Abstract
Bamiyan, Palmyra, Timbuktu are examples of iconic toponyms of ancient civilization that have been used as headlines in international media coverage of the Islamist extremists’ war – including the Taliban, Daesh, and Ansar Dine – against World Cultural Heritage as listed by UNESCO. Further, more sites are being inscribed on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage in Danger or referred to in the reports of ICOMOS’ Heritage at Risk programme because of the imminent threat posed by current armed conflict, for example, in Afghanistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria, Yemen, and other countries struck by war or the violent consequences of political instability. Nowadays, war, terrorism, vandalism, and iconoclasm pose an equal threat to cultural heritage. This poses a series of questions to heritage as well as conflict studies.
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1 Introduction
Cultural heritage has always fallen victim to war (Dolezalek et al., 2021). Movable cultural property has been taken as war trophies or war booty and has been claimed as war reparation (Ferstman & Goetz, 2020). Immovable cultural property has been damaged or destroyed either as collateral damage during hostilities, such as loss during pillage or as an intentional target.
In modern history, both World Wars caused massive destruction and, even more, the intended annihilation of cultural heritage, the “Looting of Loewen” (Born & Störtkuhl, 2017) or the “Baedeker Blitz” (Rothnie, 1992) are some of the most poignant and pervert examples of warfare against cultural property and infrastructure in this period. At the same time, these two World Wars also witnessed the first military countermeasures like the Imperial German Army “Kunstschutz” (Kott, 1997) or the US Army’s “Monuments Men” (Edsel, 2009) as militarized expert task forces.
Modern-day civilization’s response to this vast destruction of culture in war resulted in joint work on creating normative measures of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) striving for the prevention or at least mitigation of the loss of heritage due to military action. The 1935 Roerich Pact – the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments – and the 1954 Hague Convention – the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict – were the main legal instruments born in this era (Schipper & Frank, 2013).
About two decades later, the 1972 World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 1972)– the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage – was the result of a new way of thinking about heritage in an era of renewed international cultural cooperation as a reaction to modern globalization. At that time, the academic community dealing professionally with heritage paid little attention to the formerly dominant aspects of heritage protection in armed conflict. The World Heritage Convention itself hardly touches upon this topic. In the many proxy wars of the Cold War period against the backdrop of the nuclear arms race of the two superpowers, the issue of the destruction of cultural property faded from the military, juridical, and political agenda.
The shift from the ideological wars of the Cold War period to the identity wars of the post-Cold War period – against the backdrop of the nuclear disarmament deals – resulted in a renaissance of aggression against culture and its material expressions. Again, the international community reacted by jointly working on a Second Protocol 1999 to the Hague Convention 1954 (Toman, 2009). From a European viewpoint, the Yugoslav Wars 1990–1999 may be considered as decisive drivers for this diplomatic initiative and legal development (Abtahi, 2015).
The Second Protocol entered into force in 2004, about a year after the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, which is considered by the heritage community as the “Solferino”Footnote 1 momentum for the protection of cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict. The event and political reaction triggered worldwide public outrage and even enhanced anti-US resentments, which continues to have an after-effect to this day. But it also raised awareness of the fact that – regardless of the development of International Humanitarian Law – the armies of all contributing nations to the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” lacked any expertise on how to implement cultural property protection in planning and operations effectively, and what role cultural property protection could play in civil–military cooperation in general and in a post-conflict period in terms of peacebuilding and reconciliation in particular (Gooren, 2007). Regardless, a contemporary survey would have revealed the same lack of competence in almost all armed forces worldwide.
The past decade even witnessed an increased targeting of cultural property in a variety of armed conflicts, as well as terror attacks and iconoclastic vandalism. Regarding the regions of the Middle East and Northern and Western Africa, this phenomenon in part corresponds to the sparking-off of the so-called “Arab Spring” and the subsequent and prolonged armed conflicts and political instabilities with the above-mentioned main perpetrators (Schipper, 2011). This dramatic development is reflected by enhanced public and media awareness.
