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Looting and destruction of Syria’s antiquities by ISIS – With Dr Amr Al-Azm - S2E3
289 Plays6 months ago
Since 2011 the Syrian civil war, with armed confrontations between regime and various opposition forces, led to a traumatic process that has strained the ethnic and social fabric of the country. Much of Syria lies in ruins, and also its archaeological heritage has been a major casualty of the conflict, especially regarding the deliberate destruction and systematic looting of antiquities by forces of the so-called Islamic State terror organization. I had the pleasure to discuss some of the intricate details of these actions with Dr Amr Al-Azm on this episode of archaeological context.
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaeology Podcast Network
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Impact of Syrian Civil War on Archaeology
00:00:11
Speaker
looting and destruction of Syria's antiquities by ISIS. Since 2011, the Syrian civil war with armed confrontations between regime and various opposition forces led to a traumatic process that has drained the ethnic and social fabric of the country.
00:00:32
Speaker
Much of Syria lies in ruins, and also its archaeological heritage has been a major casualty of the conflict, especially regarding the deliberate destruction and systematic looting of antiquities by forces of the so-called Islamic State terror organization.
00:00:51
Speaker
And I had the pleasure to discuss some of the intricate details of these actions with the guest of this episode, Dr.
Dr. Amr Al-Azm on ISIS and Looting
00:01:00
Speaker
Amr Al-Azm. And here is already an extraction of our conversation.
00:01:05
Speaker
Because of the revenue that you're able to produce from this, very quickly, as these areas are taken over by what you might call warlords, war factions, armed non-state actors, etc., they realize that this could
00:01:24
Speaker
be a source of revenue for them as well. And so they start getting in on the act and they start taking over. And that's where ISIS comes in, or Daesh, Islamic State comes in. When they finally come upon the scene in 2014 in Syria, they come upon a very thriving and active looting and trafficking scene. And they just institutionalize it first.
00:01:51
Speaker
to take advantage of, which is what they were very good at, and then they intensify it.
Historical Significance of Syria
00:02:15
Speaker
The region of modern-day Syria features a plethora of archaeological sites due to it being located within the so-called Fertile Crescent, a broad swath of land stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. It is there that the Neolithic, so the earliest settled societies with animal husbandry and agriculture, emerged over 10,000 years ago.
00:02:44
Speaker
And over the millennia, the region was settled by Phoenicians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Umayyads, Crusaders, and so on.
Damage to UNESCO Sites
00:02:55
Speaker
Among other things, this means that the soil is rich with archaeological artifacts.
00:03:01
Speaker
And since 1946, the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums, a government agency, is responsible for the protection and excavation activities in Syria. But the civil war, starting in 2011, resulted in a power vacuum and breakdown of law and order in many parts of Syria.
00:03:25
Speaker
The fighting and military operations from all sides have severely damaged archaeological sites and monuments over the last decade. For example, at the two UNESCO designated World Heritage sites of the Old City of Aleppo or the Crusader Castle of Crac du Chevalier.
ISIS Occupation of Palmyra
00:03:45
Speaker
One of the most tragic crimes in this regard happened in Palmyra in 2015. Fighters of the Econoclastic Islamic State or ISIS terror organization had occupied the ancient city of Palmyra in May 2015.
00:04:02
Speaker
Subsequently, many of the famous and well-preserved antique structures were damaged or destroyed, for example the lion statue from the Olad Temple or the monumental arch of Hadrian. During the Isis occupation of the site, the Roman theatre was used as a place of public executions, and on the 18th of August, Palmuras retired head of antiquities 83-year-old Khaleda Lassad,
00:04:32
Speaker
was beheaded there. Before he was captured by ISIS members, he helped to organize the transport of artifacts from Palmyra to Damascus for safekeeping. He had been interrogated for weeks in an attempt to extract information about the whereabouts of the museum's treasures, but al-Assad refused to give any information to his captors.
00:04:57
Speaker
When ISIS began to occupy large parts of Syria in early 2014, it came upon an already thriving trade of looted antiquities.
Looting as a Revenue Stream for ISIS
00:05:07
Speaker
Recognizing a potential source of income, it initially permitted locals to continue looting these sites and impose a 20% tax, also known as Khums. But ISIS began to increasingly take control by regulating aspects to sites.
00:05:26
Speaker
By the summer of 2014, they were issuing digging permits or licenses and hiring contractors to loot sites in areas under its control. In the fall of 2014, ISIS even established an archaeological administration in the city of Manbij, close to the Turkish border, to manage and organize the systematic looting of archaeological sites in the region.
00:05:52
Speaker
This shows ISIS becoming increasingly engaged directly in the organization of the extraction, sale and transfer of artifacts through its own digging operations. They routinely used earth-moving machinery, like bulldozers, to accelerate the digging and recovery of artifacts.
Funding Terrorism through Antiquities
00:06:14
Speaker
which intensifies the destruction to archaeological sites clearly visible in before-and-after satellite imagery. ISIS relied on established networks of dealers to whom the looted antiquities were sold and who moved the artifacts out of the ISIS territory into the international market, most likely via Turkey.
00:06:39
Speaker
This indicates that the sale of looted antiquities is extremely lucrative, and stopping this illegal trade is imperative not only because it's a major source of income for terrorist organizations like ISIS, but also due to the irreversible damage this is causing to Syria's archaeological heritage.
00:07:00
Speaker
But the illegal extraction and trade with antiquities is a long-standing practice embedded in the local economy, and defeating the Islamic State will not guarantee the end of it. Rather, in the absence of economic alternatives, looting will remain in place as a source of revenue for the locals.
00:07:21
Speaker
For example, as the guest of today's episode wrote, Facebook is being used by networks of traffickers to buy and sell looted antiquities. They are being smuggled from Syria into Turkey despite the retreat of the Islamic State.
