REPORTS that Islamic State had been pushed out of the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site appears to have been premature. The latest news confirms that the terrors appear to have taken control of the Syrian city.
Palmyra is home to some of the world’s most important ancient ruins and there are fears that another site of global historic importance could be at risk of destruction, following demolition of the Assyrian city of Nimrud and the Roman city of Hatra.
Grotesque propaganda videos of the terrorists smashing ancient artifacts are only part of the story however. They also derive substantial income from looting and selling objects. Analysis suggests that IS funds its activities from donations, smuggled oil (estimate £1million a day), kidnapping (£12 million last year), people trafficking, extortion, robbery and last but not least the sale of antiquities.
IS operates in the richest archaeological arena in the world, the cradle of civilization. While sites at Nimrud, Nineveh and Hatra are being destroyed, a stream of artifacts suspected of coming from such places has appeared on the black market. IS either use so-called’ bulldozer archaeology’ which is of course extraordinarily destructive, or employ locals to dig sites and tombs. IS then takes a tax, approved by Shariah law, based on the value of any treasure taken. No-one knows what has come out of the ground and such loot is impossible to identify later.
IS may have defaced important monuments, which it cannot sell, but there is clear evidence it is trading in moveable objects which it can. Dr Mark Altaweel of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London says that large scale looting has been taking place in Mosul for at least 25 years, with Western demand very high.
Arthur Brand, of Amsterdam-based Artiaz, one of a growing number of firms which tries to locate stolen art, has dubbed the illicit trade “blood antiques”. While antiques are usually less transportable than blood diamonds, they are potentially far more valuable. Size matters.
There are numerous reports of objects from Syria and Iraq circulating in the European black market. Scotland Yard has four investigations in progress related to Syrian antiques but without much greater financial help, closing down the networks that move the loot around the world seems an impossible task.
“The looters tap into well established old networks using smuggling routes that often go through Turkey and Lebanon,” says Dr Altaweel.
Among items in demand are cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, jars, coins, glass and particularly mosaics, which by their very nature can be easily broken up and transported. The smaller and easier to conceal and transport an object is, the more valuable it could be.
A spokesman for London-based Art Recovery Group, which advises buyers on due diligence, says there has been intense speculation about the value of looted art. “There are a lot of figures floating around,” he said. “Theoretically, tainted objects are worth a fraction of their true value but it all depends on size. A large object that is not legitimate may be worth only 1-2 per cent of its true value in the black market but smaller pieces can be worth a much greater percentage.”
Religious historian Karen Armstrong describes IS as a “terrorist startup with a clearly defined business model” an you can’t help noticing the fleets of brand new 4x4s in their stream of grotesque propaganda videos.
IS is not the first terrorist organisation to use blood antique for funding. In 1974, the IRA stole old master paintings including Vermeer’s painting Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid from a house in County Wicklow. The works were then valued at £8 million. In the 1990s there was a phenomenal growth of looting of ancient art by Shining Path Maoist guerillas in Peru ironically inspired by the legitimate excavation of tombs at Sipan.
Very few of the thousands of artefacts looted in Syria and Iraq will ever see the light of day. They will disappear into private collections and vaults largely in Europe and America – where there is specific demand for pre-Islamic items – and in Japan and Australia. If items are recovered it usually takes years for investigators to secure convictions
In March, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) together with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) displayed some 60 artifacts that had been recovered including a magnificent head of the Assyrian King Sargon II, valued at $1.2 million. Operation Lost Treasure (a name suggestive of a future Hollywood film) dates back to 2008 when word came of Dubai-based antiques dealer Hassan Fazeli shipping illegal goods to the US.
Turkey was listed as the country of origin and documents declared the value of the Sargon II head as $6,500. Other smuggled items included a funerary boat valued at $57,000 from Egypt. Some shipments were directly linked to major museums, galleries and art houses in New York and the investigation was unique in bringing money laundering charges which allowed agents to seize bank accounts containing the proceeds,
However the items recovered by ICE date back to the Iraq war. Knowing that the war would inflict terrible damage, archaeologists, museum directors and other members of the art world met with Pentagon in 2003 to convince them to protect the archeological sites. The initiative failed. Instead, US forces notoriously turned Babylon into what was dubbed ‘the Hanging Gardens of Halliburton’, building a camp on the precious archaeological site.
The Pentagon meeting also failed to prevent the notorious looting of the National Museum in Baghdad, on the contrary, looting was effectively encouraged under the logic that the collections would be safer elsewhere. As Ashton Hawkings of the American Council for Cultural Property, put it: “the legitimate dispersal of cultural material through the market” was the best way to protect treasures.
It was effectively an invitation to loot. More than 15,000 objects including jewelry, ceramics, and sculptures were stolen from the museum. The most famous are the 3,000 BC Warka vase, later recovered in 14 pieces and the Lyre of Ur, the world’s most ancient musical instrument, likewise found badly damaged. Hundreds have never been found and five centuries of Ottoman records were lost alongside works by Picasso and Miro destroyed by fire. One estimate of the loss attributable to art theft in Iraq is $10 billion – but again that is probably a ‘street value’ estimate – and highly speculative.
Looted artifacts pass through many hands before coming on the market. Lynda Albertson, president of the Association for Research of Crimes against Art said: “is useless to try to quantify how much money IS with the black market because from looting to the seller may take years”. She cites the case of Angkor Wat and Cambodian antiquities that appeared at auction 40 years after the end of the civil war.
Illicit collectors buying unprovenanced art bear a huge responsibility for the destruction of heritage sites across the world. Now Turkish and Beirut smugglers have gone further underground and are extremely suspicious of buyers. Not only could their chains face exposure and loss, they could even be charged with aiding terrorism and that is arguably the most powerful deterrent yet.
First published BBC.com/culture