At the same time, the governmental and inter-governmental sectors actively respond to these challenges and improve their capabilities and capacities. The International Criminal Court (ICC) launched a first trial exclusively dealing with violations against the 1954 Hague Convention regarding the destruction of heritage in Timbuktu, The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi. ICC-01/12-01/15 (Casaly, 2016).Footnote 2 By passing a resolution for establishing the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the UN Security Council integrated CPP explicitly in the mandate of a UN PK (Peace Keeping) mission for the first time, UN Security Council Resolution 2531, 29 June 2020 (Schorlemer, 2020).Footnote 3 Furthermore, armed forces worldwide are currently taking steps to implement measures of military CPP as defined by the 1954 Hague Convention and its two protocols (Kila, 2012; O’Keefe et al., 2016; Schipper, 2015; Schipper & Eichberger, 2010).
Nevertheless, iconoclastic strikes against cultural heritage have increasingly been carried out through the past 20 years by Islamist actors, which are all listed as terrorist groups by the international community. These strikes are aimed at and may finally result in the cultural cleansing of whole regions as a central part of their overall strategy to reach hegemony over certain geographical and historical realms (Smith et al., 2016). In addition, the looting of and illicit trafficking in cultural property generates a source of income for these groups, as the relevant body of the UN, UNODC, clearly indicates (Musu, 2021).Footnote 4
As asserted by the World Heritage Committee in its 41st session in Krakow on 2–12 July 2017 and published in its Decision 41 COM 7, the threat to cultural heritage caused by armed conflict is also seriously increasing through the use of World Heritage properties for military purposes as well as through illicit trafficking of cultural property and wildlife for the purpose of financing belligerent non-state groups (UNESCO, 2017, sec. 8 & 12).
Taking up this WHC Decision, the 200 participants from more than 30 countries, gathered at the Royal Castle of Warsaw, on the occasion of the International Conference on Reconstruction “The Challenges of World Heritage Recovery” (UNESCO, 2018, 2) addressed amongst other issues
the growing impact of armed conflicts and disasters on important cultural and natural heritage places, including World Heritage properties, which in recent years have resulted in their widespread destruction on a scale similar to that of World War II, notably within historic urban areas and archaeological sites” (§3) and they continued to condemn “in the strongest terms, the numerous intentional attacks on cultural properties and in general the perpetration of all policies of ‘cultural cleansing’ aimed at erasing diversity, inciting sectarian violence and preventing the affected population from realizing their human rights, including cultural rights” (§4) as phrased out in the subsequent “Warsaw Recommendation on Recovery and Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage.Footnote 5
The following topics are, in any case, major issues of legal, political, diplomatic, military, and academic consideration, research, and development.
2 Targeting Cultural Property: Reasons and Justifications, Effects, and Consequences
Damage to or destruction of cultural property may occur during any military action caused by any of the conflict parties as collateral damage. This must be distinguished from the intentional targeting of cultural property. The causes, reasons, and motives for the intentional targeting of cultural property remain the most important basic question in cultural property protection (CPP), in particular in relation to the effects on its direct stakeholders and the consequences for communities and societies.
Descriptions of particular cases, including more or less reliable reconstructions of the course of events and documentation of the extent of destruction, are available for many or even most of the scenarios of the past 30 years. Nevertheless, we lack empiric data on the why (Bevan, 2006). This why may be easy to address with a few superficial and hypothetical words that can fit most scenarios. But it is difficult to identify the tactical reasons or strategic rationales more precisely behind such hostile actions that may be directed against iconic cultural or religious buildings as well as ordinary cemeteries. Nonetheless, those scholars, who have examined this phenomenon, suggest that it is common in events of ethnic cleansing, posing the equivalent of a cultural cleansing (Schorlemer, 2016).
This striking explanation obviously fits what we know about the targeting and destruction of cultural property during the Yugoslav Wars or the on-off armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, the destruction of Islamic cultural property in Mali, for example, was seemingly not related to ethnic cleansing, but the evident iconoclasm was related to other causes. The destruction of Islamic heritage by Islamists is about the interpretation of righteous Islam and the definition of Islam. And the destruction of the remains of ancient civilizations, e.g. in Palmyra, hardly fits the ethnic cleansing explanation as the temples of former civilizations are not part of contemporary practices of any religious or ethnic group (Alshehaby, 2020). The Doha Conference of Ulama on Islam and Cultural Heritage, Doc. CL/CH/THS/2001/CD/H/1, explored the realm of cultural heritage protection in Islam’s Sunnah (UNESCO et al., 2001).Footnote 6
Recently, Johan Brosché et al. (2017) have proposed a “typology of motives” that I would refer to as four categories of cultural property-related attacks allowing for systematic empiric research:
-
attacks related to conflict goals, in which cultural property is targeted because it is connected to the issue the warring parties are fighting over,
-
military-strategic attacks, in which the main motivation is to win tactical advantages in the conflict,
-
signalling attacks, in which cultural property is targeted as a low-risk target that signals the commitment of the aggressor, and
-
economic incentives where cultural property provides funding for warring parties.
