet developed, and while Brown is eager to see it developed because it has the potential to make a lot of money, he shows no interest in harnessing the economic power of that market to pay for heritage protection more generally. And the antiquities market, of course, is not located in Libya, so Libyans would have no way to tax it.

Speaking of the antiquities market: one of the striking features of Brown's argument is that it almost completely ignores the biggest threat to Libya's heritage going forward: market-driven looting of archaeological sites. Brown himself notes that the Benghazi and Apollonia Museums were looted during the uprising, but beyond calling vaguely for immediate action to provide physical security for movable objects and to recover items recently stolen, he sloughs off the issue: "Mostly, however, the problem is a lack of planning, funding and management that preceded and is unrelated to the Arab Spring."

That is very myopic. Libya did not suffer from large-scale looting of its archaeological heritage before the revolution, but it is likely to come under attack by looters in the months and years ahead. As we know from a multitude of examples, any country possessing large stocks of unexcavated sites holding antiquities for which collectors are eager to pay millions is going to be attractive looters. Where the policing power of the state is strong, looters will be deterred, but when authoritarian or totalitarian regimes fall or even weaken, black markets will flourish. As Donald Rumsfeld put it, shrugging his shoulders at the looting that erupted in the wake of the toppling of Saddam, "freedom is untidy". Public education campaigns -- may do something to keep at least some citizens from turning to looting, but there is no substitute for a robust policing capacity.

It would be helpful if development specialists at Brookings and elsewhere paid at least some policy attention to how best to plan, fund and manage the physical security of archaeological sites, rather than ignoring the problem.

Another Collector Calls for Registering Antiquities -- and Taxing Them (just not here, though!)

Peter Aldrich refloats a proposal made some time ago for a series of steps he thinks would help curb antiquities looting.

The solution is unrealistic, and unnecessarily so. No country where looting is going on now is going to change its laws to make it even easier than it is now for foreigners to deplete the countries unexcavated sites. But with a little tweaking, parts of the plan would do a lot of good. So instead of asking the world to do what it clearly is not ready to, why not just get together now with other antiquities collectors and dealers here in the US and show the world what good could be done for them? Legislators could be told that collectors, museums, dealers and auction houses all want a registry established here that antiquities would have to pass through to be saleable (a fee would be charged to have their antiquities vetted to cover the cost of that, and to cover the costs of policing the industry to ensure compliance as well). Legislators would also be told that collectors, dealers, museums, and auction houses all want to see a tax on all antiquities purchases here –including purchases made overseas of items brought into the US -- but only if tax revenues are put into an anti-looting Superfund that would support more site guards and other anti-looting measures there in poor countries where looting is worst.

Yes, the US would be putting ourselves at a competitive disadvantage in the short run for unprovenanced antiquities, but that would be more than compensated by the goodwill the collecting community would garner from countries of origin — goodwill that could be built on in lots of ways impossible now, given the animosity caused by perceived indifference towards the harm that the demand for antiquities is doing.

Egypt's archaeological sites and museums will be getting a security upgrade

This sounds like a very good development, not just because better-armed guards, if they are properly trained, will have more deterrent effect, but also because the security plans will "be updated periodically to meet new or unexpected challenges." One hopes that Egypt will settle down and fulfill its promise of establishing a stable democratically-run government, but gaming out the possible scenarios for political breakdown and creating agreed-upon contingency plans now is very prudent. It may be touchy to raise the question of whether the Tourism and Antiquities Police might once again melt away, as they did during the January uprising, but that sort of possibility has to be put on the table, just in case, so that if security does need to be turned over there are clear directions as to how the SCA can fill the security gap at least temporarily.

Libya's Sites Get the Once Over

The plucky team of Joris Kila and Karl von Habsburg, guided by Libyan archaeologist and assisted from Europe by Dr. Thomas Schuler, were able to make their way into Libya to produce the first on-the-ground assessment of that country's extraordinary cultural heritage, and have now issued this report. The news is mostly good, which is heartening, and the Blue Shield and the International Military Cultural Resources Work Group are to be commended for once again being first in, as they were in Egypt. UNESCO has now sent a mission as well. Among the most interesting findings in the Blue Shield/IMCuRWG report is that in the case of the Leptis Magna site, the museum staff, operating without a contingency plan, nonetheless took a series of steps that kept the site and its museum's pieces safe, despite efforts by Gaddafi militia on several occasions to take over the site. Shepherds were invited to bring their sheep onto the site, something not normally permitted; the shepherds helped the staff monitor the vast site and prevented mines and booby traps from being laid. The staff also was able to persuade armed members of the Qaddafi militia to rehabilitate themselves by patrolling the site's perimeter. In addition, according to this CNN report, but not mentioned in the Blue Shield report, the site director also distributed a thoroughly documented inventory to friends in the capital an hour's drive away, so even if the town were destroyed during the war its history would not be lost. Directors of archaeological sites everywhere should take notice of these smart moves, and especially of this last one. The dire consequences of not having a thorough inventory -- including photo documentation -- are being felt by the one museum in Libya that has sustained major losses from looting, the Benghazi Museum, which has been robbed of more than 7,000 rare and valuable coins dating back to Alexander the Great, as well as other artifacts. Strangely, the Blue Shield/IMCuRWG report makes no mention of this theft. So, not a fullscale assessment mission but valuable both in helping convey to Libyans that the world cares supports their laudable efforts to protect their heritage, and in waving the flag for a more robust cultural heritage protection effort on the part of NATO. As the report notes, despite the deep involvement of NATO in the war to liberate Libya, it does not appear that NATO's concern for protecting Libya's heritage has gone beyond the important but very limited accomplishment of creating a no-strike list of sites to be avoided in bombing campaigns. That is what is required under the 1954 Hague Convention. The report argues that NATO has a further obligation:

