What does heritage matter in the face of such tragic desolation? What is a child\u2019s life worth against all the antiquities of Syria?\u00a0<\/i><\/i><\/p>\n
Any reflection of Syria\u2019s architectural disasters must include this question.\u00a0 The child, a humanitarian must say, is worth all the columns of Palmyra and mosques of Damascus.\u00a0 The child, a cold-hearted historian might suggest, could be sacrificed for the heritage of all future children.\u00a0 The pragmatist must announce that both the child and the heritage should be saved.\u00a0 Alas, both are being destroyed<\/a> in Syria.<\/p>\n The inner burning of the Omayyad mosque in Aleppo, the city\u2019s soukh, the Roman Dead Cities of northern Syria \u2013 which have acquired new ghosts as thousands of refugees now hide in the tombs and ruins of antiquity \u2013 are the latest victims of the war of archeology.<\/p>\n And Emma Cunliffe of Durham University sums up the dilemma succinctly in the latest issue of \u2018British Archeology\u2019.\u00a0 If there are 60,000 \u2013 70,000 \u2013 dead, with winter snow burying<\/a> refugee tent communities, with gas and power shortages in shattered cities, \u201cwhat dies heritage matter in the face of such tragic desolation\u201d?<\/p>\n Cunliffe, who is developing ways to monitor damage to Middle East archeological sites \u2013 more accurately, I hope, than the UN puts together the human variety \u2013 has produced a remarkably even-handed report which lays blame on both the regime and the rebels for the damage to Syria\u2019s heritage. \u00a0While still not on the post-2003 Iraqi scale, \u201cthere now appear to be established networks (on the opposition side) that circumvent official inspection\u2026Seizures of several thousand unmarked artifacts on the Syrian border, including pottery, coins, mosaics, statues, sculptures, writings and glassworks suggest the extent of looting could be vast.\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps, Cunliffe says, the trade in stolen Syrian antiquities now stands at more than Pounds Sterling 1.25 billion, Cunliffe.<\/p>\n In Palmyra, however, it appears to be government army bullets that have scarred the Roman pillars and government army tracks that have used the Roman roads \u2013 not unlike the American Humvees which blithely crushed the highways of Babylon in 2003 \u2013 while in Homs (and Cunliffe does not apportion blame here), the Cathedral of Um al-Zennar, one of the city\u2019s oldest churches \u201cnow lies in ruins, its worshippers, dead and scattered, its ancient Aramaic liturgy silenced.\u201d\u00a0 It was one of the world\u2019s oldest churches, its site dating back to AD59, containing a belt said to belong to the Virgin Mary.\u00a0 If you want to search for responsibility, I suppose, then you must ask:\u00a0 who was the first to use firearms in this Syrian bloodbath?<\/p>\n Ever since the Independent on Sunday<\/em> first gave large-scale publicity to the destruction of Syria\u2019s heritage<\/a>, both sides in the war have used the damage in their own cause.\u00a0 Free Syrian Army officers have vouchsafed to prevent all looting \u2013 a dubious claim since the Jordanian markets are now flooded with Syrian gold, mosaics and statues \u2013 and have even used Roman Palmyra in a propaganda U-tube.\u00a0 Produced by the \u2018Media Centre for the city of Tadmor (Palmyra)\u2019, a horseman gallops across the screen bearing the FSA\u2019s green, white and black flag in front of the Roman columns of the city\u2019s Via Maxima.<\/p>\n Interestingly, however, the Syrian government\u2019s own minister for antiquities, Professor Maamoun Abdul-Karim, has appealed to all Syrians \u2013 whatever their attitude to the Assad regime<\/a> \u2013 to protect the country\u2019s architectural treasures because \u201cit is everyone\u2019s responsibility (to) work together to protect those antiquities.\u201d\u00a0 While acknowledging severe damage to some Roman heritage sites in the north, he praises local villagers for driving away looters and diggers.\u00a0 The locals, it would appear, realise that a town without antiquities is a town that will never earn tourist money in post-war Syria<\/a>.<\/p>\n There are a few intriguing notes in Abdul-Karim\u2019s appeal.\u00a0 Government forces, he claims, have confiscated 400 items, beads, coins, statues and mosaic panels \u201cthough some of them were fake\u201d.\u00a0 Where, in heaven\u2019s name, did the fakes come from?\u00a0 The minister also assures us that the vast bulk of treasures have been secured in \u201csafe places\u201d.\u00a0 But where are all these \u2018safe places\u2019?\u00a0 And if they are so safe, why do the internally-placed refugees not flock to them?<\/p>\n Deir ez-Zour, now a deserted city in largely rebel hands, seems to have suffered disproportionately as looters assaulted the Acropolis, excavated sectors of the Temple of the Rock \u2013 from Bronze Age Ebla (middle of the 3 millennium BC) \u2013 and bored down through the rock for earlier artifacts.\u00a0 One prominent Lebanese archeologist in the region tells me \u2013 and this one of the most disturbing characteristics of this tragic treasure-hunt \u2013 is that the smugglers are now working for the same networks created by the Iraqi looters.\u00a0 A taste for treasures has now been acquired internationally \u2013 and buyers are now asking Iraqi gangs to use the same methods in Syria.\u00a0 The Washington Post<\/em> has been investigating rebel smuggling trails, and insurgents told the paper that an average haul can net $50,000 for weapons purchases.\u00a0 \u201cSome days we are fighters;\u00a0 others we are archeologists,\u201d an Idlib rebel told the paper, after claiming to have discovered Sumerian tablets from Ebla.<\/p>\n Several archeologists (the legal kind) have suggested that their approaches to NATO \u2013 even the British Ministry of Defence \u2013 led to attempts by pilots to avoid damaging Roman heritage sites in Libya in 2011, even switching munitions to avoid shrapnel spray while targeting Ghaddafi\u2019s legions.\u00a0 But there are no NATO planes over Syria, and I doubt if Syrian government pilots carry Minister Abdul-Karim\u2019s appeal in their cockpits.\u00a0 \u00a0So same old question:\u00a0 what is a child\u2019s life worth?<\/p>\n ___________________________<\/p>\n Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/i>correspondent for <\/i>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n