United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Office of the Spokesperson, Publication Date: 16-03-2009
On 13 March 2009 the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, expressed his great pleasure on receiving the instrument of ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict from Mr Stephen Engelken, Chargé d’Affaires a.i. of the United States of America to UNESCO. This ratification brings the number of States Parties to 123. In accepting the instrument of ratification, the Director-General expressed his thanks to the United States for ratifying the Hague Convention and reiterated the importance of the United States’ participation in several other UNESCO Conventions for the protection of cultural heritage, including the First and Second Protocols to the Hague Convention.
The Director-General recalled that the Hague Convention is the first multilateral treaty with a universal vocation devoted exclusively to the protection of cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict. It covers both movable and immovable cultural property, including architectural, artistic or historical monuments, archaeological sites, works of art, manuscripts, books and other objects of artistic, historical or archaeological interest, as well as scientific collections of all types.
The Hague Convention contains a number of provisions concerning the safeguarding of and respect for cultural property, as well as those on dissemination within the general public and target groups. It also deals with sanctions. There are two Protocols to this Convention – 1954 and 1999. The 1954 Protocol focuses on the protection of movable cultural property in occupied territories, while the 1999 Protocol reinforces the Hague Convention in several aspects, such as penal and institutional measures.
For his part, Mr Engelken underscored the importance of the 1954 Hague Convention for the United States. He pointed out that, through this ratification, his country had decided to formalize its practice of protecting cultural heritage during armed conflicts and emphasized that the United States military personnel had already been trained in the Convention, added that the Convention would enter into force in the United States immediately.
Dr Ulrich S Soénius, Director of the Stiftung Rheinisch-Westfälisches and the Wirtschaftsarchiv zu Köln, has sent out the following circular letter explaining the disaster recovery plan set in place by the organisation, and appealing for specialist volunteers.
‘Interest in the fate of the Historical Archive in Cologne continues to grow. Much help has been offered - hence this report and further information on co-ordinating aid. Today [March 8] an archive crisis-team has been assembled consisting of representatives of the city, the historical archive, the professional fire-fighters of Cologne, the state archive of North Rhine-Westphalia and restoration experts, which will advise and make decisions on further steps of the recovery process.
‘On Wednesday, a large portion of the rubble-heap will be projected from the rain that set in a couple hours later, by being covered by tarpaulins. Delays occurred while a roof was constructed over the rubble; these had to do with the uncertain stability of the school opposite.
Only once that stability had been assured could the construction of the roof be undertaken. As of today, one third of the rubble heap has been stabilized by the roof; the remaining portions of the roof are being prepared and will be erected in the course of the next couple of days.
‘What has been saved, and how? First, from the areas of the site that had to be cleared in order to allow for the construction of the roof and to search for missing persons, fire-fighters excavated the archival materials by hand - very carefully and according to established techniques. These materials are undergoing a preliminary examination and then being packed up by archivists, restorers, museum workers, and other specialists on site before being readied for transport to the warehouse and/or packed for freezing.
‘The condition is highly variable. Some of the materials have been damaged considerably, but there are some files and even boxes of files that have been completely preserved, and that could, in theory, be used again right away. Wet materials have been set aside away from the
accident site, in a covered hall. All of the building debris that is being hauled away in trucks is also going to be examined and sorted. At the moment we are negotiating with the city administration for the use over the long term of a building that is safe, climate-controlled and technically appropriate for the conservation work that the archival materials need.
‘On site, in addition to fire-fighters, rescue workers and other emergency specialists, there is a team of 50 people in action, working around the clock in three shifts seven days a week. The helpers include many colleagues from Cologne archives and from other places as well. In the
next few days, the Archive School in Marburg will send more than 50 students, teachers and other staff. The Fachhochschule in Potsdam has also offered help, which will be arriving soon. Colleagues throughout the state and country are also giving tremendous support.
‘Nonetheless, help is still needed, now and in the coming weeks - especially from archive and conservation specialists. Offers of help are coming in from all over the world. In order to ensure a better co-ordination, we would like to channel the aid as follows:
1) Offers for shelving and storage units: please contact the LVR-Archivberaturngs- und Fortbildungszentrum, attn Herrn Dr Arie Nabrings <mailto:rafo@lvr.de> . There the donated units will be pre-sorted and transferred to the Historical Archive.