00:07:38
Speaker
For example, Roman mosaics still in the ground in Syria were offered for sale on Facebook pages. And if you dig something up and you don't have a trafficker, you can now just hop on Facebook, share pictures of what you found and connect with people who are willing to buy it.
00:07:56
Speaker
The importance of the Syrian archaeological heritage is clear when it comes to the issue of national identity.
Importance of Preserving Heritage
00:08:04
Speaker
Syria has a resilient sense of identity based on a concept of a shared history. The people of Syria need to find ways to reconnect with symbols that once united them across religious and political lines. The country's ancient past, represented in its rich archaeological heritage, is key to this.
00:08:26
Speaker
protecting and preserving Syria's history and heritage is thus also about safeguarding its future. This important message originates from the guest of today's episode, Dr. Amr Al-Azam. Dr. Al-Azam, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me.
00:08:54
Speaker
Unfortunately, I was so far not able to visit the amazing archaeological sites in Syria. I would really love to see Krakta Chevalier or Palmyra. But when I was visiting Baalbek in eastern Lebanon in 2016, I saw markets.
00:09:13
Speaker
of selling illegally excavated antiquities myself. So this practice being embedded in the local economy, not just in Syria, how has the smuggling of antiquities in Syria evolved since the retreat of the so-called Islamic State?
00:09:34
Speaker
Well, first of all, it's important to kind of frame this in the sense that
00:09:45
Speaker
The Islamic State did not start the looting and trafficking of antiquities.
Looting Practices in Syria
00:09:50
Speaker
In fact, the history of looting and trafficking and sale of antiquities is as old as the history of humanity itself. You could say that for as long as people have been burying their dead with valuables, goodies,
00:10:06
Speaker
Someone will try to come along later on and retrieve those valuables and repurpose them, reuse them, sell them, exploit them, benefit from them, et cetera. So there's a very time honored tradition in this and it's not exclusive to our part of the world either. And the second thing to kind of consider here is the fact that
00:10:35
Speaker
our region, and this is Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, et cetera, Iraq, is extremely rich in, you know, obviously history and ancient civilizations, et cetera. And so everybody grows up, and I say in Syria that every Syrian either lives on top of an archaeological site, right next door to an archaeological site,
00:11:01
Speaker
or within a stone's throw over the archaeological side. So it's everywhere. It's all around you. And the third thing I would sort of kind of introduce here as well, again, is that there is this kind of perception based on stories, traditions, knowledge transmitted to oral stories, et cetera.
00:11:30
Speaker
Everyone in Syria and probably elsewhere in the region has an uncle whose nephew from the second cousin from the third wife of the fourth husband of the sixth
00:11:42
Speaker
whatever, was digging in their garden or plowing their field or doing something around their house, some sort of repair, and they come across a pot of gold and they find, you know, this treasure. So the idea that there be buried treasure everywhere is again deeply ingrained in the customs and traditions and
00:12:05
Speaker
local lore and history of the people of the region. So when you put all these three elements together, you're going to find a situation where people assume there is buried wealth, they know that it's nearby, and all they have to do is go and dig it up and take it. The question
00:12:30
Speaker
then is why does this not happen all the time? And if it does, when does it happen? How does it happen? And why does it happen? And are there certain times in history where it happens more often than other times? And of course,
00:12:48
Speaker
you know, fast forward to the to the present tense and the current situation. Usually, you know, when you have when, you know, before the war in Syria, prior to 2011, obviously, you have a state, you have state institutions, you have, you know, governmental control, you have laws that can be enforced and are enforced to a certain extent. And those also relate to
00:13:16
Speaker
the control, possession, transport, you know, and again, even sale of antiquities. And I would tell you that in Syria and again, many other countries in the region, there is no legal trade and antiquities. All antiquities belong to the state and the state's institutions are the only entity responsible for the care of these items and artifacts.
00:13:44
Speaker
So when the state and its institutions are functioning as well as they can in any given environment, then people are going to find it much harder to go out and loot these sites and dig them up because they fear the repercussions.
00:14:05
Speaker
The real issue comes is what happens when these institutions and these systems break down as a result of some catastrophic event. In the case of Syria, obviously, it was the war, following the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011. And then that essentially forces the country to descend into a civil war. And very quickly, as that conflict spreads across the
00:14:35
Speaker
the entire country, the state and its institutions are in retreat. They no longer are able to exercise their authority.
00:14:48
Speaker
The government entities that are like the DJI, the Department of Antiquities, which is responsible for the protection and care of these sites, monuments, museums, et cetera, is no longer able to perform its functions. That creates opportunities for anyone who seeks to exploit these antiquities.
Economic Pressures and Looting
00:15:10
Speaker
And of course, coupled with the
00:15:15
Speaker
credible destruction of the states and the state itself, the economy, people's livelihoods that came with this conflict. People lost their jobs. People lost their livelihoods. People could no longer go out and, you know, get money. So it
00:15:35
Speaker
And so if you think, everybody knows that there is treasure somewhere buried around them. Everybody knows that it's nearby and knows the stories and everything. They know that under normal circumstances, if they went to dig for it, there could be consequences. They now know that the instruments that could enforce these consequences on them are no longer there. And they, more importantly, need money.
00:16:03
Speaker
a way to feed their families, to feed their children, to sustain themselves. And so they instinctively start to go and dig where they think they believe there might be treasure. And that's how it starts. That's how it's exciting. We call this basically subsistence looting. And a lot of the looting that started in the late 2011, early 2012 was primarily subsistence looting.
