Heritage Conflict and the Council: The UNSC, UNESCO, and the View from Iraq and Syria

Abstract

Cultural heritage preservation and protection are increasingly tethered to an international security agenda constituted across multilateral agencies. UNESCO and other organizations have securitized heritage, engaging in military training and peacekeeping, international law and prosecution, and cultural property protection. Following the events in Iraq and Syria, UN Security Council resolutions have instantiated norms of heritage violence, risk, and threat, while the Global War on Terror also interpolated looting, trafficking, and terror financing into a heritage-protection agenda. We compare these developments with our large-scale public opinion survey of Mosul and Aleppo residents’ experiences of heritage violence and the implications for security and reconstruction. While our results display potential overlaps with UNSC concerns, we suggest that site destruction and broader security concerns are understood differently on the ground, shaped by political and economic factors. We argue for a more humanitarian focus if any relationship between heritage, security, and, indeed, peacebuilding is to be forged.

Introduction

Since the end of the Second World War, there has been a long-standing commitment to protecting cultural heritage as part of humanity’s shared legacy for the future, evinced by the establishment of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1945. However, in the twenty-first century, the international community has been confronted by escalating attacks on cultural property around the globe, including the intentional targeting and performative demolition of the monumental past. Over the past two and a half decades there has been a gradual recognition that the destruction of heritage might extend beyond the sphere of shared patrimony and cultural loss and have even greater impacts on matters of security worldwide. This article focuses more on the latter development, which a growing number of scholars consider an emergent heritage-security nexus.¹ Despite its original mandate to foster peace “in the minds of men,” UNESCO is increasingly vocal in a coalition of organizations that have securitized heritage, becoming more deeply enmeshed in everything from military intervention and peacekeeping, international law and prosecution, condemning criminal networks, and cultural property protection. These linkages were largely established from 2015 to 2017, at the height of Islamic State’s (IS) reign of terror across Iraq and Syria, coinciding with the tenure of Irina Bokova as UNESCO Director-General. This article outlines these developments with reference to heritage resolutions at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and associated activities in other UN fora.

Cultural heritage, its preservation and protection, is today more strongly tethered to the international security agenda in multilateral agencies than to the defense of cultural or human rights. Ironically, given UNESCO’s guiding role in the recent securitization of cultural property, a rights agenda may have aligned more closely with the agency’s foundational mission. Similarly, UNESCO has chosen to support prosecutions against heritage destruction² that are now seen as war crimes rather than rights violations.³ Since most of these security-driven developments have come in the wake of the IS and its high-profile destructive agenda, we have specifically focused here on the UNSC resolutions regarding heritage looting and the destruction in Iraq and Syria. Ultimately, this is where most UNSC resolutions concerning heritage have been directed, albeit set against a backdrop that also includes resolutions regarding Afghanistan and Mali.⁴ It is worth noting, however, that none condemn the heritage destruction perpetrated by Saudi airstrikes in Yemen, in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, by Boko Haram in Nigeria, or other examples, including in Myanmar, Sudan, and Nagorno-Karabakh. As yet, there have only been discussions in the UNSC regarding Russian Federation attacks on sites in Ukraine, but no formal resolutions.

This article proceeds by outlining UNSC resolutions starting in 1999 that first acknowledged the role of heritage protection in escalating violence, beginning with the conflict in Afghanistan, followed by Iraq. We then discuss the upswing in resolutions after the rise of the IS and their program of historic erasure in Iraq and Syria, and how this was tethered to terror financing under the Global War on Terror (GWOT) military campaign. In doing so, we seek to understand how this ramping up of normative instruments has effectively consolidated the connection between “heritage” and “security” in the past two decades.⁵ Regardless of the severity of the conflict, we recognize that various actors, including the UNSC, UNESCO, the US government, and their representatives, have advanced the integration of the security rhetoric for their own political agendas, and to legitimize initiatives, secure funding, and garner high-profile support.⁶ We then compare UNSC resolutions with the results of the first large-scale public opinion survey conducted in Mosul and Aleppo on heritage destruction to ascertain how the residents of those cities have experienced heritage violence and whether that intersects with international security concerns. Our results indicate that there may be a potential alignment between UNSC pronouncements and the views of affected communities. However, the patterns we discern suggest that the situation is more complex and nuanced and that the linkage conjoining heritage destruction and broader security concerns is understood differently on the ground. The article concludes by recommending that international organizations need to capture this complexity more accurately in each specific setting to determine if and how any relationship between heritage, security, and, indeed, peacebuilding might be realized.

From Protection to Trafficking

In twenty-first-century conflicts, the international community has been impelled to no longer simply consider what heritage is and how to preserve it, but rather what heritage does and how to combat its increasing weaponization. Indeed, agencies tasked with heritage protection and those larger organizations dealing with conflict and security have found themselves confronting each other and their respective mandates and missions. Whether the UNSC, UNESCO, the International Criminal Court (ICC), or NATO each now recognizes the shift in global heritage from a seemingly unproblematic, passive global good entreating protective measures to an asset that can be weaponized in all phases of war,⁷ with the ability to cause extended cultural damage and long-term trauma. In the following, we focus on the UNSC and UNESCO in a particular moment of heightened cooperation following the rise of the IS and pair this with our survey findings covering the same period. Specifically, we examine this moment of heritage securitization and consider the implications not only in light of the local context of Mosul and Aleppo but also for ongoing conflicts globally.