2) Offers of personnel (archivists): please contact me first (ulrich.soenius@koeln.ihk.de ), as the representative of the Association of German Archivists (VdA) on site. To facilitate all our work, please also be sure to contact this address - rwwa@koeln.ihk.de - with information about your position or that of your group. We need the following information: first and last names, current position, address, telephone number, email address and duration of your availability. Please understand that any archivist who needs a place to stay overnight (we’ll help with this) should
count on spending at least three days here; otherwise the administrative costs are prohibitively high. In particular the large archive administrations are asked to [vet or oversee] an assembly of specialized workers.
3) Offers of personnel (restorers): Please contact Bert Jacek <mailto: bert.jacek@fh-koeln.de > with the same information as detailed above.
‘If you have already offered help, there is no need to contact us again. At the moment, the priority is for personnel to join the teams involved in the systematic and co-ordinated recovery of items from the rubble. Once this work has been completed, we will move to working through the
salvaged materials.
“The Historical Archive of Cologne, as an institution, did not collapse on 3 March 2009. We will all work to ensure that it receives a secure and adequate new building, in which the previous holdings as well as new ones can be used. The memory of Cologne, the Rhineland and the nation will have a future.”
[SALON - the Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter]
On the afternoon of Tuesday 3 March, the building of the Historic Archive of the city of Cologne in Germany collapsed along with two neighboring buildings. According to news reports, rescue workers are searching for people believed
to be missing after the collapse. The building dated from the 1970s and contained some 65,000 original charters as well as valuable collections of maps, images, posters and files.
The International Committee of the Blue Shield conveys its sympathy and support for all those at the Historic Archive of the city of Cologne following this tragic incident.
A selection of News reports on the incident is included below:
Julien Anfruns, President International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) Contact Information: secretariat@icom.museum
For more information please contact the Blue Shield Office
The Blue Shield is the protective emblem of the 1954 Hague Convention which is the basic international treaty formulating rules to protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts. The Blue Shield network consists of organizations dealing with museums, archives, audiovisual supports, libraries, as well as monuments and sites.
The International Committee of the Blue Shield, founded in 1996, comprises representatives of the five Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in this field:
the International Council on Archives (www.ica.org), the International Council of Museums (www.icom.museum), the International Council on Monuments and Sites (www.icomos.org), and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (www.ifla.org) the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (www.ccaaa.org)
National Blue Shield Committees have been founded in a number of countries. The Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS), recently founded in December 2008, will coordinate and strengthen international efforts to protect cultural property at risk of destruction in armed conflicts or natural disasters. The ANCBS has its headquarters in The Hague.
Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS) Postal address ANCBS Office: Laan van Meerdervoort 70 2517 AN The Hague,The Netherlands E mail address: contact@ancbs.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Web address: www.ancbs.org Telephone: 00 31 (0)70-3466161 Fax: 00 31 (0)70-3467232
With so much bad news coming out of Afghanistan these days—a resurgent Taliban, spreading violence, and a booming opium trade—it might be easy to overlook another tragedy taking place: Across the war-shattered nation, scavengers, looters, and thieves are pillaging antiquities from more than 1,500 ancient sites around the country and smuggling them abroad.
“It’s like a sickness that kills us slowly,” said Omara Khan Masoudi, director of the National Museum of Afghanistan. “Every day, we lose a bit more of our cultural heritage.”
But now Afghanistan is finally getting something back. The British government, with the help of the National Geographic Society and the British Red Cross, has returned 3.4 tons of stolen antiquities that were confiscated over the past six years at London’s Heathrow Airport. (See photos.)
(The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)
On February 17, a Red Cross freighter plane touched down at the Kabul Airport, carrying the looted treasure back to its homeland. The artifacts are now at the National Museum. Returning the enormous shipment took more than a year to organize, and involved the cooperation of participants from around the globe.