Military contacts and training about protection of cultural property are indispensable, this is for instance mandatory under IHL (Hague Convention) and is still not put into practice in many countries.

I do not share that reading of what the Hague Convention requires, but I am not a legal scholar so I am ready to stand corrected. In any case, whether Hague requires it, policymakers would be well-advised to do this as a matter of sound policy. Securing cultural sites from post-conflict looting is in the interests of mankind, since the archaeological past is our shared human past; but it is also in the interests of warfighters to win hearts and minds by showing that a nation's heritage is respected. The Libyans are going to need all the help they can get going forward to ensure that the new Libya, with its freedoms, and with the inevitable lure of profits to be made by mining and smuggling its antiquities to be sold to super-rich collectors abroad, does not see the emergence of industralized looting by mafia-like groups, as is the norm in countries where state power is weak.

If Busybodies Can Help Prevent Illegal Garbage Dumping, Why Not also Pay Them to Identify Looters of Antiquities?

The Times today has a story about an interesting law enforcement technique in Korea that might be a cost-effective way to improve policing of archaeological sites, especially if the fines are greater than the reward.: http://nyti.ms/o2icnK

Archeological Organizations Step Up, Urge Concrete Steps to Help Protect Libyan Archaeological Sites

Finally, a coordinated, thought-through call from archaeological organizations for specified steps to be taken to protect archaeological sites in a post-conflict transitional situation. I would have suggested a few additional steps that would focus more resources directly on site guarding -- i.e., not just US-AID funding, but also real-time remote site monitoring assistance from NATO, which has the capacity to keep an eye in the sky on what is happening out in the desert. But that aside, this is a huge improvement on any comparable statements in the aftermath of other revolutions or wars.

Excellent overview of what the Egyptologists saw and did during the 2010 Revolution

Kate Phizackerley and Andrea Byrnes of the Egyptological blog have posted a very informative and clearheaded summary of how the Egyptological and cultural heritage communities responded to the challenge posed by the revolution in Egypt. Well worth reading.

Antiquity tied to Jesus? Maybe, but we will never know for sure, thanks to the looters and those who buy from them

Here we go again. An ancient ossuary is determined to be genuine, but is the inscription genuine as well? And even if it is, where exactly is the burial site, who else was buried there, etc. etc.?

The researchers aren't able to trace where the ossuary was discovered, since it had made the rounds in the illegal antiquities trade, but they believe it came from a burial site in the Valley of Elah, southwest of Jerusalem, the legendary location of the battle between David and Goliath. Beit Imri was probably located on the slopes of Mount Hebron, they said.

Maybe yes, maybe no. If I were a devout Christian, I would be very upset. As someone who cares about the truth in our past, a truth that is continually being falsified and obliterated by those who collect antiquities, I am upset myself.

After the Iraq Museum Was Looted, Senior Bush Administration Officials Told It Still Needed to Be Secured. Three Days Later It Was.

As cables from the Iraq war continue to ooze out onto the internet, more details are gradually emerging to fill in the small gaps that still exist in the picture of the Bush administration's ineptitude and indifference. From the particular angle of interest to readers of this blog -- the failure to secure the Iraq Museum and archaeological sites -- this cable reconfirms what we already knew: that even after the news of the looting at the museum reached authorities, the museum remained unsecured for days. What we still do not completely understand, all these years later, is who dropped the ball during that interim period, when Donny George and a few other museum employees armed with nothing more than metal pipes were fending off further attacks on the museum.

In the cable, Amb. John Limbert, a former Iran hostage who had been tapped to deal with Iraq's cultural ministry after the expected cakewalk, writes on April 13. The museum had been looted between April 10 and April 12, when Donny George and other Iraqis returned and drove out the looters. Limbert writes from Kuwait, weeks after the invasion began, having been denied, along with most other post-war reconstruction officials, the chance to go into Iraq along with the military.

In addition to the important call to issue offers of amnesty for return of stolen items and to define looted antiquities as stolen property, Limbert urged that

Coalition authorities should provide security for
remaining objects and for other high-value cultural
sites.

Limbert might have been more forceful had he written instead that "coalition authorities should provide security for remaining objects AT THE MUSEUM" but his point is clear: the museum itself needs to be secured.

Who received this message?