Under Article 24 of the United Nations Charter, the United Nations Security Council is tasked with maintaining international peace and security and hence is considered the preeminent global body with this mandate. In the late 1990s, heritage protection first figured in Council resolutions in relation to the country-specific situation in Afghanistan (Resolutions 1193, 1214, 1267, and 1333).⁸ These documents simply called for “respect” for “cultural and historical heritage” but went no further. Here “cultural and historical heritage” was tacitly linked to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and national unity of Afghanistan. But, following the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the US and its coalition forces and the mass looting of museums and archaeological sites that ensued, the Council further called for the return of Iraqi cultural property in Resolutions 1483 and 1546.⁹ These remained consistent with the call for continued protection of archaeological, historical, cultural, and religious sites, along with museums, libraries, and monuments.

Yet with the emergence of the IS and other militant groups, references to cultural heritage in Council resolutions increased markedly (see Figure 1). This began quite conservatively, with the nominal listing of heritage as a category of resource requiring protection among many others. For example, Resolution 2139 mentions Syrian heritage only briefly in the context of ensuring protection for “Syria’s rich societal mosaic and cultural heritage,” calling for all parties to the conflict to “take appropriate steps to ensure the protection of Syria’s World Heritage Sites.”¹⁰ Similarly, Resolution 2170 condemns the “destruction of property and of cultural and religious sites” in Syria and Iraq.¹¹ Yet here too, heritage destruction follows at the end of a litany of more egregious crimes denounced as terrorism which undermine stability and impinge on social, economic, and cultural rights.

Figure 1. Chart of UNSC Resolutions which include references to heritage through time.

Note: There are only mentions of Ukraine, not formal resolutions.

While “terrorism” and “heritage” were initially specified with regard to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the explicit link between illicit antiquities and financing terror was only made in 2015. This occurred in response to evidence that the IS was generating revenue from the looting of archaeological sites. This led to the adoption of Resolution 2199 regarding Iraq and Syria.¹² The adoption of this resolution represented a significant shift in which cultural heritage was framed under a new, separate category. Paragraphs 15–17 situate cultural heritage at the end of a long line of issues such as oil trade, arms, and banking, noting that “Al-Qaida are generating income from engaging directly or indirectly in the looting and smuggling of cultural heritage.”¹³ We suggest that this linkage between destruction, sanctions, and terror financing was soon to become the norm, moving from prior discussions about antiquities looting and illegal trade toward discussions of terror financing and recruitment. As such, the erasure of the past under the IS was rendered a threat to the future of global security, enabling the international community to mobilize strong and extraordinary measures. This securitization of heritage, the significance of both its protection and its destruction, extended well beyond previous standard political norms and procedures.¹⁴

Importantly, Resolution 2199 also called upon UNESCO, INTERPOL, and other international organizations to assist. In a follow-up to Resolution 2199, Member States Jordan and France organized a UNSC Arria-formula meeting on the “Destruction, Smuggling and Theft of Cultural Heritage,” with briefings by UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova and INTERPOL Secretary-General Jürgen Stock. Their stated aim was to disrupt illicit funding for the Al-Nusra Front and the IS via oil exports, traffic in cultural heritage, ransom payments, and external donations.¹⁵

Also, in 2015, in the midst of IS violence and international attention to the destruction of heritage, UNESCO released a strategy document entitled “Reinforcement of UNESCO’s Action for the Protection of Culture and the Promotion of Cultural Pluralism in the Event of Armed Conflict.”¹⁶ It states that “threats to cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict result from intentional destruction, collateral damage, forced neglect, as well as from the organized looting and illicit trafficking of cultural objects” – the latter of which was said to be occurring “at an unprecedented scale.”¹⁷ Intentional destruction by extremist groups in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, was positioned as using “ideological warfare against cultural property.” In 2003, UNESCO similarly issued a “Declaration Concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage,” which gained little visibility or traction. Yet, while such strategies may not have stopped the destruction or perpetrators, the timing of the 2015 announcement did garner attention at the Council, thereby including UNESCO’s concerns within an emerging international security agenda.