The Heathrow collection includes more than 1,500 objects spanning thousands of years of Afghan culture: a 3,000-year-old carved stone head from the Iron Age and hand-cast axe heads, cut rock crystal goblets, and delicate animal carvings from the Bactrian era, another thousand years earlier. The oldest artifacts in the collection include a marble figure of an animal showing similarities to artifacts dating to the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, dating as far back as 8,000 years.
The collection also contains gilded bronze pieces, coins, and ornately inscribed slabs dating from Afghanistan’s early Islamic period (8th-9th centuries A.D.) and treasures from the Medieval Islamic period (10th-14th centuries A.D.) that serve to replace the decimated collection at the National Museum, which was hit by a rocket in 1993 during the civil war, then repeatedly looted.
Lost and Found
Through a quarter-century of violence, Masoudi and his staff somehow managed to save about 90 percent of the National Museum’s masterpieces, an incredible feat. But the museum still lost about 70,000 objects, most of them from the reserve inventory kept in storage.
Two 12th century metal trays in the Heathrow hoard are nearly identical to ones that were previously on display. Plus there are a number of magnificent metal objects from the Ghaznavid era, including a bronze brazier in the form of a peacock.
Museum director Masoudi, who has spearheaded efforts to locate Afghan antiquities scattered around the globe, first heard about the objects piling up at Heathrow from British diplomats posted to Kabul. He contacted U.S. archaeologist and National Geographic Fellow Fredrik Hiebert, an expert on ancient Central Asian cultures, who arranged with officials in the U.K. to come to London and examine the artifacts.
It was not the first time Hiebert and Masoudi had worked together. Hiebert spent periods from 2004 to 2006 in Kabul cataloguing a priceless collection of 22,000 gold Alexandrian-era objects known as the Bactrian Hoard. For many years, experts believed this collection, discovered in 1978 by Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi, had been stolen during Afghanistan’s decade-long civil war or even melted down by the Taliban regime.
The Bactrian gold was “rediscovered” in 2003, hidden in a locked vault beneath Kabul’s Presidential Palace. Hiebert, Sarianidi, and Masoudi were all on hand for the stunning moment when Afghan officials pried six boxes open and found the entire collection intact.
Hiebert said he felt similar amazement the first time he saw the antiquities amassed at Heathrow.
“When I did an initial look, my eyes popped out and I said, ‘They all look like they are from Afghanistan.’ It was like seeing old friends again.”
Heritage Under Attack
Helped by Carla Grissmann, an American expert on Afghan cultural heritage who has been working with the National Museum since 1973, and a British Museum curatorial team, Hiebert compared the objects in the Heathrow hoard to tens of thousands of missing items from the museum’s collection.
“None of the Heathrow objects came from the museum,” Hiebert said. “They are from recently illegally excavated sites exported without permit.”
Most of the Heathrow collection will end up in the museum’s reserve collection and replace the many objects stolen during the civil war, Hiebert said. Only about 10 percent of the recovered items are museum-display quality, in part because antiquities excavated illegally get robbed of their identity. Without the original excavation context—which provides critical information allowing scholars to piece together a full picture of ancient cultures—ancient objects lose most of their significance, said Hiebert.
But that didn’t lessen the significance for anyone involved in getting the Heathrow collection back home.
“Traditionally our work has focused on protecting human beings and ensuring their health and well-being,” said Michael Meyer of the British Red Cross. “However, there has been increasing recognition of the deleterious effect on civilian populations when their cultural sites and property are destroyed.”
Afghanistan has a cultural heritage that is among the world’s richest. Crisscrossed by the Silk Road, the mountainous nation was a melting pot of ancient cultures and religions, a repository for precious objects from China, India, Egypt, Rome, and Greece. The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, however, launched almost three decades of vicious fighting, turning the country from an archeologist’s paradise into a nightmare.
Rocket attacks ravaged ancient sites and museums. Precious objects were stolen. Ai Khanoum, the 4th century B.C. settlement in northern Afghanistan and one of the primary cities of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, was almost completely looted. In 2001, the Taliban blew up the giant 6th-century A.D. sandstone Buddhas in Bamiyan.
Today, the tragedy continues. Poor villagers lacking other sources of income use shovels and wheelbarrows to cart off precious objects from historic spots around the country, while criminal gangs smuggle the loot to Pakistan and onwards.