00:16:32
Speaker
Now, that's not to say that there was not looting and trafficking before then, of course there was, but it was much more restrained, it was much more controlled, and it operated within the bounds of organized crime, known families within certain areas that
00:16:51
Speaker
were known to traffic, were known to be looters and often partnered with corrupt officials to help move their goods around. But in terms of scale, it was much, much smaller because at the time the state's institutions were functioning. Once that is no longer there, then things get out of control very, very quickly. And of course,
00:17:20
Speaker
Because of the revenue that you're able to produce from this, very quickly, as these areas are taken over by what you might call warlords, war factions, armed non-state actors, etc., they realize that this could be a source of revenue for them as well, and so they start
00:17:43
Speaker
getting in on the act and they start taking over. And that's where ISIS comes in or Daesh, Islamic State comes in. When they finally come upon the scene in 2014 in Syria, they come upon a very thriving and active looting and trafficking scene. And they just institutionalize it first to take advantage of it, which is what they were very good at. And then they quickly also institutionalize it
00:18:15
Speaker
they institutionalize it, which is what I said, and then they intensify it. And they turn it into an industrial process with heavy machinery, bulldozers, trucks, and large teams of workers. So you can see kind of that evolutionary process as it moves along.
00:18:35
Speaker
Sorry, speaking of this institutionalizing of this process, you wrote that ISIS or Daesh even had its own archaeological department, or how we will call it in Manbij, and can you give us some insights in how they were organized and how they had knowledge of these archaeological sites and artifacts?
00:18:59
Speaker
As I said earlier, knowing where archaeological sites are, it's not very difficult in Syria. Many of these sites are very prominent, very clear to see, even from a distance. A lot of these sites have already been registered by the Department of Antiquities prior to the conflict. And usually, there's someone appointed by the department to be a guard. Many of these sites are
00:19:28
Speaker
under excavation by, you know, archaeological missions, joint missions between the Department of Antiquities and, you know, archaeologists from all over the world. So many of these sites are already there and they're already known. You don't need, you know, you don't need a special, you don't need a special, you know, treasure map secret, you know, the spot that defined it or any
ISIS's Structured Looting System
00:19:53
Speaker
expensive or high-tech equipment to find this stuff. It's not that hard to know where the sites are. And as I said, with ISIS, they came upon an already existing scenario. So as they took over areas, large swathes of territory,
00:20:19
Speaker
they took over what was already there, including any legal and illegal activities that were going on. Their leadership was very good at quickly recognizing the potential sources of revenue and then turning to those and exploiting them to their own advantage. In the case of
00:20:41
Speaker
And this is why they set up one of their so-called ministries, or D1s, that's what they call them, and they set up the D1 rikas. D1 rikas means the D1 of resources.
00:20:56
Speaker
And resources included oil, included agricultural produce, included cash crops like cotton, and it included antiquities at any buried treasure. So they all fell under this 1D1. And then there were some departments. So as they created the Williah system, as they created their
00:21:26
Speaker
their prefectures, if you will, or they divided the country into different sections, and each relay, each prefecture, if you will, had its own administration that was then obviously responsible, or went back to the main headquarters, which was back then in Raqqa, because that's where the capital of the so-called caliphate was then.
00:21:52
Speaker
stationed in 2014, summer of 2014, and then into 2015, until the recapture of Raqqa in, I believe, late 2016. I think they took Raqqa back.
00:22:10
Speaker
area had its own sort of leadership and its own offices, and Manbij being an important city because of its strategic location, because of its proximity to the Turkish borders, and also because of the surrounding area that it controlled,
00:22:33
Speaker
became a major center, and there they established the members department of antiquities, which was a sub-department of the Diwan Nariqas. And they had an office in a building, and they had a big banner outside. It wasn't a
00:22:50
Speaker
It wasn't like a secret organization. It was all public. They had a big banner outside with the name of the office, name of the person who was in charge. And he had written on a wall outside the building his telephone number, his house, his landline and his cell phone so you could reach him 24 seven. And they ran the operation.
00:23:16
Speaker
because it was institutionalized. And they had a system where you would go to the office, you would seek to get a license to go and dig up a site. And in return for a pre-arranged, let's say, they would say to you, okay, if you anything, and these are sort of kind of
00:23:44
Speaker
almost individually negotiated. For example, they would say to them, okay, you go dig this site and you will take all the costs of the actual digging activity. In return, anything you find, you will have to declare to us and then we will put a value on it.
00:24:05
Speaker
and then you have to give us 20% of that value. Or following the sale of that item, we will get 20% of any sale that occurs. And that was what they called the chums, or one fifth rule. But then it also evolves into other kind of processes where they will say,
00:24:27
Speaker
But then they'll put a time on them and they'll say you have four weeks or three weeks or two weeks to sell it. And then if it doesn't sell within that period of time, the members office might take over and say, okay, now we're going to sell it, but then we'll only give you 50%.
00:24:43
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Of the take. So you lose, you know, and then the members office doesn't succeed in selling it. For example, after let's say one month, then it shifts to the main auction in Raqqa, where you, the person who found it might only get 10% or 15%.
00:25:01
Speaker
said that there were systems in place, and they would agree to all of this. And you would say, yes, I agree. And then you would go out and loot the site and accordingly pay whatever you're required to pay. And of course, that immediately creates also a black market where looters would try to avoid. So for example, Enduroropus, further south,
00:25:26
Speaker
The looters were all positioned inside the site itself. The ISIS cadre were outside. It's a Roman city with a wall around it and the river behind it, the Euphrates River behind it. And so it's south of Deir Ezzor. And so the looters would be camped inside. They would work.