The year 2015 was a watershed of resolutions, meetings, and declarations linking the UNSC, UNESCO, and agencies such as INTERPOL. Resolution 2233 further reinforced that looting and smuggling of cultural heritage by various terrorist groups was being “used to support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacks.”¹⁸ Significantly, when the UNSC ratified Resolution 2249 in November 2015, the heritage-security nexus had crystallized among the relevant international actors. Here the “violent extremist ideology” of the IS is linked to the “eradication of cultural heritage and trafficking of cultural property,” which further aids in “its recruitment and training of foreign terrorist fighters” and thus “constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security.”¹⁹ That same year, Resolutions 2253 and 2254 further reiterate these claims.²⁰

Following UNESCO’s lead, the Council made concrete the linkage between heritage and security, primarily with the assertion that looting constituted a viable means of terror financing. The subsequent frenzy of activity followed a US Special Forces operation that ultimately killed the senior IS member, Abu Sayyaf, in May 2015. In that raid, it was claimed, though not substantiated, that some 160 flash drives were recovered which revealed the organizational structure and revenue of the IS stemming from oil, gas, and other resources. In a document written with an IS letterhead, and signed by Abu Sayyaf, the President of the Antiquities Department, he requests another IS member to transfer an archaeological object to him. Abu Sayyaf indicated his intention to sell the archaeological object and transfer the proceeds of the sale to the Treasury, being the centralized depository of finances that funded IS terrorist activities. The US government swiftly filed a Forfeiture Complaint of Antiquities Associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), asserting that Abu Sayyaf’s antiquities trafficking directly financed ISIL.²¹ A total of four objects (one gold ring, two gold coins, and a carved stone) were identified as “defendants,” claimed to be “worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”²² Accounts of looting and smuggling operations, sourced from an unnamed intelligence officer, led some commentators to speculate that the illicit trafficking in antiquities in one region of Syria alone had netted the IS a profit of up to US$36 million.²³ This generated a good deal of counter-speculation and skepticism.²⁴ Nonetheless, some commentators estimated the annual value of trafficked artifacts at anywhere between US$50–150 million.²⁵ This degree of speculation and paucity of precision reflects the current lack of reliable empirical research into this important issue.

The political recognition of heritage as a security issue strategically tied to modern warfare was further reiterated in 2016 when UNESCO produced its own Protection of Cultural Property Military Manual.²⁶ Taken together, the increasing number of UNSC resolutions identifying threats associated with heritage violence (for example, Resolutions 2199, 2249, 2253, 2322, 2347, 2379),²⁷ reinforced by UNESCO statements, underlines how swiftly the international community moved to accept that both cultural property destruction and its trafficking pose a risk to global stability. This would soon be followed by other assertions about the role of heritage in nefarious schemes to finance terror and recruit militant followers, largely underwritten by the US preoccupation with the GWOT. This “world-organizing macro-securitization” campaign, which Buzan predicted two decades ago, served to “structure global security for some decades, in the process helping to legitimize US primacy.”²⁸ Regardless of reliable data on linkages between illicit antiquities and terror financing, the assertion was designated a “social fact” and constituted a new political framing of world politics.

From Trafficking to Terror Financing

Starting in 2015, a clear pattern emerges in UNSC resolutions. Those who identify cultural heritage concerns effectively shift their wording from defining a primarily protective role to a preventative one. In their statements, UNESCO and the UNSC mutually reinforced the view that international cooperation was required to halt the trafficking of antiquities in conflict zones such as Syria and Iraq.²⁹ In her many speeches, Director-General Irina Bokova pledged that UNESCO would “lead the fight against the illicit traffic of cultural artifacts, which directly contributes to the financing of terrorism. At stake is the survival of the Iraqi culture and society.”³⁰ Resolution 2322 underscored the “growing involvement of terrorist groups … in the destruction and the trafficking in cultural property and related offenses.”³¹ Practically, it suggested that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) office work “in close cooperation with UNESCO and INTERPOL, broad law enforcement and judicial cooperation” to combat trafficking, framing it as transnational organized crime.³² While there was a longstanding concern for curbing such criminality, reinforced by UNESCO’s 1970 Convention,³³ it had not been previously framed on this scale. A raft of UNSC resolutions now made a concrete link between the destruction and circulation of cultural property as a central component of extremism, terrorism, and terror financing.

As with 2015, 2017 proved another critical year for the framing of heritage resolutions. Perhaps the most significant was UNSC Resolution 2347, raised by France and Italy.³⁴ It affirms that armed non-state actors have “exploited destruction of cultural heritage as a fundraising mechanism and a war tactic” and requests that member states “take appropriate steps to prevent and counter the illicit trade and trafficking.” Unlawful destruction of heritage and looting, “notably by terrorist groups,” is identified as “generating income … which is being used to support their recruitment efforts and to strengthen their operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacks.” This change in focus to terrorist activity marks a significant shift in the international community’s awareness of heritage destruction as a preeminent threat in both a strategic and an ideological sense.³⁵ Under Resolutions 2347 and 2249, the Council also effectively authorized itself to intervene with the use of force by way of preserving heritage during armed conflict in accordance with Article 39 of the UN Charter. Scholars generally agree that Resolution 2347 encapsulated the “growing alarm for this unprecedented close connection between terrorism and cultural heritage, both as a deliberate symbolic target to be destroyed and as a source of financial revenue to fuel terrorist activities.”³⁶ Though not legally binding, it captures the legal and normative framework that UNESCO championed by acknowledging that the “destruction of cultural heritage … can fuel and exacerbate conflict and hamper post-conflict national reconciliation.”³⁷ Moreover, this resolution contains the first explicit recognition by the UNSC that attacks on heritage sites may be deemed a war crime and that the perpetrators must be brought to justice.³⁸ Theoretically, Resolution 2347 means that the intentional destruction of ancient sites is increasingly likened to other threats to global peace, such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.³⁹