While the current intentional targeting of cultural property certainly has its general context in the above-mentioned identity wars, the hermeneutical bracket constituted by cultural cleansing and ethnic cleansing is insufficient as an overall explanation to help face future challenges of cultural property protection. The proposal by Johan Brosché et al. or similar recent ideas may serve as a renewed basis for military, legal, sociological, and other research.
3 Safeguarding of and Respect for Cultural Property
The safeguarding of and respect for cultural property are the two main principles of cultural property protection defined by the 1954 Hague Convention according to Articles 3 and 4 and further developed in Articles 5 and 6 of the 1999 Second Protocol.
Safeguarding of cultural property refers to all measures to prepare in peacetime for the protection of cultural property situated within a state territory against the foreseeable effects of an armed conflict. This includes all civil as well as military measures in peacetime and, in particular, all measures that both segments of the governmental sector – civil and military – have to undertake as a joint effort. That means that safeguarding cultural property is the strategic dimension of civil–military coordination. Regarding the military side, this requires the integration of cultural property protection on a doctrinal level (national security or defence doctrine) to enable any military policy-making or strategic planning. Practically, these issues should fall into political science, where cultural property protection and safeguarding is contemporarily not on the agenda of any prominent research programme.
Respect for cultural property refers to all measures to protect it by refraining from any use of the property and its immediate surroundings or the equipment used for its protection that would likely expose it to destruction or damage in the event of armed conflict. This also includes refraining from any act of hostility directed against such property. As these measures apply to the conduct of armed conflict, which means military operations, they fall within the responsibility of the military. In consequence, cultural property protection has to be established within the military on a normative basis, which means on the level of a corresponding directive and, as such, it is an issue of military science (Rush, 2012).
From doctrine to directive, from political to military science, the safeguarding of and respect for cultural property are the most basic principles for successfully implementing cultural property protection, and a comprehensive research approach is required to foster cultural property protection in the military as well in civil–military cooperation.
4 The Instruments of Special and Enhanced Protection
Cultural property protected under the regime of 1954 Hague Convention and its two protocols shall not just be listed and communicated to the depository of the Convention, which is UNESCO, but also marked with a protective emblem, the so-called Blue Shield (UNESCO, 1954, Art. 6, 16 & 17). Nevertheless, it is a widely ignored or even unknown fact that cultural property may also be granted Special Protection according to Chap. II of the 1954 Hague ConventionFootnote 7 or Enhanced Protection according to Chap. III of the Second Protocol (UNESCO, 1954; UNESCO, 1999a, 1999b).Footnote 8 The regime of Enhanced Protection was introduced in the Second Protocol as the regime of Special Protection was by then evaluated as not having met the expectations of its authors and considered an unsuccessful instrument. However, whether the regime of Enhanced Protection may be evaluated as having been more successful so far is doubtful, at least. Therefore, it remains an open and important question, why these two legal protection instruments fail to meet the expectations of the juridical and diplomatic community that developed and negotiated them.
5 The Tools of Registers/Inventories
Accurate, complete, accessible, and secure registers or inventories of cultural property are the basic formats of information about such property, which are necessary for all kinds of professional administration and management and protection. Such lists usually form a key element in national heritage legislation and consequently also in International Humanitarian Law regarding the management and protection of heritage. Beyond the basic norm to keep such lists, there are also standards, like ICOM’s or the International Council of Museums’ Object ID, for how to identify and record cultural goods or how to keep a priority list for the purpose of emergency evacuation of a collection (Thornes et al., 1999; Yasaitis, 2005).Footnote 9 Cultural property protection in the sense of the 1954 Hague Convention and its Protocol is also based on the principle of listing protected property, see Art. 12 regarding the International Register as laid out in the Regulations for the Execution of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
In the event of armed conflict, such lists become the basis of no-strike lists by the military. These no-strike lists, which are compiled and maintained by target officers of the air force or artillery, contain all kinds of elements that bombing or shelling must avoid for humanitarian or other reasons, e.g. hospitals.