00:25:55
Speaker
the ISIS guys were outside and they would insist on making sure that no sales would be buyers, that the buyers would show up at the gate of the site. And then if you have anything, you would go out and do your deal. So there was this constant cat and mouse game between the guys who were digging, who had the items, you know,
00:26:18
Speaker
to sell and the guys who wanted to buy and the ISIS guys who wanted to make sure that all sales went through them or they got their cut. So there's this constant cat and mouse game that was being sort of conducted. And you see this happening the way through and every once in a while, as there was a famous case, somebody tried to smuggle some very nice
00:26:39
Speaker
an important palmerine funeral reliefs and they didn't tell the members office. And then these guys got caught at a checkpoint by accident. You know, they didn't realize there was going to be a checkpoint there. You know, the guys at the checkpoint found the stuff and they destroyed it and they filmed themselves destroying it. And I remember in a conversation that we got, you know, that we had one of our guys have with the head of the members office, you know, discussing this with him. And he was really upset, not that
00:27:09
Speaker
these guys were trying to just simply smuggle these items. What upset him most was the fact that his own people destroyed what he considered to be extremely valuable property. And he was upset at the guys who did it because they hadn't told them, because he said, as a result, you lost your property, but we also lost it.
00:27:31
Speaker
an important, you know, potential sale here. So have you told me I would have made sure that you would have passed through to Turkey because that's where they were. They were heading to Turkey to smuggle it into Turkey back then. And, you know, so these things would happen from time to time. They would get caught. The perpetrators who were trying to bypass
00:27:53
Speaker
the sort of rules would get severely punished with imprisonment, flogging, or whatever punishment they would inflict on them. And in some cases, the item would simply get confiscated. In other cases, they would, as this one time happened, it was too late and they destroyed the item as well. And you know, on the issue of destruction, sorry, I think it's important to just point this out. You know, a lot of people kind of when they think of Palmyra, you mentioned Palmyra earlier on,
00:28:23
Speaker
When they think of Palmyra, they think of the destruction of the Temple of Bel. They think of the destruction of the Temple of Balshamin, the arch of the triumph, the funerary towers, and so on and so forth. But what people forget, and that's how IS destroyed those, and therefore that's where the connection is, but what they forget is that when they took over the city, the museum was still full of, you know,
00:28:49
Speaker
archaeological artefacts, and the basement was full of archaeological artefacts. Those didn't get destroyed. In fact, when the Russians finally recaptured the city from Daesh a year or so later, they found the museum storerooms intact with a lock on them. They hadn't destroyed them because they were planning to sell them.
00:29:11
Speaker
They knew they were back when they knew they were gonna. So the destruction is usually restricted to what they cannot sell. And so they use it in other ways.
00:29:21
Speaker
And do you know how did they have knowledge of what artifacts, if one is valuable and one is not? And how did they, you said they had this tax you needed to pay, but how did they know that one pottery shard maybe is valuable? I mean, gold, I can see it, but other things, you need some archeological knowledge, I guess. Okay, so you are familiar with Aunty Google, aren't you? Yeah.
00:29:49
Speaker
Auntie Google is very helpful. Auntie Google will tell you all sorts of information. All right. Just as you use Auntie Google to find out if something, you know, like you see something, you want to buy it and you think, you know, you'll just quickly talk to Auntie Google. Auntie Google will tell you, you know, a lot of things you need to know. So this is obviously one important. The Internet is extremely important for this. Plus, you have people who
00:30:19
Speaker
perhaps were archaeologists once upon a time and they would also be able to and they recruited those and some did you know assist and a lot of them a lot of the guys were not only just from Syria they were from Iraq they were from Tunis from other parts of the world so they also had
00:30:37
Speaker
you know, knowledge that they had acquired along the way. Some were professional looters, smugglers, traffickers, who, you know, like, they go from conflict zone to conflict zone, and they take advantage of, of these situations. And that, again, helps, you know, and but I think the easiest way would have been just to Google auction house sales.
00:31:01
Speaker
You look, you see a piece, you think, oh, I've got a piece like that. That piece sold for 50,000 at auction. Therefore, my piece will sell for 50,000. Now, is that an accurate number? Is that the market? Obviously, the market. And remember, you have a supply and a demand. So sale at the supply side is going to be different from the final sale prices at the demand side. Demand being the global north, if you will, the northern, you know, northern, you know,
00:31:29
Speaker
Western Europe and the United States, whereas the supply is usually going to be from conflict zones like Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and so on, so forth, and Afghanistan and Ukraine because of the conflict there, Southeast Asia, etc. So they know in part because they see the, you know, they go on the Internet and they see the material and then they can
00:31:58
Speaker
And they're quick learners. They're not stupid people. They're quick learners. The other thing that really changes the landscape though, and starting from 2012 onwards, is social media. That's the atomic factor here. That's the thing that accelerates everything and makes it spin out of control.
00:32:23
Speaker
Yeah, it was interesting to read you wrote that on Facebook, the people now can just put what they find on Facebook and sell it right and don't need to middleman anymore. But yeah, but not only that it's it's not just they can put stuff on Facebook, it's the algorithm itself. The algorithm, remember, the Facebook algorithm quickly knows what you are interested in. Mm hmm.
00:32:49
Speaker
Right? So if I start looking at Facebook, it will notice or searching on the internet using anti-Google for certain things. Facebook will very quickly figure out what I'm interested in and it will start to introduce me, push on me content that is similar to the content that I appear interested in. So if I happen, if my eye lingers by accident,
00:33:16
Speaker
on a car, suddenly I'm going to get the next 20 posts are going to be about cars. And if it happens to be a certain anatomical part of a woman, then the next 20 posts are going to be about women with that certain anatomical. And it's accidental, let alone if I mean. So
00:33:40
Speaker
If I accidentally do this, it will fill my feed with that. Can you imagine what happens when it knows I'm actively looking for something?