Resolution 2347 reiterated that armed groups were “generating income from engaging directly or indirectly in the illegal excavation and the looting and smuggling of cultural property” and this was “support[ing] their recruitment efforts and … strengthen[ing] their operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacks.” Moreover, it stressed the long-term negative impacts; that is, heritage violations were “thereby undermining the security, stability, governance, social, economic and cultural development” of affected states and communities. Security and future peace-building efforts were effectively bound together in this resolution. Resolution 2347 framed the possibility that future UN peacekeeping operations be mandated to include “the protection of cultural heritage from destruction, illicit excavation, looting and smuggling in the context of armed conflicts, in collaboration with UNESCO, and that such operations should operate carefully when in the vicinity of cultural and historical sites.”

In addition, UNESCO’s contribution to “promoting culture as an instrument to bring people closer together and foster dialogue, including through the #Unite4Heritage campaign” was lauded and its mission conjoined with that of UNODC and INTERPOL.⁴⁰ During an open debate regarding heritage destruction and the interlinkages with counterterrorism and the trafficking of cultural property by terrorist organizations, the Council duly noted that France, the UAE, and UNESCO had announced the establishment of a new fund, the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH).⁴¹ One setback for Bokova, however, was that this new, well-funded international NGO ultimately chose to remain separate and independent from UNESCO, so as to be “flexible and to react quickly.”⁴² Nonetheless, by the close of 2017, the Council had transferred the category of heritage into an asset, moving it squarely into the arena of counterterrorism and trafficking (see also Resolutions 2367, 2393).⁴³

It is no coincidence that the development and elaboration of resolutions linking UNESCO and the UNSC overlaps with Irina Bokova’s influential term as Director-General (2009-2017) and her ambition to be elected as UN Director-General. Bokova essentially securitized World Heritage, propelling UNESCO properties into emergency mode – what Buzan et al. consider a special kind of politics that supersedes the normal bargaining processes of the political sphere.⁴⁴ Through her various speeches, declarations, and social media, Bokova advanced a logic whereby heritage destruction posed an existential threat, such that the international community needed to combat “extremism” and “cultural cleansing.” She argued that “Violent extremists don’t choose between attacks against culture and people – they are attacking both. This means we need to defend both together.”⁴⁵ In classic securitization mode, she upgraded the issue “beyond politics” and indeed beyond Paris to the UNSC and International Criminal Court. “Protection of heritage is more than a cultural issue: it is a security necessity.”⁴⁶ It is a tactic of war, she argued, linked to the financing of terrorism as established by UNSC Resolution 2199; heritage destruction is a war crime following Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the ICC, “and should be prosecuted and punished as such.”⁴⁷ This swiftly evolved into a UNESCO campaign, “seeing a new global struggle for the hearts and minds … especially young hearts and minds.”⁴⁸ Ironically, Bokova engaged the language of battle to save World Heritage and its global mission for peace and tolerance. More recently, she has defended her position, asserting that her “attitude does not reflect a ‘weaponizing’ of culture and heritage, as some have claimed, but a strong political declaration on the link between heritage protection, diversity, and peace.”⁴⁹

In December 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi declared victory over the IS in Iraq.⁵⁰ Shortly before, a UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da’esh/ISIL (UNITAD) was created by Resolution 2379, to support Iraq’s domestic efforts to hold the IS accountable “by collecting, preserving, and storing evidence in Iraq of acts that may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.” The destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq was also included, and a number of member states provided funding to support investigations. However, UNITAD’s mandate was abruptly halted without a single heritage investigation or prosecution.⁵¹ Only one individual was ever tried, with a charge of genocide against the Yezidis, without reference to cultural property concerns.⁵² By 2018, UNSC resolutions reiterate, but take no further, discussions of the “unlawful destruction of cultural heritage” (for example, Resolutions 2401, 2449, 2490).⁵³ In subsequent years, the association between terror financing and recruitment coupled with threats to international peace and security remains constant (Resolutions 2504, 2544, 2597, 2651, 2697).⁵⁴

This shift also aligned with the US-led GWOT where “trafficking” reflected an institutionalized preoccupation with terrorism as a worldwide preeminent threat.⁵⁵ Exceptional measures were considered justified as a “way to hamper terrorist financing and activities.”⁵⁶ Here the crosscurrents of heritage preservation, transnational crime, and antiterrorism efforts were marshalled, specifically with regard to the Middle East, and elevated to a higher public policy priority. This was built on existing antiquities and border initiatives led by the US Departments of State and Homeland Security that effectively merged American policy on culture, defense, and national security. As Luke clearly demonstrates, after the looting of the Iraq Museum in 2003, sponsored projects on illicit traffic boomed and budgets multiplied.⁵⁷ For the first time, a sitting US Vice President (Joe Biden) spoke publicly about antiquities being used to fund IS terrorism, and congressional lawmakers voiced concern about the cultural property/terror financing nexus.⁵⁸ Similarly, by framing heritage violence and trafficking as a threat to international peace and security, the UNSC might respond to its perpetrators, as the British Representative to the United Nations argued, “with the same intensity and the same unity of purpose as any other threat to international peace and security.”⁵⁹ The resulting international discourse further bolstered the “heritage-security nexus” and subsequently elevated “cultural property” to “an urgent issue in international security politics.”⁶⁰