EPT FOR NEA LAROCCO PM BLOOMFIELD AND INL SIMONS
IRAQ TASK FORCE FOR PM ACTION TEAM
DOD FOR WOLFOWITZ
DOJ FOR SWARTZ AND ODAG/EONS JAMES MCATARMNEY
DEPARTMENT PASS NSC FOR SUZANNE MCCORMICK

That would be, then:
a) from the State Department: James Larocco, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, 2001-2004; Lincoln Bloomfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs from 2001-2005; and (probably) Paul E. Simons, then acting assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. Simons was one of three State Department officials to write a memo in February 2003 warning that there were major gaps in the military's postwar planning. Suzanne McCormick's status at that point is unclear, but she later became Director of the Office of Intelligence Operations at the NSC.
b) from the Justice Department: Bruce Swartz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division in charge of international issues, with duties that include interacting with foreign governments on counterterrorism and criminal justice issues. Like McAtarmney, another lawyer, they are probably on the list to push the legal angles.

Policy players all, but not as far up the policy food chain as Paul Wolfowitz, who needs no introduction. He could, one assumes, have picked up the phone and ordered the museum to be secured immediately. But he probably had his hands full with other matters at this point, and it was to be another three days before a tank crew finally arrived at the museum on April 16, 2003.

Libyan Rebels Mobilize Special Brigade to Protect Museum and Sites

I somehow missed this nugget in a Guardian article on Tuesday: "The opposition National Transitional Council (NTC) said on Tuesday that guards from a specially trained Tripoli brigade, made up of fighters from the capital, were being stationed at the national museum as well as other key cultural sites." That is really interesting news, and very heartening, especially since it is the Libyans themselves taking responsibility for the dangerous but important task of securing their own cultural patrimony.

Thanks to Cori Wegener and the excellent U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield for the find.

Did NATO Plans to Help Libyans Topple Ghaddafi Include Inducements to Protect Libyan Archaeological Sites?

This UNESCO statement warning authorities in and neighboring countries to guard against looting of their archaeological sites raises some important questions. With Libya now more or less liberated from Ghaddafi's tyranny, what will happen to the extraordinarily rich archaeological sites there now, with the country in what may be a protracted period of instability? I am ashamed to say that I do not know enough about Libyan politics to be able to say whether archaeological police were part of a hated governmental ministry (as was the case in Egypt and Iraq), but in any case the sites are almost certain to be left less well-protected than they should be. Are there any short- and middle-range steps that could be taken at this point, beyond issuing statements, to help the Libyan people protect their own (and the world's) archaeological heritage from the market-driven looting of antiquities that spikes during such periods?

NATO has certainly thought about this problem (as in this excellent conference held a few years ago in Tallinn), but it is pretty unlikely this thinking has been translated into the very politically constrained operational planning structure under which NATO must be operating in Libya. Let's be clear: No U.S. or British or Italian tanks are going to be rolling to the gates of Leptis Magna. This is not Iraq. But one could imagine a number of other stopgap measures that might be taken, if the planning had been done over the past month or so. These possibilities include:
a) helping the ministry of culture to organize and enlist Libyans, preferably locals for each major site, into site-protection groups who could camp out in large numbers on the sites and act as a deterrent.
b) helping the ministry of culture work with the antiquities police units directly
c) providing real-time aerial and/or satellite monitoring information
d) placing import bans on antiquities from Libya
e) with the permission of Libyan authorities, bring the carabinieri over to help the antiquities police cope with the heightened threat
f) providing Libyan archaeological police and site guards with material support in the form of walkie-talkies, remote monitoring devices, helicopters, etc.

Readers of this blog may have other ideas to add.

These suggestions are about what NATO and the community of nations could and should be thinking of doing. But -- and it is a big but -- there is no reason why many of these suggestions could be pursued by cultural heritage NGOs, if they were a little less focused solely on sustainable tourism and more attentive to the threats that looting poses, even to World Heritage sites. I would add that it would be wonderful if a wealthy collector or major foundation recognized this as a problem they could help solve, but I am not holding my breath on that one.

ICE on a roll

This story is interesting on several counts, including the news that the smuggler was apparently moving artifacts not just from the Dominican Republic but also from Mexico. Equally interesting and heartening is the news that ICE is working well with INTERPOL and other countries to interdict illicit imports. (On the other hand, checking a shipment marked as containing artifacts is not exactly rocket science, and leads one to wonder why the importer did not try to hide the artifacts somehow.)

Antiquities Dealers, Asked for Help from FBI in Identifying Law-Breaking Dealers, Respond with Laughs

A sobering account here of a meeting between FBI agents and the Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association. The attitude of dealers in Native American antiquities, at least, appears to be to laugh at the law as it stands. When asked to help law enforcement identify major players in the illicit trade, the response of dealers is jeers. That is hardly likely to endear the FBI to these folks. If I were in the FBI I would leave that meeting steamed and ready to do some more investigating. If I were a responsible dealer I would be looking for some way to deal with the problem of looting that prompts law enforcement to go after dealers in the first place. Legalizing looting of Native American sites is not going to happen. The licit trade needs to develop structures to make it as difficult as possible for illicit pieces to enter the market. As I have suggested on many occasions, the best policy here would be one whereby the licit trade agreed to a tax and reporting system on sales over a threshold price, with proceeds directed at beefing up the number of Park Service police to prevent the looting in the first place.