The concern that such lists may also be subject to abuse and turned into strike or target lists has been raised and discussed since their adoption. Listing or not listing cultural property may therefore be considered an ethical, legal, and practical dilemma. Nevertheless, the experience of past conflicts shows that such lists are a necessary condition for the respect of cultural property, as it cannot or can hardly be identified by the military during operation (Stone, 2013).
6 Cultural Property Protection and Peacekeeping Operations
Peacekeeping comprises activities intended to create conditions that favour lasting peace. Evidence shows that peacekeeping reduces civilian and battlefield deaths, as well as reduces the risk of renewed warfare. Within the United Nations (UN), there is a general understanding that peacekeepers monitor and observe peace processes in post-conflict areas and may assist ex-combatants in implementing peace agreement commitments that they have undertaken. Such assistance may come in many forms, including confidence-building measures, power-sharing arrangements, electoral support, strengthening the rule of law, and economic and social development. Accordingly, UN peacekeepers (often referred to as Blue Berets or Blue Helmets because of their light blue berets or helmets) can include soldiers, police officers, and civilian personnel (Powles & Negar Partow, 2015).
As all International Humanitarian Law automatically and without exception applies to all peacekeeping missions, the Conventions for the protection of heritage, in particular the 1954 Hague Convention and its two Protocols, also apply. Therefore, cultural property protection is and has always been an implicit element of every Peacekeeping Operation. Nevertheless, history and reality show that cultural property protection has de facto been a neglected aspect of most Peacekeeping Operations, with cultural property protection usually not being explicitly mentioned as a task in the mission mandates issued by the UN Security Council. As a consequence, most Peacekeeping Operations have no specialized personnel commissioned to conduct measures of cultural property protection in the area of responsibility and no cultural property protection measures set in their rules of engagement. Furthermore, no cultural property protection content is provided in the context of on-mission training for its personnel. In the long term, this also results in cultural property protection being ignored even in the context of the lessons-learned process (Micewski & Sladek, 2002). UNIFIL and MINUSMA may be referred to as exceptions to this otherwise defective reality of Peacekeeping Operations. Meanwhile, the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, as the entity providing political and executive direction to all Peacekeeping Operations, offers at least a compact online course on cultural property protection that has been created in cooperation with UNESCO.Footnote 10 Nevertheless, the development of integral cultural property protection in teaching and training (pre-deployment and on-mission), as well as operations, remains a desideratum in the context of Peacekeeping Operations (Petrovic, 2018).
7 Blue Shield and the Role of Expert Organizations
In 1996, in the context of the efforts leading towards what would become the Second Protocol to the Hague Convention, the International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) was established as a joint committee of the UNESCO-affiliated cultural heritage expert organizations – International Council of Museums (ICOM), International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), International Council of Archives (ICA), and International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) – with the task to protect the world’s cultural heritage from threats such as armed conflict as well as natural and man-made technical disasters. Originally intended as the “cultural equivalent of the Red Cross”,Footnote 11 its name derives from the distinctive emblem used to signify cultural sites protected by the 1954 Hague Convention. In the very same year, the first national committees of the Blue Shield were established to perform the operative work in the sense of ICBS.
ICBS was introduced to the 1999 Second Protocol as an expert organization and consultative body to UNESCO, namely to its Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. Its IHL-related mandate derives from this reference in Article 27.3 of the Second Protocol.
In 2008, the national committees joined to make up the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS) in order to coordinate operative work worldwide. In 2016, both ICBS and ANCBS merged to become what is now Blue Shield International.