Irrespective of the gravity accorded to the antiquities trade, the difference between long-established organized crime networks and terror financing remains hard to disentangle. Moreover, so-called “looting” is neither new nor specific to supporting acts of terror, such that experts cannot easily differentiate such motives from the more mundane needs of subsistence. Indeed, the practice of “subsistence digging” has been documented widely as a means of livelihood across the globe, with many researchers preferring this terminology.⁶¹ Certainly, sophisticated networks of sellers existed well before the rise of the IS and were already well established.⁶² In a recent study, Brodie and Sabrine assert that such practices are better understood within “a coping economy that has been forced upon [people] by the ongoing war in Syria, an economy that stands in stark contrast to the conflict economy of Da’esh that has been widely reported in the media and seemingly captured the attention of policymakers.”⁶³ They suggest part of the solution lies with the international community to develop a humanitarian policy that prioritizes peace, repair of civil society, elimination of corruption, and the resumption of normal economic activity.

The Islamic State and Local Opinion in Mosul and Aleppo

As outlined above, by far the greatest number of heritage resolutions in the UNSC pertain to Iraq and Syria and occurred during the years of conflict with the IS. Yet, despite extensive global coverage and the pronouncements of international agencies including the UN and UNESCO, little rigorous information was available on public perceptions of heritage violence, local priorities during the (post-)conflict phase, and attitudes towards peace in Iraq and Syria. While the security situation undoubtedly hampered research and the political environment in Syria remains challenging, it has been possible to gather information from residents of Mosul and Aleppo on a range of issues that bear on the role of heritage in conflict, peace, and security.

In June 2014, the IS captured the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, declared a new caliphate, and caused devastating human suffering that included the slaughter and enslavement of thousands of innocent civilians. These events triggered a mass humanitarian crisis, exacerbated regional insecurity, and led to foreign military intervention from actors ranging from the US to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Running parallel to these developments, the IS waged a ruinous campaign, targeting many of the region’s most sensitive and important cultural heritage sites. In Mosul, the IS filmed and then distributed footage of themselves using sledgehammers to destroy artifacts in the Mosul Museum as well as blowing up parts of archaeological sites such as Nimrud. The IS also damaged or destroyed scores of other heritage sites including libraries, souqs, historic schools and houses, and sites belonging to different religious groups in Mosul: Sunni and Shia mosques, Yezidi temples, and Christian churches. When the IS faced imminent defeat in Mosul in June 2017 they detonated explosives inside the twelfth-century Great Mosque of al-Nuri. In the aftermath, numerous agencies including UNESCO, ALIPH, and the World Monuments Fund (WMF), coupled with other NGOs, universities, and archaeologists, have all been active in various reconstruction efforts.⁶⁴ Earlier work documented local responses to these initiatives and the aspirations of residents with regard to future restoration, heritage activities, and their own involvement in such developments.⁶⁵

With regard to Syria, since the onset of the civil war in 2011 the scale of human suffering and destruction in cities like Aleppo is difficult to comprehend. According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of thousands were displaced and untold numbers of innocent civilians were killed by indiscriminate airstrikes, barrel bombings, chemical weapons, asymmetric urban warfare, ethno-religious violence, and summary executions.⁶⁶ Heavy fighting in Aleppo also had significant consequences for the heritage of the city, which suffered ongoing destruction as the conflict escalated. Aleppo, like so many other Syrian cities, faced what Azzouz rightly terms “domicide.”⁶⁷ Among the destruction, the UNESCO-listed Old City of Aleppo with its historic mosques, churches, markets, and buildings suffered immense damage during the civil war. Following the Assad regime’s “victory” in Aleppo in late 2016, UNESCO led an emergency mission to assess the damage done to heritage sites across the Old City, concluding that about 60 percent of the Old City of Aleppo had been severely damaged, with 30 percent completely destroyed.⁶⁸ Since many international agencies have not been able to operate in Syria, most have prioritized inventories, documentation, and digital recording, rather than community involvement. The most impressive project to date, widely regarded as the first in the post-war recovery process, has been the Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s (AKTC) work in the Old City of Aleppo. Its restoration of the medieval Aleppo Souk, one of the largest in the Middle East, is considered the first step in the rebuilding of the central commercial zone and the Old City. For the AKTC, material and social recovery are commensurate, since together they stimulate cooperation and overcome social divisions; enhance cultural backgrounds and economic possibilities; and revive cultural traditions, restoring cultural continuity and identity.⁶⁹

As outlined above, given the number and visibility of UNSC resolutions for Iraq and Syria, including the first devoted to heritage destruction in 2017 (Res, 2347) and the perceived difficulties of accessing the perspectives of ordinary citizens, we sought to conduct large-scale public opinion surveys in the cities of Mosul and Aleppo. We designed the surveys in collaboration with scholars from the Arab Barometer, adhering to conditions of anonymity to encourage candid responses while respecting people’s safety concerns. The Mosul survey was conducted face-to-face from March 25 to April 4 2021 and the Aleppo survey was conducted by telephone from April 14 to May 25, 2022. Both surveys were conducted in Arabic by Arab Barometer staff to a representative and random sample of 1,600 adult citizens (18 years and older) living in the various neighborhoods of each city (3,200 total).⁷⁰ Both surveys were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee.