00:33:49
Speaker
It just pushes that content on you. It will encourage you. It will introduce you to people who are interested in similar things. It will encourage you to make friend requests with these people. And more importantly, it will encourage you to join groups. It will push groups on you or content from groups that seem to have that material. And if there is no group for some reason, it will create one for you.
00:34:14
Speaker
We've seen, we've done a lot of studies on social media and Facebook specifically. Facebook will actually create groups for content for you to kind of join in and take part in. If there is no group for it, it will actually create it for you and then encourage you to take it over. So the algorithm really is part of the problem, not part of the solution, if you will.
00:34:41
Speaker
The algorithm actively encourages and supports and promotes this activity. So when we started doing our research back in 2014,
Role of Social Media in Trafficking
00:34:50
Speaker
2015, we were looking, just seeing individuals starting to post items, like you said, oh, I have found this, and then they'll post it, which is quite incredible in its own right, because that's the great equalizer. You don't need a middle person anymore.
00:35:03
Speaker
You just sort of find it, you take a picture, and theoretically, over a billion people can see if you think of how many users there are on Facebook. Very quickly, the algorithm takes over, it starts encouraging to join groups. If groups start to form these groups, then
00:35:21
Speaker
you know, take on a life of their own. And different groups have some are open, some are closed, some are secret, you know, and they each have rules on how to get in. And so these different groups perform different functions. Some are for crowdsourcing information where the others are for actively sort of requesting. So a group will have a request area where does anyone have items like this for sale in
00:35:51
Speaker
Jordan, or in Syria, or in Libya. And then other groups are actively seeking information. I found this. Can someone tell me its value? Can someone tell me what it is? Or is it real? Or is it fake? All of this kind of thing. So you have an entire universe now.
00:36:15
Speaker
with over 12 million people just from the MENA region at all. We now track over five, 600 groups on Facebook, almost exclusively from the MENA region, that's the Middle East and North Africa.
00:36:31
Speaker
And some of these groups have closed these groups or bands. A lot of them are closed. A lot of them are closed in that you cannot join. The posts will show up, but to become a member of the group, you need to request to join. But these groups have tens of thousands, in some cases hundreds of thousands of members. Some of the bigger ones have 600,000, 700,000 members in them.
00:36:57
Speaker
Our latest count was over in excess of 12-13 million people, just from our region.
00:37:08
Speaker
in those groups. Now, I'm not telling you that every one of these 12 million plus people is actively engaged in living and trafficking. The vast, vast, vast majority just sit there and do nothing. They're like us. We have accounts that we kind of, we just, we do the monitoring and I'm sure that a lot of other people are doing monitoring. But also a lot of would-be buyers are sitting there and when they see something they like, they'll just message privately the person who has it. And as soon as it goes,
00:37:35
Speaker
As long as it's on the actual platform, we can see it. As soon as it goes to the messenger side, it goes private. And they'll say to each other, you know, like somebody will sometimes get a bit of the chat where somebody will say, oh, this is really interesting. How much do you want for it? And the guy says, let's go private. That means let's go to messenger. That's then we from our end, we can no longer see it. But obviously, Facebook can if they want. Yeah, yeah. No, it's encrypted. But
00:38:03
Speaker
And of course they don't want to look at it because all of this is a very, very important revenue stream for them. And that's why they won't do anything about it. When we were doing our research, at one point we were able to dive into the dark web because we thought at the time that we were looking at an iceberg effect.
00:38:29
Speaker
where we only see this much, but there's going to be a huge bulge underneath, which is hidden from sight. And I'm not going to go into the details of how we got access just because there are groups, but we were given keys to go in and
00:38:50
Speaker
I guess we shouldn't have been surprised, but we found nothing. Do you know why we found nothing? We found nothing in the dark web because you could do it all in plain sight. If you can do it in plain sight, why hide? You're doing it in plain sight. You go into Facebook, you go into YouTube, you go anywhere. One of the latest sort of, well, I don't know how fresh it is, but
00:39:15
Speaker
One of the ways now they make money, they're very creative. So now what you can do, for example, you find what it is you want to loot. You make a TikTok or you make a YouTube of yourself doing it. That then gets very popular, goes viral. So you make money on that.
00:39:34
Speaker
And then when you sell the artifacts you found, you make money again. So you make money on the looting process, videos, TikToks, et cetera. You become a, you know, a video celebrity, a TikTok celebrity, whatever. And then you make money on the sale.
00:39:54
Speaker
They're becoming extremely creative in how they do that. And the platforms are making enormous amounts of money. And of course they don't make money on the sale itself. I'm not saying that Facebook makes money when you sell something. The way it makes money is by, through the sponsored advertising. And so a lot of the times when we see stuff, and it's clearly looted,
00:40:19
Speaker
And yet in the sidebar, you'll see, you know, sponsored advertising and we've got screenshots of it, like with one in one of the groups, I think they had like sponsored advertising for auction houses. So here you have a group that deals in trafficking. And Facebook is posting auction house advertising.
00:40:48
Speaker
in the same place. So I'm like, okay. And that's how the algorithm, and that's how they make their money. That's how they make it. And it's eyeballs, you know, eyeballs on screen. So Facebook says, this group has, you know, 900,000 people in it. I want X amount for your ad. And if the revenue for these people who are advertising is not also doing well,
00:41:15
Speaker
They won't pay. How do we know it works? How do we know it's making money? Because people are paying. Because at the end of the day, and it's the same with the looting, how do we know looting is profitable? Because people continue to loot. Looting costs money.
00:41:32
Speaker
When you look at a level and a scale like we were seeing in Syria, for example, under IS, we know that it's profitable because it costs money. It costs money to bring machinery to a site. It costs money to put fuel in the machine. It costs money to hire the labor.