The Kabul government remains too cash-strapped, and too caught up fighting the Taliban-led insurgency, to do anything about it. (Afghanistan’s own Ministry of Culture was the target of a suicide bomb attack last October.) And despite efforts to raise awareness among Pakistani customs and law enforcement officials, the situation is no better across the border.
Conflict zones like Iraq and Colombia are generally vulnerable to treasure hunters, but the extent of the pillaging in Afghanistan puts the country in a class of its own.
Airport of Antiquities
The vast majority of the thousands of artifacts confiscated every year at Heathrow, the world’s busiest airport, come from Afghanistan, according to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Department (HMRC). And the Paris-based International Council of Museums (ICOM) believes that’s just a fraction of the total quantity smuggled out of the country annually.
“The extent of the problem is very, very serious,” said Jennifer Thévenot, who heads the fight against illicit traffic at ICOM.
Working with Masoudi, ICOM maintains a “Red List” of Afghan antiquities at risk that is distributed to museums, auction houses, border crossings, and customs points where there is known to be heavy illegal traffic.
Heathrow Airport is one such heavy traffic gateway, because many ancient Afghan objects trafficked through Pakistan get smuggled out on flights to the U.K.
Using the Red List as reference, HMRC agents started performing random searches on passengers arriving from Pakistan in 2002, finding thousands of ancient objects tucked into suitcases or hidden in false compartments. In many cases, antiquities are declared by arriving passengers, who falsely describe them or assign a low value on the declaration forms in order to hide the true nature of the goods.
Once they seize objects, HMRC agents work closely with experts from the British Museum and the U.K. Department for Culture, Media and Sport to determine their true identity and, if possible, to arrange their repatriation.
Hiebert calls repatriations like this one a critical part of Afghanistan’s psychological healing.
“If we can use this transfer to put some Bronze Age and Islamic Age materials back on display,” he said, “that will help repair the horrible looting that went on for 25 years.”
Masoudi, who has previously welcomed back stolen artifacts from Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway, is calling on other nations to round up and return Afghan antiquities.
“Every time I see a piece return home, it is a meaningful moment, not just for me, but for all the museum staff,” he said. “I feel like a parent recovering a lost child. I am very emotional when it arrives.”
Soldiers at the Augar Guf ziggurat, on the outskirts of Baghdad. (photo by John Goodman)
Santa Barbara Independent
Inside Iraq – Santa Barbara in the War Zone
Posted February 25, 2009 by Ben Preston
Most of the areas surrounding the Victory Base Complex are densely populated, but but from the northern gates, the way is not far to bucolic scenery reminiscent of Nineteenth Century Romantic literature. When the 425th Civil Affairs Battalion embarked upon a mission to meet with municipal officials regarding the establishment of archaeological tourism in their jurisdiction, these particular Baghdad outskirts were — for me anyway — an escape from the dirty, desperate urban hell I’d been confronted by for so many weeks. I had not yet traveled from Camp Liberty’s northern gate, and as our convoy distanced itself from the base, the number of people on the streets dwindled. Concrete blast walls gave way to low concrete block walls, and then to mud walls that have probably been part of the scenery here since biblical times. Brush covered the desert, and flocks of sheep wandered amongst rows of green crops planted between dusty stands of palm trees. The air was warm, and the sky changed from blue to gray to yellow as cloud banks drifted by in intermittent waves. The night before, dust from a sudden wind storm had reduced visibility to about ten feet, but the next day had dawned clear, revealing v-formations of birds making their way north to escape the withering heat that will soon arrive.
The scene felt historic, and in point of fact, it is. Some of the first civilizations sprouted up here when nomads decided farming was a better way to live than hunting and gathering — the physical remains of ancient civilizations are abundant throughout modern day Iraq. Although it has been difficult to track down concrete records, what I’ve been able to piece together from interviews with local officials and internet research indicates that state sponsored tourism in Iraq is a fairly recent occurrence. In addition to constructing many modern buildings around Baghdad during the 1980s, Saddam’s government also promoted the tourism industry for Iraq’s cultural heritage sites, presumably to bolster national pride. That pride remains today, and while most people are apt to muddle the finer details of ancient history, they will enthusiastically recount it nonetheless. There are many sites around the country related to Islam, and a multitude of Judeo-Christian prophets are said to have been born here. In a place where Islam is such an important facet of culture, even the non-religious light up when they begin talking about “the prophets.”
