LOS ANGELES—Warfare has always put cultural heritage into harm’s way, but the threats of today’s armed conflicts are without precedent in the modern era. The breakup of Syria into separate enclaves of influence and governance has put at risk the United Nations’ regime for protecting cultural heritage. The systematic and planned destruction of millennia-old antiquities by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq has made the task of the United Nations more difficult. It is time to consider concrete measures as to how to safeguard the artistic legacy of our ancient past.
Individual nations have struggled to find a way to stop ISIS pillaging Iraq and Syria. President Barack Obama announced his decision to send 50 special operations troops to Northern Syria as part of the broader campaign against ISIS. The U.S. effort focuses on advising and training Syrian Arab and Kurdish forces while Russia is aiming its military might in support of the Assad regime.
Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has described this strategy not as the beginning of an effort to restore Syria as a country, but as accepting that Syria is already a multi-enclave geographic entity comprising separate enclaves controlled by the Syrian government, ISIS, Nusra Front, and the Kurds.
ISIS vigorously not only opposes the modern states of Iraq and Syria, the borders of which date back to a “Sykes-Picot conspiracy,” as ISIS calls it, but it also doesn’t recognize nation-states as such. ISIS knows no national borders. It is a geographic entity of ideology and enforced obedience, whereas Patrick Cockburn quotes in his new book “The Rise of the Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution,“ ”the Arab and non-Arab, the white man and black man, the easterner and westerner are all brothers … Syria is not for Syrians and Iraq is not for the Iraqis. The Earth is Allah’s.”
This complicates the international community’s response to ISIS’s assault on the region’s cultural heritage.
