Libya: Cultural Racketeering by the Actual Mafia and What it Tells Us about How It Should Be Fought

Informative piece on Libya's struggle to protect its archaeological sites in the absence of a strong centralized government. Several points to note:

• international trafficking of antiquities is, as Deborah Lehr and the Antiquities Coalition have emphasized, racketeering in which the smugglers are mafia-like organizations -- or in this instance, the actual Mafia!
• high-end artifacts are being proffered, not just cheap pots.  It may well be the case that there are distinct smuggling channels, with the more violent ones operating at the higher end where the profit margin is the highest. This is at least a hypothesis to be tested.
• Given the cost of weapons, and the apparently direct trade of weapons to terrorists in exchange for antiquities to the mafia, it makes sense for higher-end artifacts to be favored currency.
• securing sites in the absence of central authority requires not SPI-style economic development projects aimed at gaining local buy-in, valuable as such projects are in peacetime situations in countries at peace, but rather the arming of local groups backed by rebel authorities.

Against Despair Over the Looting in Egypt

I am hearing a lot of despair being expressed, on facebook and elsewhere, about our inability to do anything to stop the destruction of cultural heritage in Egypt as elsewhere -- even from people as otherwise optimistic as the great folks engaged with the Sustainable Preservation Initiative. After all, if one cannot protect human lives, how could one protect sites and museums? And if all that international organizations like UNESCO can do is to issue one more statement deploring what is happening, what else can we do?

We can do a lot more actually, and SPI helps point the way, though of course SPI-like initiatives in these countries in chaos are impossible. The key point of SPI, though, is the taking-responsibility by non-governmental groups, and that has to happen here as well -- in spades, since the government has abandoned or lost the ability to fulfill its responsibilities.

So with that as the principle here are a few things that could be done:

• Non-Egyptians could help by finding ways to donate to Egyptians like Monica Hanna, Save El Hibbeh and other facebook groups, etc. who are mobiizing Egyptian citizens to take direct action where possible; 
• We could raise money to pay for remote site monitoring to at least make sure the world is aware of what is going on; 
• We could push much harder for a worlwide emergency ban like the one UN Resolution 1483 imposed on Iraqi materials; 
• We could help foster longterm growth of both SPI-like and citizen-led emergency site protection groups in countries where breakdown, revolution, or invasion seems possible (UNESCO is doing something like this but working with governments not with NGOs incountry);
• We could explore ways to tap into the military-to-military friendships that one supposes must exist given the decades of joint exercises, to see if there might be some way to appeal individually to officers there who are in the right position to move some forces onto sites. 

These are action items, and I am sure there are others beyond this (please chime in anyone). But they take energy, as well as financial resources, neither of which exist in anything like the amounts needed for the overall task of investing in sustainable site protection. What we need, above all, is a stable and substantial revenue stream that can feed and incentivize such efforts. SPI generates sustainable revenue streams but only at the local level and only so long as the government takes care of law and order more generally. Is there another market in things archaeological that is not the tourist market, a market that is not affected negatively by unrest or revolution as the tourist market is, a market that is legally protected and therefore could generate sustainable revenue streams, say via a tax or user-fee on purchases with proceeds funneled to support efforts like those above? Why yes! Guess what market that is.

Looting in Lebanon

This article has already spurred at least two responses in the blogosphere, from Derek Fincham and Larry Coben. Coben suggest that the Sustainable Preservation Initiative is designed to prevent precisely the type of looting to feed one's family that is detailed in the article -- the interviewed looter is quoted saying he does not believe he is doing anything wrong:"I have a wife and six children to support, and I do so through this business."

The SPI is a wonderful idea, but its success, if I understand correctly, depends on getting buy-ins at the local level, from community leaders, for a tourism-oriented business model. That might be a tad difficult in countries like Lebanon where tourism is difficult to arrange, and where -- if the article is accurate -- the community leaders one hopes to appeal to are acting as middlemen to consumers who include Lebanese elites:

The artifacts often wind up in the homes and gardens of Lebanese politicians and citizens and even in private collections on other continents.

In February, police confiscated a child's sarcophagus dating back to the Roman empire from the Baalbeck home of a Muslim sheikh who was trying to lure in the highest bid.

I'm not suggesting it is not worth trying the SPI approach, even in Lebanon. But it would seem more likely to succeed in countries without a strong indigenous demand for antiquities, and where the central authorities are more committed to combating the illicit trade.