Our previously published findings reveal local attitudes to cultural heritage in each city, its destruction and reconstruction, and the efforts of foreign actors and agencies to rehabilitate the urban historic fabric.⁷¹ There are further insights, however, to be gleaned from the survey data on issues of security and peacebuilding. The entire survey consists of 60 questions, but for the purposes of this article we home in on the perceived root causes of heritage destruction in Mosul and Aleppo, priorities for (post-)conflict security, and whether heritage rebuilding projects have the potential to foster future reconciliation. While the UNSC necessarily focuses on broader international security concerns, this paper has shown how heritage violence in the twenty-first century has been increasingly identified and rendered more visible in the Council’s debates and resolutions. Given that the majority of these UNSC resolutions pertain to IS aggression in Iraq and Syria, our data reveals the views of those directly impacted, in specific urban contexts. In many cases, there is alignment between the pronouncements of the Council and the views of affected communities. However, the patterns we discern suggest that the situation is more complex and that the linkage conjoining heritage and security is understood differently on the ground.

On the broadest level, we wanted to understand people’s priorities for the peace, security, and stability of their country in the future. This enabled us to determine whether heritage rehabilitation is a priority given all of the other urgent needs facing the people of Mosul and Aleppo. We therefore asked: “If you had to choose just 3, which of the following do you think are the most urgent priorities for the future of Iraq/Syria?” and presented them with a list of 10 options. The top answers in Mosul were: “safety and security,” (61%); “unemployment and poverty” (54%); “education and schools” (52%); and “hospitals, health and sanitation” (48%). Significantly, only 16% of respondents listed “heritage protection and reconstruction” as their top three urgent priorities for the future of Iraq. A similar pattern emerged in Aleppo, where people listed “safety and security,” (60%); “electricity, water and other services” (57%), “unemployment and poverty” (33%); and “a political solution” (33%). Less than one-third (31%) of respondents listed “heritage protection and reconstruction” as their top three urgent priorities for the future of Syria. Together, these results indicate that, despite all the international claims about the heritage, peace, and security nexus, heritage is a relatively low priority for the people of Mosul and Aleppo. These results also underline that ordinary citizens do not immediately associate heritage and its rebuilding with future security, peacebuilding, or development.

With regard to historic sites, we first asked how residents in the cities of Mosul and Aleppo felt when these were destroyed during the recent conflicts, and presented respondents with a 5-point Likert scale from “very upset” to “very happy.” In Mosul, we found that the vast majority expressed distress at the destruction (99%), comprised of those who felt “very upset” (93%) and “somewhat upset” (6%) – with only 1% feeling at all happy about heritage destruction. The results were very similar in Aleppo where almost everyone felt upset by the destruction of heritage sites (99%), comprised of those who felt “very upset” (63%) and “somewhat upset” (36%) – with only 1% feeling “neither upset nor happy.” This indicates that the overwhelming majority of residents in Mosul and Aleppo did not support the violence inflicted upon historic sites by IS or other actors. This finding is also significant for the international community to understand the level of attachment residents experience with historic places and why damage in wartime by any combatants in this or previous violence has long-term negative effects. It should also be noted that coalition forces and other militaries previously deployed in the region have also caused widespread collateral damage to religious and historic buildings.⁷²

However, as significant as heritage is in the lives of residents, it does not follow that site reconstruction is a key concern in the (post-)conflict phase or that heritage and security are necessarily entwined. While these are positioned as Western priorities, people living amidst the ruins of war have very different priorities from those typically imputed by UNESCO and other international agencies. Given these findings, we wanted to ascertain what the people of Mosul and Aleppo believed to be the key motivation behind attacks on sites. We therefore asked, “What do you think was the principal reason for most of the heritage destruction during the conflict in Iraq/Syria?” and prompted respondents to choose one of seven options (Figure 2). In both Mosul and Aleppo, the most prominent answers were “Looting for revenue” (28%, 25%), “Religious extremism” (25%, 22%), and “Anger at the Iraqi/Syrian state” (17%, 17%). In both surveys, other factors such as sectarian and ethnic conflict, anger at the West, propaganda, and collateral damage ranked considerably lower. This indicates that while respondents recognize religious extremism was central, they also understood that much of the devastation was driven by a complex array of other political and economic factors – including looting for profit.

Figure 2. What do you think was the principal reason for most of the heritage destruction during the conflict in Iraq/Syria?.