This particular mission involved visiting a 5,000 year old ziggurat — one of the massive stepped platforms once used by ancient Sumerian priests to make offerings to the gods, and in some cases, as a place where they could escape the rising flood waters of the Tigris River — at Augar Guf. Said to have been built by the Syrian king Namrud — who, according to the Koran, unsuccessfully attempted to burn alive the prophet Ibrahim — to be closer to the heavens, the massive remains of the ziggurat stand as a monolithic symbol of the tourism trade’s potential. Captain Cole Calloway, commander of the 425th Civil Affairs Battalion’s Headquarters Company, has been gathering information on how to turn historical resources in his area of operations into financial asetts with which the Iraqis can generate some much needed revenue, and met with Ilaa Mardeisker, the chair of the local neighborhood council for a site visit. The ruins stand atop a brick pedestal that was supposedly built by the Iraqi government during the early 1980s, as were the crumbling remnants of what used to be a visitors center and summer concert stage. Apparently, there were shops on and around the property as well. Mardeisker said that many tour groups visited the site during Saddam’s time.
A museum building stands nearby, but that was looted in 2003, shortly after the American invasion. According to local officials, many priceless relics were carted off. Today, bits and pieces of cuneiform-inscribed bricks and pottery shards litter the floor of the building. Flashlights from the soldiers’ helmets pieced the darkness, and Mardeisker pointed out two large stones sitting on the floor amidst scattered documents dated from the 1970s. He said that the stones’ carvings were Sumerian; about 4,000 years old. Unfortunately, Atta Abu Anor, the man who has been the ziggurat site’s curator for over 60 years, was not available. He is considered the resident expert there, although I was curious how much of his knowledge had been derived from local folklore.
Looting and site degradation have been a problem in Iraq since 2003, when protection of cultural resources went by the wayside and opportunists carted off thousands of archaeological items. Many archaeologists have criticized the US military for allowing it to occur. The Iraq museum — once a significant cache of historical artifacts — was reopened on February 23 after more than 4,000 looted items were returned from around the world. Most of them had been in Jordan, but many were in the United States as well.
There wasn’t much left to loot at Augar Guf, as the area was for several years a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and squatters, and a well known hideout for Al Quaeda operatives. Even though the site is now vacant and under 24 hour armed guard, we watched as a giggling Iraqi man climbed about 200 feet to the top of the crumbling ziggurat. The kiln-fired bricks which once cased the structure are now gone, and the sun-baked earthen bricks and straw matting used to construct its core show signs of wear from millennia of rain and wind. When I touched it, little flakes of dried mud fell into my hand, so I’m pretty sure the guy’s scrambling Pumas didn’t do much to help.
Plans have been drawn up by the neighborhood council to develop the area for tourism. Mardeisker said that although water, sewer and electrical problems take top priority right now, he would like to see the visitor center and museum refurbished, and a hotel built next to the site — things he felt would vastly improve the economy in his impoverished rural municipality. Although the Baghdad government has promised $5 million to get the project started, he said the money will not be available until 2010, if it comes at all. “Now, we can’t receive anyone, because the area is in bad condition,” he said. “There is nothing here to support [visitors].”
Groups such as Third World Watch have decried efforts to boost tourism in countries with poor infrastructure as irresponsible attempts to aid business that will only lead to further degradation of cultural and environmental resources. Based upon what I’ve seen in other areas in Baghdad, where trash piles up in the street and residents have difficulty getting reliable electricity and clean drinking water, this may not be an inaccurate assessment. Still, I hope that a program may be put in place which benefits both the Iraqi people and their history, for theirs is a history in which the world shares. For my part, I am glad to have seen it as it is now — a place unfettered by throngs of gift shop customers and camera-wielding tourists. The silence of the worn down relic speaks volumes of the intense human drama which has unfolded before it.
