Conference Review
Culture Wars: Heritage and 21st Century Armed Conflict
Culture Wars was a major international conference designed to explore the ways in which armed conflict of the sort recently witnessed in the Balkans and the Middle East become crucibles for struggles about cultural identity that are played out in relation to material manifestations of culture. Collaboration between CRASSH, the Getty Research Institute, the Macdonald Institute, and the Classics Faculty brought together experts from the British Museum, the British Library, the British Army, the Iraqi National Library, UNESCO, and the Aga Khan Foundation, along with archeologists, journalists, and NGOs working in the field in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and Lebanon. Speakers focused on ways in which sites and monuments become at once metaphorical weapons and physical casualties of war, offering a timely opportunity to test ideas and responses in relation to recent armed conflict in the Middle East, including the politics and ethics of intervention.
The conference shed particular light on the fraught intersection of material heritage, local geopolitics, and the universalist mission, asking how we manage ‘Culture’ in a culturally fragmented world. Much recent attention has been paid to the looting and illicit trade in objects from the Middle East. Culture Wars, by contrast, focused on damage to ‘immovable’ heritage: historical monuments, archaeological sites, and cultural and human landscapes. Questions included: how does the nature of modern armed conflict bear on immoveable heritage? ?Are international conventions appropriate to recent scenarios? Why are sites destroyed and to what ends? ?Is intervention ethically justifiable?? What are the appropriate uses of expertise? ?Does the intensity of the contest over heritage open paths to reconciliation? What new approaches to knowledge sharing could be adopted? What is involved in stewarding culture in a post-ownership world?
The conference opened with a lecture in the Fitzwilliam by Professor Margaret Miles (Mellon Professor of Classical Studies at the American School of Classical Studies, Athens and Professor of Art History and Classics, University of California, Irvine). Margaret Miles, an expert on the history of cultural property, reviewed the debate about the repatriations after Waterloo among the British involved in the decision and showed how a fresh examination of their reasoning throws new light on current debates. Her lecture asked: what happens to art in time of war? Who should own art? Under what circumstances should victors in war allow the defeated to keep their art and other cultural property? Should the age-old idea of ‘to the victors go the spoils’ still be the common expectation in warfare? These questions go back to debates in antiquity, when the first legal case dealing with these issues was Cicero’s prosecution of Gaius Verres for extortion in 70 BCE.
Cicero had held up as models for behavior conquering Roman generals who did not loot art or who repatriated art that had previously been looted. This ancient model of repatriation and abstention from plunder was discussed again in London newspapers in 1815, in the aftermath of Waterloo. Thanks to decisions made by the Duke of Wellington, a modern precedent was set for repatriating plundered art to Italy and other countries that had been invaded by Napoleon, later helping to inspire the legal basis for international agreements that exist today to protect cultural property in time of war. Concerns about nationalism as a basis for cultural identity, and for claims about cultural property, are again being debated as foreign governments demand the return of cultural artifacts.
During the two days of the conference that followed, contributions fell into two categories: general theoretical and critical papers which provided both context (including that of international law) and reflections on larger issues; and pragmatic and policy-focused papers which illuminated the on-the-ground conditions of heritage preservation in Iraq, Lebanon, Kosovo and Afghanistan. A number of threads emerged from these presentations, including the obsolete role of international organisations in terms of prevention and post-war reconstruction--for instance the slowness of UNESCO when it comes to allocating funds for emergency action, or its inability to prevent bombing and looting of cultural heritage sites. A more general observation emerged that despite the precedents of Kosovo and Afghanistan, little has been learned; the destruction of cultural heritage had been even worse in the case of Iraq. Some of the policy-oriented papers from the conference proposed specific or concrete solutions that could help to prevent the destruction of cultural heritage in future situations. Others questioned the efficacy of such proposals and presented a pessimistic picture of current progress in specific regions.
The role of technology and IT emerged as a crucial strand in the conservation of cultural heritage, with its potential for creating inventories and lists of endangered sites as well as catalogues of missing or looted object. Projects undertaken by the British Museum and by the Getty showed how web-based GIS could be used to monitor activity and maintain a national inventory of endangered archeological sites, to analyse digital data from large numbers of Iraqi sites, or to reconstruct monuments such as a destroyed Kosovan mosque using 3-dimensional imagery. These new technologies have implications for the future of cultural heritage conservation since they permit communities of scholars to rebuild websites (memory sites) about cultural heritage using collective information, as in the case of Samarra. Digitalisation of endangered texts or objects, along with translation and contextualisation resulting from such initiatives, also have the potential to turn artifacts of national (or regional) heritage into multi-lingual resources as well as changing their identity, purpose, and meaning. Finally, digital information has a bearing on the role of experts in preventing the destruction of vulnerable sites prior to conflict.