00:41:48
Speaker
to do the work. That's all money that you're having to invest. You're not gonna invest your money if you're not getting a return. So I can't, you'll say to me, well, how do I know how much you made? I don't know how much you made because I don't have access and it's not something I can see. But I can guarantee you that if somebody keeps doing the same thing, they,
00:42:10
Speaker
they must be making money, otherwise they wouldn't, they must be making a return on their profit, otherwise they wouldn't do it. I don't know how much, but they must be making enough of a return on it, they're not scratching a living because they have better ways, they have easier ways to make a living, these guys. But they must be making a profit on it, otherwise they wouldn't do it. Yeah, so that's how we know it's profitable.
00:42:32
Speaker
Even though we might not know exactly how much, we can look at the overall size of the legal side of the trade and say, okay, the global trade in antiquities is worth X billion dollars.
00:42:49
Speaker
Well, I can't tell you exactly how much group X or Y made from their sales. Because I only have snapshots. I might find a piece and say, okay, this piece is worth $50,000. So I can tell you that when this piece got sold, it probably made around X amount of dollars. But I can't tell you how much they made in six months or a year, because I don't know exactly what their,
00:43:15
Speaker
what they're holding, what their inventory is. They don't have that information. These were very, very interesting insights. I didn't know about how we evolved. It has become the selling of antiquities with these social media platforms. It's just another... No, the social media is really... I mean, that was just... It's like having a huge fire and then you drop a...
00:43:44
Speaker
a massive tanker full of gasoline and then wonder why you have a fireball. It's literally, it's like you had an active looting trafficking market up to 2011.
00:44:03
Speaker
like everywhere else, but with bottlenecks, in terms of how you connect supply and demand, the demand side obviously had to work through certain intermediaries, middle persons, et cetera, to access. First of all, and the supply side had to figure out a way to inform the demand side that they had what they had. And then once social media takes over,
00:44:31
Speaker
you know, that interaction is essentially not removable.
00:44:38
Speaker
altogether, but very much become secondary because now I can communicate with you directly like this. I don't have to wait for somebody to introduce us and then to act as a negotiator between us. I can talk directly to you. You can talk directly to me and we can agree on a price. And then we go to the guy and say, okay, now make the arrangements to smuggle item one from point X to point Y. Yeah.
00:45:03
Speaker
But you don't get a finder's fee, what you're getting is just for the cost of the smuggle, the transportation.
00:45:16
Speaker
And a lot of these guys might have, I remember sitting in one of those kind of close sessions with a guy who had some material that they were kind of showing us with the idea to sell somewhere in Southern Turkey. I'd say somewhere not because I don't know where, I knew exactly where.
00:45:42
Speaker
And I remember asking the guy, so he was showing us some mosaics. They were okay, they were nothing special. And they won't show you necessarily all the special stuff on the first meet. Yes, yeah, no. And with us, this guy, so in the conversation, I was saying, you know, where can, you know, and can you deliver? And he said, yes, I can deliver, but only one country.
00:46:10
Speaker
So I said, in fact, can you deliver to Holland or can you deliver to Germany? And he was like, no, no, no, I can't. So what can you deliver? And he said, Stockholm. I was like, Stockholm? He said, yeah, I can only deliver to Stockholm.
00:46:30
Speaker
So, you know, he obviously had this one connection where if you buy from him, he will deliver it in Stockholm, not anywhere else. Or you have your own delivery means, you have your own network that will then move stuff for you. And depending on how, what arrangements you make, other examples, there was, you know, like you have,
00:46:59
Speaker
sex tourism or medical tourism or religious tourism. You can also have trafficking in looted antiquities tourism. We were tracking this one group a while back and this was in Turkey where
00:47:22
Speaker
They would make arrangements for you. It's like a package. They would buy the ticket. You would pay for the package. And that would include a ticket for you to fly to Istanbul. They would meet you at the airport. They would take you to your hotel. They would give you a burner phone. You know what a burner phone is. They would give you a burner phone.
00:47:44
Speaker
They would then, as part of the package, they would bring potential sellers with goods, with items for sale to your hotel so you could view them. Then they might include, for extras, I guess, trips, day trips or longer trips where you would fly to
00:48:09
Speaker
let's say Antalya for like a two-day visit where obviously you would also be shown goods that are recently smuggled in from Syria into Turkey. You would then be allowed to see these and then you would choose what you want and then you would go back to Istanbul and then you'd take your flight back home to wherever it is. In this case, this particular guy was Jordanian but
00:48:40
Speaker
You know, it could be from anywhere. And then the items would be shipped to whatever destination you had agreed to and paid for. So this this particular situation, I believe the guy came and he was, you know, shown a number of items, which he picked a few. Then he was taken on a trip to somewhere, you know, where there was some other goods
00:49:06
Speaker
you know, provided that the dead all come out of Syria. I don't think he bought any of those ones. He just bought the ones that he was shown in Istanbul, the hotel, then took his flight back and to, you know, to Oman and then the goods would have been delivered to him later on to there. And then from there, he probably would have smuggled them across the border into Israel. And then from Israel, they were probably
00:49:34
Speaker
either gone straight to Europe or more likely back here to the Gulf, to the Emirates, to one of the pre-ports here and then from here back out to wherever they needed to go. The reason why Israel is kind of interesting is because
00:49:54
Speaker
It's literally the only country in the region that has a legal trade.
Legal Trade and Market Complexities
00:50:00
Speaker
The president of the legal trade is really important because most, if not all, almost all supply countries
00:50:11
Speaker
have laws on their books that make it illegal to buy or sell any kind of antiquities. So there's no legal trade in Syria. There's no legal trade in Egypt. There's no legal trade in most of these countries. But when you have a country that has a legal trade, then there is going to be a gray space between the legal and the illegal.