Today, Blue Shield has developed into a network of expert organizations that offers competence in CPP to national governments and armed forces or to UN peacekeeping operations (PKO), including but not limited to awareness-raising initiatives and lobbying activities for implementing cultural property protection and training, fact finding in conflict areas, and emergency response. It shares this field with a few other organizations that have developed specialized expertise in the field of cultural property protection in armed conflicts, such as International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), ICORP (International Scientific Committee on Risk Preparedness), DRMC (Disaster Risk Management Committee), and others. As a consequence, proposals for guidelines, standard-setting instruments and training curricula etc. have been frequently developed and published over the past decade, and many more initiatives in response to current crises and disasters have been performed (Stone, 2019).
While such activities supporting cultural property protection on the level of expert organizations have steadily increased over the past 25 years, there is still an urgent need for a common policy leading to internationally accepted standards in trainings and missions.
8 Outlook: World Heritage in Danger
Armed conflict and natural disasters may pose major threats to World Heritage sites. Several of these sites are on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage in Danger and consequently referred to in the reports of ICOMOS’ Heritage@Risk programme.Footnote 12 According to paragraphs 179–180 of the Operational Guidelines of the World Heritage Convention, dangers can be a. “ascertained”, referring to specific and proven imminent threats, or b. “potential”, when a property is faced with threats which could have negative effects on its World Heritage values. In the case of armed conflict, dangers are always classified as “potential” (UNESCO, 2019). Inscribing a site on the List of World Heritage in Danger allows the World Heritage Committee, among other things, to allocate immediate assistance from the World Heritage Fund to the endangered property.
To decide whether a World Heritage site is endangered or not, an assessment mission has to be carried out. The assessment of World Heritage is definitively a core task of ICOMOS. Its Heritage@Risk programme was endorsed by its General Assembly in 1999. The aim of this programme’s reports is to identify endangered monuments and sites, present typical case studies and trends, and share suggestions for solving individual or global threats to our cultural heritage. Nevertheless, the assessment of World Heritage sites in areas of armed conflict goes beyond the usual challenges posed to an expert team and requires military-compatible skills. Blue Shield is well-prepared for such fact-finding missions in conflict areas, though it does not necessarily have expertise on World Heritage. While World Heritage is increasingly becoming a target of higher priority, particularly in the Islamist extremists’ war against heritage, the creation of a joint task force, the development of a legal basis for such a task force, and guidelines for joint missions are the best practice consequences. It is furthermore a necessity in terms of peacebuilding because cultural heritage – while being a target in armed conflict – may at the same time also constitute an essential resource for reconciliation (Stone, 2012; Tandon et al., 2021; Walters et al., 2017).
Notes
- 1.
This is a reference to the battle of Solferino, which led to the establishment of the Red Cross.
- 2.
See https://www.icc-cpi.int/mali/al-mahdi for more information about the ICC trial of Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi
- 3.
See https://minusma.unmissions.org/en/mandate-0 for more information about UN Security Council Resolution 2531 (United Nations, 2020).
- 4.
See https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized-crime/intro/emerging-crimes/trafficking-in-cultural-property.html for more information about trafficking cultural property.
- 5.
For more information about the Warsaw Recommendation on Recovery and Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage, see https://whc.unesco.org/document/168799
- 6.
For more information about the Proceedings of the Doha Conference, see http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001408/140834m.pdf
- 7.
For information about the International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection, see http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/Register2015EN.pdf (UNESCO, 2015).
- 8.
For information about the List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection, see http://www.unesco.org/culture/1954convention/pdf/Enhanced-Protection-List-2017_EN.pdf (UNESCO, 1999a)
- 9.
See https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/objectid/ for more information about ICOMs Object ID list
- 10.
See https://cdn.peaceopstraining.org/course_promos/unesco_pcp/unesco_pcp_english.pdf for more information about online courses on cultural property protection (UNESCO, 2020).
- 11.
See https://theblueshield.org/about-us/history/ for more information about Blue Shield International
- 12.
See https://www.icomos.org/en/what-we-do/risk-preparedness/heritage-at-risk-reports for more information about ICOMOS’s Heritage at Risk Reports.
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Schipper, F. (2022). UNESCO World Heritage and Cultural Property Protection in the Event of Armed Conflict. In: Albert, MT., Bernecker, R., Cave, C., Prodan, A.C., Ripp, M. (eds) 50 Years World Heritage Convention: Shared Responsibility – Conflict & Reconciliation. Heritage Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05660-4_12
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-05659-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-05660-4
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)