From one perspective these results would seem to align with the UNSC heritage resolutions, discussed above, that have made significant claims concerning looted antiquities, illicit trade, and terror financing on an international scale. While not articulated in former conflicts such as Afghanistan, this cluster of resolutions targeting Iraq and Syria quickly gathered momentum into an accepted norm of heritage violence, risk, and threat. As stated above, countering looting and illicit trafficking of antiquities has been folded into countering violent extremism and counter-terrorism strategies.⁷³ Consequently, the connection between looting and terror financing has been affirmed by major international organizations and bodies, including the UNSC, the UNSC Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), the UN General Assembly, UNESCO, UNODC, the EU, numerous states and NGOs, and the broader academic community. Yet convincingly demonstrating the chain of evidence and intent has proven difficult. One vocal authority, Matthew Bogdanos, a retired colonel in the United States Marine Corps and now Assistant District Attorney for Manhattan, admits that “we do not have hard numbers — the traffic in art for arms is too shadowy a phenomenon.”⁷⁴ Similarly, interviews conducted for a 2019 European Union report did not produce any new evidence to substantiate the connection between terrorist groups and the illicit trade in cultural goods.⁷⁵ INTERPOL concurs that “estimating the size of the illicit trade in cultural goods proves to be a challenging task as no reliable statistics exist that can be used to provide a comprehensive picture. The little data that is being recorded is patchy.”⁷⁶ In 2022, UNODC concluded that “despite many decades of normative efforts to address this illicit trade, and an engaged academic community seeking to shed light on various criminal activities involving cultural property, too little is known about the scope and scale of cultural property trafficking across the world today … more evidence is needed.”⁷⁷ This note of caution is significant and we would do well to consider a broader sense of “security” and what it means for the residents of Mosul and Aleppo. Recall that “safety and security” were the most urgent priorities for the 3,200 Iraqis and Syrians we surveyed. Their next highest priorities included unemployment and poverty; electricity, water, and other services; education and schools; and hospitals, health, and sanitation.

Importantly, our survey results also reflect on the widespread precarity experienced by Iraqis and Syrians today, with growing concerns about poverty and adequate welfare, infrastructure and government provisioning, and corruption. It should also be stressed that, in recent years, besides living in the aftermath of the IS, Iraqis have also endured political impasses, violent crackdowns on protests, foreign interference, the socio-economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, electricity shortages, and protracted internal displacement. In the last wave of Arab Barometer polling in 2022, Iraqi citizens reported that their country’s number one challenge is corruption. During the same time, it was not possible to poll in Syria due to security concerns, further highlighting the argument above. Trust in the Iraqi government, according to Arab Barometer surveys, Kayyali reveals, sits at only 19 percent in Iraq.⁷⁸ More generally, he argues, due to the historical quality of governance in Arab countries, Arab publics often instinctively distrust their governments. These additional challenges constitute the backdrop to discussions of looting and heritage destruction and further put into context the needs and priorities of citizens, in which a monumental past that the international community seeks to preserve may not be high on the agenda. Perhaps we would do better to combine the top three concerns that both sets of citizens themselves identify, namely “looting for revenue,” “religious extremism,” and “anger at the state.”

In light of our results, it may prove misleading to escalate these motivations to terror financing. It is more productive to see these findings as reflective of a more mundane, but no less dire, dissatisfaction and distrust of government, widespread poverty and unemployment, lack of services, and stable futures. Perhaps the over-arching concerns promulgated in UNSC resolutions and underwritten by the GWOT narrative have served to further obscure local contexts, in which heritage security has been sutured to “global security” ambitions while overshadowing basic humanitarian concerns for ordinary citizens. Heritage securitization is a pertinent, yet less-studied example of the long-standing practice in US foreign policy to frame American interests as universal principles.⁷⁹ We suggest that the notion of protection has been to some degree instrumentalized for regional security agendas, briefly aligning with UNESCO’s programs and personalities on a scale we have not hitherto witnessed.

Finally, our survey enquired as to whether respondents from both cities considered heritage protection programs to be effective mechanisms for promoting peace. For the residents of Mosul, 92% agreed and in Aleppo, 90% agreed. This suggests that although cultural heritage may not be a high priority in the face of so many other basic and infrastructural needs, people do consider that heritage might play a positive role in moving their societies toward peace and reconciliation. It is often assumed by international organizations that historic sites are central to the peacebuilding process, even though both countries have been riven with ethnic, sectarian, and religious violence. We therefore asked whether people believed that the destruction of historic sites exacerbated communal tensions. In Mosul, 80% of people agreed with the statement, whereas in Aleppo 89% agreed. What was more striking was that when we asked whether restoring heritage properties and conservation projects could foster communal peace there was even more widespread agreement. In Mosul 95% of people agreed heritage restoration could fulfill this role as did 93% of people in Aleppo, suggesting that this is indeed an important arena to build future peace if there is active involvement of local communities.