Some speakers emphasized that damage to cultural heritage may be inflicted not only during the war but by modernity itself--during post-war reconstruction and rapid modernization when implemented without concern for the preservation of heritage, e.g. by the development of roads, new apartments, and shopping centres (for instance in Afghanistan), by the uncontrolled extension of agriculture or local building (in Iraq), or simply by the neglect or rebuilding of traditional homes (in the villages of Southern Lebanon). On the other hand, educational and training projects could also lead to the preservation of cultural heritage, allowing local people to know about their own history and to help in the political process of national identity construction and historical memory outside the professional and political divide. Equally, there is a need to create and support local archaeologists and experts who will be able to continue to monitor endangered sites and take part in post-war reconstruction.
The first panel gave an overview of legal and international policies to safeguard cultural heritage. In some instances war crimes against humanity and culture have been successfully prosecuted. However, in other cases a claim of ‘military necessity’ has been made to justify cultural destruction and breaches of humanitarian law. In the second panel, Saad Eskander's presented his ‘Open Letter to the Director of Hoover Institute’ (http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=439) about the removal of Iraqi archives to US and restrictions which prevent Iraqi scholars having access to their own history. The importance of providing access and expertise was also illustrated by the Getty Conservation Institute’s use of IT as an approach to conservation along with local training programmes for Iraqi archeologists-- which may, however, have mixed outcomes (for instance, in Afghanistan) where there is a lack of qualified or educated staff. The discussion surrounding post-conflict projects was particularly probing in relation to the joint project by the Ministry of Defense and the British Museum that showed how the nature of military interventions is changing, as increased professionalization and specialization requires the engagement of archeologists.
The ‘Operation Heritage’ project in Southern Iraq, for instance, provided 800 photos showing evidence of looting and damage to archeological sites from war or neglect. Different types of damage included the construction of defensive positions near the sites; the activities of coalition forces; looting; and neglect. John Curtis (Keeper of Middle Eastern Antiquities, British Museum) offered a reflection on what we can learn from engagement between scholars and military, arguing that for pragmatic reasons academics should be engaged in the wake of armed conflict, bringing their expertise to the field in an attempt to monitor and mitigate damage that had been done. Besides this project, he mentioned as an example his involvement in compiling an independent report on the destruction of Babylon and the list of missing objects from the Baghdad Museum (together with Donny George), some of which have now been returned. Curtis' position raised the question of whether collaboration with the military might prejudice the neutrality of NGOs and humanitarian organizations, as proved to be the case in Afghanistan.
Another question debated at length was whether (if at all) and how the army should be trained to deal with cultural heritage. Can the military make decisions about heritage? The Ministry of Defence emphasis was on collaboration by all sides (military, government, and academia) to achieve the preservation of cultural heritage. Other participants, however, questioned the end product of post-war reconstruction. If cultural heritage is socially constructed and part of shifting discourse about identity and sovereignty, who should decide how it should be organised? An example was the decision (in conjunction with the Basra authorities) to move the Basra Museum from the centre of Basra old town to the former Sadam palace on the periphery. Might this alienate future users? Others asked how far the perspective of the local Iraqi people was considered? Would the Iraqis themselves rather collaborate with the occupying forces in restoration than allow looting and destruction of their heritage sites?
The case of villages in southern Lebanon which had been bombed by Israel revealed that many traditional and historical buildings were later also destroyed by demolitions or by reconstruction: damage is done not only during the war but also by post-war reconstruction when implemented without concern for the preservation of cultural heritage. When financial incentives exist to rebuild rather than restore, reconstruction could result in the loss of communal memory and identity. Here educational projects could do something to recover what had been lost. The systematic destruction of cultural heritage during the Balkan wars, including the case of Kosovo Museum–2000 objects were taken from Pristina and never returned to Kosovo--emphasized the frequent impotence of international organizations when it comes to military intervention. The example of the Balkan war was instructive from the jurisdictional perspective, as it provided the legal precedent for the indictment for destruction of cultural property (eg in the bombing of Dubrovnik).
