A US academic working with Syrian heritage has warned that Isil’s tightening grip on heritage sites such as the ancient city of Palmyra indicates its increasing reliance on the sale of plundered cultural objects to generate funds that it previously earned from kidnapping and oil smuggling.
Michael Danti, the academic director of the ASOR Syrian Heritage Initiative, a joint project between the US Department of State and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), says Isil is “holding the site hostage. It’s the kidnap for ransom situation that Isil specialises in. In this case, it’s heritage they’re holding, rather than people.”
According to Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Syrian government’s antiquities and museums department, Isil dynamited two Muslim shrines near the ancient Roman site of Palmyra between 21 and 24 June—an act that is in line with Isil’s aggressive pillaging of Sufi and Shia holy places. Meanwhile, local observers, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Al Jazeera news network claim the entire archeological site is now mined, although some experts are calling it a bluff to complicate any military efforts to retake the area.
Modern racketeering operation Isil’s trade in antiquities brings a systematic efficiency and an industrial scale to a centuries-old practice. Despite suicide bombings, the fanfare of religious pronouncements and grisly executions of hostages, experts say the terrorist group functions as a modern racketeering operation.
Isil is now strictly enforcing its requirement that looters in its territories buy licences to excavate, says Amr Al Azm, a Syrian archaeologist and associate professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, US. “They’re trying to squeeze more profits from the process,” he notes, citing “a glut” of objects on the market, based on sources in Syria and Turkey. “A religious reason is [being] used to justify the atrocity, rather than the other way around, where an atrocity is committed to fulfil a religious requirement,” he says.
“It’s shocking how much we’re seeing [coming from Syria into Turkey] because there’s so much of it, and there’s a scramble to make money,” says Danti, who has directed archaeological projects in the Middle East for 25 years.
“It’s important to understand the level of control that this organisation seeks to impose, and they’re generally successful at it—even down to cigarette sales and anything of value,” says a researcher in southern Turkey who spoke to The Art Newspaper on the condition of anonymity. “Black markets are cultivated by them and then run by them. They’ll ban an object, like antiquities or cigarettes, and then control the black market for that object. The sophistication of this is startling.”
“You can see Isil as a roving tribe, going out and foraging on the landscape, in areas that are not necessarily tactically or strategically important, to make money for their fighters,” Danti says. The precedent for this approach, he says, was Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which raised 80% of its funds in the Anbar Province through theft in 2005 and 2006, according to documents seized from the terrorist organisation by US intelligence. A study of those files by the Rand Corporation showed that AQI taxed plunder, including antiquities, at rates set by Islamic jurisprudence in the eighth century. Danti stresses that despite those religious underpinnings, Isil, on the model of AQI, remains “a large, organised crime network. They’re destroying a few looted artefacts for the camera, but they’re actively selling most of it,” he says.
Looted objects now cross from Syria into Turkey and are transported westward and shipped away to dealers in Lebanon and Europe. “Weapons and migrating jihadists are coming in that way. Antiquities are going out, in the opposite direction,” Danti says, noting that Syrian antiquities recently turned up for sale in Sweden. “The cultural property crime is largely untapped [by law enforcement] at this point. It’s lucrative. There are an enormous number of archaeological sites at their disposal to loot and large numbers of cultural institutions that haven’t been hit,” he says.
Although staff at Palmyra’s museum removed much of its collection before evacuating, Danti expects that Isil will move remaining objects to depots for eventual sale. “Palmyrene funerary sculptures are stylistically distinct, as a fusion of Greek, Roman, Persian and Syrian influences,” he says. “They are very identifiable and highly sought after on the antiquities market.”
Unprecedented efficiency Other armed groups in the region also profit from smuggling, says Al Azm, yet Isil brings unprecedented efficiency to the process, deploying heavy machinery to excavate on an industrial scale. Neither he nor Danti would put a value on the illegal trade.
Given the urgent threat to sites in Syria and northern Iraq, some collectors suggest buying objects on the black market to provide them with a “safe haven” from oblivion. That “safe haven” buying worsens the problem, warns Danti, who predicted in a memorandum to the US State Department in October 2014 that Isil would rely increasingly on cultural property crimes for revenue.
“If you buy that object, you’re supporting cultural cleansing,” he says. “Also, Isil uses the money made from the sale of antiquities and other cultural property crimes for terrorism. In buying those objects, you’re contributing to the transnational crime networks that support Isil and other groups’ terrorist activities.
“You’re contributing to demand,” Danti adds. “You’re building the market base for illicit cultural property when you buy it.”