00:50:36
Speaker
And that's where most of the business occurs in that gray space, that opaque zone, if you will. It's kind of not clear. And so it becomes a lot easier to move things around. You have an item acquired illegally. It then somehow gets legal paperwork.
00:51:05
Speaker
obviously, you know, yeah, yeah, it generates some sort of fake story for it. And then from there, it becomes possible to move it around legally, because now it's got it's moved from the illegal to the legal through this gray zone. And that's why Israel is a is a favorite.
00:51:30
Speaker
kind of route out of that. I think also- On the other hand, obviously it's Turkey because of its proximity, but there's no legal trade there. It's not about there, it's not an issue of legality. It's just because it's a good route to smuggle antipodes and anything else that you carry, you know, drugs.
00:51:52
Speaker
You know, illicit trafficking that has that exists in just about every country. I mean, it's not a problem specific to Turkey, per se. It's just one of those, you know, transnational challenges that. Yeah. I think I think also here in Switzerland, I remember some years ago I read that I don't know in Basel or in Geneva that the police found some
00:52:21
Speaker
let's say companies where they forged these certificates for these antiquities to legally sell. So it's also here that they do it.
00:52:32
Speaker
But it's the fan here. Bulgaria is another, at least for, I don't know if it's there, but it certainly back then was also very famous for producing which documents to, you know, force all provenance. And it all ties back to the international laws and conventions. So when you want to create a legal
00:52:59
Speaker
paperwork for something acquired illegally, it's going to comply with those conventions. So it's going to comply with the 1970 convention. So it's been somehow acquired prior to 1970.
00:53:16
Speaker
1970 is the internationally accepted cutoff date where after 1970 any item that shows up on the market has to have some sort of legal export permit from the country. So let's say you have an Egyptian item.
00:53:37
Speaker
You have to demonstrate that this item was acquired before 1970 because after 1970 it has to have a legal export license.
00:53:48
Speaker
for Egypt. And also, it got factor in the laws of the country itself. And when they ratified the 1970 treaty, so the 1970 treaty went to 1970, but, you know, a country might not ratify until 1980 or 1990 or 2000. And you'd be surprised, I think, I think, like, great, you know, the United Kingdom didn't ratify the convention until
00:54:17
Speaker
the mid-90s. The US, for example, was one of the earliest ratifieds. It ratified almost immediately. countries for different reasons ratify when they wanted. But so it's got to be
00:54:31
Speaker
It's going to be the 1970s. It's going to be the date of ratification. It's also going to be the date of what laws are on the books. In Syria, I believe the law of 1968 made it illegal to sell or buy antiquities. You have the 1968 law, and then you have the 1970 convention. Any item coming out of Syria will automatically need to predate
00:55:00
Speaker
1970 and 1968. So you'll see like a lot of these like really nice, very incredibly sort of important artifacts say from Palmyra and they all have a conveniently. They were acquired somehow prior to 1968 or right on the dot. It makes them legal because of the way the ratification. If you remember in, I think it was in 2019,
00:55:29
Speaker
there was the sale at Christie's of the head of Tutankhamun for 3.8 million pounds sterling or something like that, some credible figure. And it created a huge, you know, it became a big scandal, it became a big issue with the Egyptians claiming, no, no, no, this was looted.
00:55:56
Speaker
in the 70s, and we want it back, and the owners were saying, no, no, we've had this. It was some Italian family. And Christie's were saying, no, no, we can sell it then, and the paperwork is OK. And what I found most shocking was that no one was disputing that it was looted. Christie's was not disputing it was looted.
00:56:19
Speaker
The owners, the family who owned the item, were not disputing that it was looted. And the Egyptians were not disputing that it was looted. The argument was not on whether it was looted or not. The argument was that it was looted before 1970 or after 1970. That was the fight.
00:56:36
Speaker
It didn't matter, it's okay. So if you seal it before 1970, it's fine. If you seal it after 1970 or after the date of the ratification, if that's what's there for you. I mean, it was about when it was stolen or not, whether it was stolen or not. If everybody agrees it was stolen, why can't we give it back? And that's kind of part of the problem that exists in the world today when it comes to, and it's a valuable market.
Heritage as a Unifying Factor
00:57:06
Speaker
It's a very important one. And you have to remember that the demand side is Western, Northern, Northern Europe, Western Europe and the United States. And they're the ones with the money. And so it's to their benefit. You go to any major museum around the global, you know, you go, you go to the Louvre in Paris, you go to the British Museum in
00:57:34
Speaker
in London, you go to the any of the big museums in Berlin, you know, you go to the you go to any of these major museums. And I guarantee you, not I guarantee you know, and I know that almost every single item there is going to be looted from someone else's country, someone else's culture. You know, if the British Museum was only going to house artifacts from
00:58:02
Speaker
the United Kingdom, it's going to be a very, very small collection, tiny collection. So you see what I'm saying? It's like these museums are filled with artifacts that come from somewhere else. And these were not donated by these countries. They were not given away for free. They were not sold willingly or legally. They were looted.
00:58:26
Speaker
You could say, yeah, it was OK back then. Yes, this was part of the world order back then. Yes, this was during the time of colonialism and imperialism and so on and so forth. But, you know, we can we can make restitution. We can make new arrangements. We can recognize that really don't own these items. They're not ours to do as we will and sell on. I mean, OK, so let's say you are
00:58:55
Speaker
private collector X, and you inherited this wonderful sort of Egyptian, I don't know, statue or sarcophagus. And when your grandfather or great grandfather acquired it, it was acceptable. But you know today that this is not acceptable behavior anymore. So how about we reclassify your possession as not a
00:59:24
Speaker
possession of private property, which you can do what you will with, you can smash it up, because technically you can take it and smash it into little pieces. It's yours, it's your personal property, even though it has immense value. Okay, you can sell it.