Peter Stone's paper summed up some of the issues with a theoretical and quite personal exploration of the ethics of involvement with military. Can archaeology ever be entirely separated from politics? The failure to protect museums in Iraq was a political failure, not just a military issue. The moral dilemma facing the archaeologist was whether to collaborate before the conflict began, or afterwards (Stone vs. Curtis and ‘Operation Heritage’). Stone emphasized the importance of preventive action and engagement with military both before, during and after the war, and the different modes of engagement by journalists, international law experts, and academics. In the case of Iraq, providing lists of endangered sites to the military had not proved effective (just as the failure to protect the Iraqi National Museum showed a lack of will to do so). Should such lists and inventories be provided in case of the future wars (e.g. with Iran)? If such lists and inventories were widely available on the web, the moral dilemma of ‘embedded’ archeologists might even cease to exist.
The second day of the conference provided other examples of preventive action which could be taken by the academic community, such as the case of the individual researcher collecting and recording information about Samarra since 1983 in order to preserve knowledge in the face of political uncertainty. While wars cannot be prevented by academics, they can record their accumulated knowledge in case of conflict. When the Golden Dome was bombed in 2005 the greatest regret is that this monument had never been seriously recorded. Through satellite imagery, photos from soldiers in the field, and recurring visits by western journalists, it has been possible to build up a more detailed picture of events than elsewhere in Iraq. The Samarra website gathers information that creates a collective memory site, while showing that road-building and agriculture, as well as the building of Iraqi police barracks on the site, have made inroads on the site despite its listing by UNESCO on the World Heritage site list in 2007. Such instances are common despite their avoidability.
A paper by the British Library’s Cultural Property Manager focused on the practical issues of conservation of endangered texts and the role of the British Library's collections as the ‘DNA of civilisation’. The British Library has to operate in restrictive context of copyright rules and other legal and political issues. However, it tends to give a wide interpretation to these legal restrictions, recognising an ever-expanding and complex non-legal environment in which collaborative partnerships help to offset the political context in which the library has to operate. The British Library’s temporary acquisition scheme provides a safe-haven for resources in danger (storing material until it can be returned to its proper location, e.g. the case of indigenous manuscripts which can be also preserved by digitalisation). These practices allow the British Library to transform an artifact of national heritage into a multi-lingual resource, making it widely available to different constituencies as well as allowing its later restitution.
A number of speakers focused on the history of the destruction of cultural heritage in Afghanistan, including a compelling on-the-ground discussion of both the promise and perils of heritage preservation. Monuments remain unclaimed, unregistered and unprotected, while it is difficult to work in Afghanistan due to the security situation -- three quarters of the country are outside the governmental control--and because of tensions between conservation issues vs. development (including pressures from the commercial sector and threat to minarets in Kabul from new buildings and roads). Conservation issues also included the issue of ‘living’ heritage--Afghanistan’s traditional practices and way of life. Central to the post-2001 narrative of a 'new Afghanistan' has been the notion of loss of cultural identity. In order to recover this identity, education is crucial, along with learning from and preserving street-level culture by involving local people who have knowledge of the heritage sites, and by participating in community life as anthropologists do. Local knowledge of history can also help in the political process of national identity construction outside professional and political divide.
Other papers explored the ethical issues of military interventions, for instance criticising the idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’ vs. traditional humanitarianism and defining the involvement of scholars in military operation as the risk of neo-imperialism. The problem of collaborating with the military, among many others, is the ambiguity it generates between armed forces and humanitarian aid. Another paper addressed the ways in which the Buddhist and Islamic heritage are intertwined in the history of Afghanistan’s art and artifacts, as a perspective on the destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas: cultural heritage is hybrid, and local knowledge often acknowledges such hybridity. Here art historical and architectural expertise can provide an alternative perspective on sectarian and religious struggles in which cultural heritage is the deliberate target of destruction, or museums can preserve fragile artifacts that could not survive conditions in situ.
The conference ended with thoughtful reflections on the role of the museum and on legal ownership. One argued that contemporary conflicts tend to consolidate a normative role of the museum, which has otherwise been subjected to critique. Objects acquire new layers of meaning in the context of war. A similar point was made Marie Louise Sorensen --some objects become more valuable than others in the context of contemporary conflicts. Sites and objects acquire iconic value and play a specific role in post-war negotiation and identity formation. Important distinctions can be made between the rhetoric of belonging as an extension of legal ownership and ‘being part of…’; between an archaeological object as data or as heritage; between local scale action and universal claims. The final point to be made was the need to move beyond an ‘ownership world’ to think in terms of dual ownership, ownership vs. guardianship, or even post-ownership--a cultural commons.
It is hoped to publish selected papers from the conference in the Journal of Cultural Property and in an edited collection.
Mary Jacobus and Joanna Kostylo