These results could indeed be positive for various international agencies and actors in the future. But there remain some challenges. As of now, when surveyed, only 60% of those asked in Mosul and 58% in Aleppo felt that international actors adequately listened to them regarding reconstruction. Moreover, very few residents have had the chance to participate in programs. In Mosul, 91% of residents have not thus far had any opportunity to be involved, whereas in Syria, ironically, the number is considerably less, at 46%. Indeed, 9% of people record being involved in heritage rebuilding efforts more than 10 times, 23% claim they have participated between 5 and 10 times, and 18% have participated between 1 and 5 times. One consideration is that the AKTC operates in Aleppo and has a proven track record of inclusion. Regardless, these findings should be salutary to the many organizations working in Mosul over the years, including UNESCO’s high-profile project “Revive the Spirit of Mosul.”⁸⁰

Final Thoughts

This article has documented the momentary alignment between international organizations, specifically the UNSC and UNESCO, in their attempts to combat violence and destruction around historic sites. While falling short of invoking the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to intervene directly,⁸¹ these statements elevate cultural destruction to an unprecedented level of threat to global security and stability, further enabling war crimes prosecution under international law.⁸² Hausler and Jakubowski were correct in stating that the normative and axiological weight of legal instruments has substantively changed, not only on a rhetorical level but largely through the workings of the UNSC.⁸³ We might ask what effect this normative securitization has had on positioning cultural sites and issues as prominent risks and threats in more recent conflicts globally. Regarding current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, we reiterate that there have been no new UNSC resolutions given the P5 veto and, in the case of Ukraine, only Council discussions, presidential statements, briefings, and letters in which heritage is scarcely mentioned. Nothing comparable has been issued for the situation in Gaza.

The inability of the UNSC to pass resolutions on Ukraine and Gaza is also mirrored in UNESCO’s long-standing unwillingness to publicly call out its Member States.⁸⁴ By contrast, UNESCO has readily censured non-state actors, as we demonstrate above in the case of the IS. The unfolding crises and lack of stated accountability reveal the failure in implementation and inherent weakness in taking seriously the framing of heritage security developed a decade ago. Despite the high rhetoric, it is notable that UNESCO’s current Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, was hamstrung in identifying the Russian Federation as the instigator of the conflict, initially referring to the invasion as a “military operation.”⁸⁵ Yet in 2024, members of the World Heritage Committee still wrangled over the wording of conservation reports detailing the targeted destruction of World Heritage properties in Odessa, Kyiv, and Lviv. Russian influence was keenly felt throughout those meetings. Alternatively, while Palestine’s site of St Hilarion’s Monastery was inscribed on the World Heritage List and the List in Danger, with strong support from Committee members, the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and damage to historic sites are all but silenced in the Paris Headquarters. Bokova’s recent reflection on the role of the organization is worth recalling: “UNESCO has a huge convening power and unmatched normative outreach to define areas of common public good, such as education for all or heritage protection. And a challenge, as it requires navigating through a complex political landscape, competing regional and national agendas, and often minefields of unresolved historical narratives that may lead to conflict.”⁸⁶

We have suggested that UNSC and UNESCO declarations, speeches, and documents marshalled bold claims connecting heritage, security, and peacebuilding. While UNESCO and the UNSC have tended to place heritage conflict and security at one end of the spectrum, with an expectation of peace at the other end, much less has been documented or demonstrated for the latter. UNESCO, especially under the directorship of Bokova, made much of the promise of peace, stating that “the need to focus on exploring the links between the preservation of cultural heritage and peace has never been greater.”⁸⁷ While UNESCO now regularly portrays itself as operating on the front line of conflict and (post-)conflict heritage in the Middle East, there is no effective reporting or oversight mechanism to ensure that UNESCO’s signatory states comply with their international humanitarian law obligations, much less address serious, systematic violations.⁸⁸ Cultural heritage is widely considered vital for (post-)conflict national reconciliation, yet it has proven difficult to quantify or measure success, nor have there been prominent studies attempting to analyze the situation. Still, the heritage of the peace process attracts millions from UN agencies, NGOs, universities, and philanthropists. While we know the costs of war, the costs of peace are more opaque. Brown University’s Watson Institute and its Costs of War project now estimate that the 20 years of war in Iraq and Syria has cost the US some $2.9 trillion.⁸⁹ The UN’s most recent budget is over US$6 billion to service nine active operations.⁹⁰ As Hay notes, “Amidst so many news reports, special envoys, political posturing, interviews and in-depth analyses of unfolding conflicts, I struggle to hear any inquiry into the peacebuilding failures that are so savagely affecting local civilians and their communities caught up in conflict.’⁹¹ He cautions that such paucity of commentary recognizing these peacebuilding failures is yet another factor that severely weakens an already fragile international security.

Finally, as our survey results from Mosul and Aleppo demonstrate, we would do well to consider a more localized understanding of security, where basic safety in the face of widespread precarity is the priority. Our data are reflective of the more mundane but no less dire dissatisfaction and distrust of citizens towards their governments, of fears about widespread poverty, unemployment, lack of healthcare, education, and the services that would promote stable futures. If we are to learn anything from our Iraqi and Syrian survey data, it is that if the international community is to truly embrace heritage as a peace and security issue, the organizations charged with the prevention of conflict and site protection and restoration will have to be more inclusive and effectively mobilize rehabilitation programs in national socio-economic recovery strategies.