00:59:40
Speaker
to someone else. You can take it and hide it and the world will never ever ever be able to see it again. You can bury it. You can do whatever you like with it. It's your personal property. How do we change that designation from personal property I can do anything I like with to I am the caretaker?
00:59:57
Speaker
I am going to look after it and when I no longer want the candle, I will return it back to its original. There are ways to do this, but at the very least start by recognizing that you don't actually really technically own this item because it's not yours.
01:00:16
Speaker
the people where this piece came from. That's the very simplest, simplest of steps. I'm not saying it's a good solution. The best solution is obviously to start thinking about how do we, you know, restitute and recompense, especially countries where, you know, they
01:00:36
Speaker
They are in a position to take this material back. I think there are some parts, if you're in the middle of a war, I wouldn't recommend you return materials back there. We have other sort of solutions that are complicated, they're difficult, but maybe not a good idea. But a country like Greece, we're still holding on to the Algan marbles.
01:01:03
Speaker
the Parthenon marbles, we're still holding onto them. We can return those back and make some sort of arrangement or put them on like long-term loan where we give you half pack and we keep a half and then after so many years we switch around and so everybody gets to see them and they get to go back to their own place and there are ways to deal with this.
01:01:29
Speaker
Yeah, one would hope we would be at this point. I'm also involved in a project now where we try to finally give back a collection from Alaska from indigenous peoples. There was a private collection here in Switzerland that we want to give back to them. And if that person for some reason or that group is unable to receive this for whatever reason,
01:01:54
Speaker
then there are ways, at the very least recognize that it's not your private property to burn, bury, hide, sell, whatever.
01:02:06
Speaker
Maybe as a final question, because I liked it really much when I read your article. You wrote that to safeguard Syria's future, the people need an identity based on a shared history that unites them across religious and political lines. How would you facilitate such a process? The war in Syria
01:02:35
Speaker
has been very brutal on its people. The country has ruptured across every possible cleavage, social, sectarian, ethnic, you name it, any cleavage that has existed in that society has essentially ruptured.
01:03:00
Speaker
It's going to be a real, real challenge to put Syria back together again after what has happened. And today we need to find
01:03:11
Speaker
something that's any Syrian anywhere in Syria would find some would be able to recognize today. Someone from the south of Syria has very little in common with someone from the east or someone from the coastal area, et cetera, because of the terrible things that have happened. But every Syrian knows who Queen's Anubias.
01:03:30
Speaker
Every Syrian knows that the first alphabet came from Ras Shamra-Ugarit, Zhanuya from Palma-Ira, Ras Shamra-Ugarit from the coastal region. Every Syrian knows of the Kingdom of Ebla, which is, you know, in the Hama region. Every Syrian knows the great mosque in Aleppo, and so on and so forth.
01:03:55
Speaker
or the crack to Chevalier. So that's a common denominator. And that can then be something to be used to start the conversation between Syrians.
01:04:08
Speaker
And Syrians from all these different communities, irrespective of the conflict around them, somewhere along the line, there are groups of Syrians in Idlib, in Deirah, in Damascus, in Latakia, in Deirizur, in Raqqa, in Hasak, somehow participated in the protection and preservation of trying to save what they can.
01:04:37
Speaker
So even though they might not agree politically, ethnically, socially, whatever, but they did participate in some sort of activity that is shared across the whole thing. It's those kind of shared experiences, that kind of shared knowledge, shared kind of contexts that may become the
01:04:59
Speaker
if you will, opener the way in which people can begin to talk to each other. I bring somebody from the north or from the south. I put them in a room. What are they going to talk about? What's the one thing that they can start to talk about that perhaps won't immediately result in some sort of terrible feeling of pain, anguish, hurt or you did this to me. I did this to you.
01:05:25
Speaker
which that conversation has to be had. I'm not saying it doesn't have to be had. Yes, you can't just hide it, bury it, but you've got to be able to start building kind of some sort of conversation, some sort of confidence, some sort of, some measure of calm. And you have to, and one of the most basic rules of negotiation is you also need a safe space, a neutral space. When either side feels threatened,
01:05:53
Speaker
And a museum or an archaeological site could be that because I take a museum, like the Museum of Damascus, which contains artifacts and items from all over Syria. And I bring representatives from all over Syria and I put them in that room.
01:06:12
Speaker
And immediately, the Syrian from Latakia will recognize what comes from his region or her region. The Syrian from Deir Ezzor will recognize what comes from his region or their region. So immediately, they feel that they are somehow represented in that room, that they're not excluded. And that's a tiny step, but it will have a major impact.
01:06:39
Speaker
Yeah. On starting that conversation. And that's why I think saving serious past is about ensuring that Syrians will have a future
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:06:50
Speaker
as well. Because if we destroy that as well, then we'll have nothing.
01:06:54
Speaker
Yeah, that was, that was very, very interesting and great for me also to read this, this idea. Thank you. Thank you very much for your insights and taking the time. It was extremely interesting for me to hear. It's a pleasure. Very happy. Thank you for doing this. And you know, thank you for the interest. Of course. Thank you very much. And hopefully see you in some conference one day, conference somewhere for sure.
01:07:29
Speaker
All right, that's it for this episode. I wanted to cover this topic since a long time and learned a lot researching it, especially thanks to the insights of Dr. Amr Al-Azam. So if you enjoyed it as well, please follow and subscribe to this podcast. You can even support it over on Patreon. I hope you will tune in in about two weeks for another edition of Archaeological Context with Dr. Noah.
01:08:18
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.