Friday, April 1st, 2016 | Posted by WorldTribune.com

Cultural barbarians for the ages: ISIL, Taliban, Chairman Mao

Special to WorldTribune.com

By John J. Metzler

UNITED NATIONS — The modern day barbarians have been routed from the ancient city of Palmyra, but the destruction left in the wake of the nearly year long Islamic State occupation has been near catastrophic. After five years of conflict, war torn Syria sees the fruits of limited cease fires allowing observers to gaze upon a near apocalyptic humanitarian and physical landscape.

That’s why the liberation of the ancient city of Palmyra is key; signaling a significant setback for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, (ISIL) and hopefully now a turning point from wanton destruction to the eventual restoration and preservation of Syria itself.

The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO) stated clearly, “Palmyra contains the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient world. From the 1st to the 2nd century, the art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, married Graeco-Roman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences.”

ISIL destroyed the Baal Shamin temple in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra on Aug. 25, 2015. / AFP

Yet UNESCO’s Director Irina Bukova warned, “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished.”

After ISIL captured Palmyra, it turned to destroying archaeological sites such as two 2,000 year old temples, the Arch, and turning the Roman amphitheater into an execution ground. ISIL claims such pre-Islamic structures are idolatrous and should be smashed and sacked.

Following the occupation, Maamoun Abdulkarim, the Syrian antiquities director, advised 80 percent of the Unesco World Heritage site nonetheless remains intact.

Beyond its hateful political ideology, ISIL has spread a noxious anti-cultural logic that it must destroy the legacy of pre-Islamic civilization. Thus when ISIL seized Mosul in Iraq, it trashed the famed Museum and later sent its demolition teams to blast the storied ruins of Iraqi civilization. And the same in Syria. Blasting, bulldozing and looting art treasures from the past and in some cases allowing more portable objects to enter the global antiquities black markets.

Such damage is not unique. In Afghanistan in the Spring of 2001, the Taliban’s Islamic extremists targeted age-old Buddhist statues in Bamiyan. The world watched in horror but did nothing as the Taliban thugs blasted statues dating from the 7th century AD into oblivion.

Such cultural barbarism is not unique to the Middle East. During China’s so-called “Cultural Revolution” between 1966-1976, Red Guards, the self appointed watchdogs of the communist new order, burned books, Buddhist sutras and trashed religious Temples all in the name of Chairman Mao. In the Spring of 1966, the mindless terror which led to opposing the “Four Olds” of China’s civilization was unleashed by the paramilitary Red Guards.

Chinese devotees of Communist leader Mao Zedong burn books in 1966, during the country’s Cultural Revolution. / Zhou Thong / Newscom

The Washington D.C. based “Antiquities Coalition” created a map of Culture Under Threat to highlight the threat to sites such as St. Elijah’s Monastery in Iraq, Palymra and the Mosul Museum. The map lists 700 heritage sites throughout the 22 states of the Arab League, 230 of the sites which have since been destroyed.

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, offered interesting views on the recapture of Palmyra by the Syrian army backed by the Russians. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Johnson called Bashir Assad a “vile tyrant” but added “the victory of Assad is a victory for archaeology, a victory for all those who care about the ancient monuments.” Johnson called for the top notch expertise of British archeologists to help restore this ancient city known as “the Bride of the Desert.”

Beyond ISIL’s cultural barbarism we see the humanitarian disaster unfolding inside Syria.

Addressing the Security Council, Stephen O’Brien the UN’s Humanitarian Chief spoke of the slightly improved situation in light of the ceasefire. Yet, “Many of the 4.6 million people in need in besieged and hard to reach areas still remain outside our reach to to insecurity and obstructions.” Essentially, the UN relief has reached only about a third of the nearly five million people internally displaced inside Syria.

Treating Syria’s humanitarian symptoms remain admirable, but the political Problem must be solved.

Though some quarters may question if Palmyra’s liberation from Islamic State by the military forces of the Syrian dictator Bashir Assad should be celebrated, the facts favor this positive development. The Assad’s at their worst never ruined or wrecked ancient Roman and Greek treasures scattered throughout the country. On the other hand, Islamic State policy is to deliberately desecrate, destroy and loot pre-Islamic treasures. Moreover, a century from now who will remember this evil ruler, but all will still cherish millennia of civilization which stand as silent testament to Syria’s ancient heritage.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014).

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Demand still high for ISIL’s stolen antiquities from Palmyra, elsewhere

 Jim Michaels, USA TODAY6:49 a.m. EDT April 1, 2016

Archaeologists said many of the ancient ruins of Palmyra, Syria, can be restored after Syrian forces took back the city from ISIS.Video provided by Newsy Newslook

The historical city of Palmyra with the Fakhr-al-Din al-Ma’ani Castle, also known as Palmyra Castle, in the background, on March 31, 2016.(Photo: STR, European Pressphoto Agency)

WASHINGTON — The recapture of the ancient city of Palmyra by Syrian forces takes away a key revenue source of looted antiquities for the Islamic State, but global demand for the stolen valuables persists despite international efforts to stop the sales.

The Islamic State has earned millions of dollars from the sale of antiquities looted from throughout Syria and Iraq by establishing an elaborate system to smuggle and sell the goods on the open market.

“This is carefully managed,” said Amr Al-Azm, an associate professor at Shawnee State University and former official in the Syrian government’s antiquities department. “It’s a resource they exploit it as they need to.”

Palmyra was recaptured last weekend by Russian-backed Syrian forces, nearly a year after the Islamic State, also called ISIL or ISIS, seized the city and destroyed some of its most iconic Roman-era structures and looted other artifacts it could sell.

Countless antiquities are already on the market, which has proved difficult to curb. Criminal cases are hard to prosecute without evidence that a dealer or broker knew an item had been pilfered.

“It’s a huge weak link,” said Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, a group that pushes for action to crack down on antiquities smuggling.

Determining the origin of some common items, such as Roman coins, is a challenge. Unique items often are kept off the market until there is less scrutiny. The Internet has made it easy to market items to a global audience.

The State Department has made efforts to warn dealers and auction houses about the looted pieces, but unscrupulous dealers might look the other way about their origin.

“With antiquities, it’s very much a gray market,” Davis said.

For its part, the Islamic State recognizes the financial windfall in looted antiquities. It established an antiquities division, according to intelligence gathered in a U.S. raid in Syria last year that killed a top leader of the militant group.

“ISIL does not just passively tax the sale of antiquities by others,” Andrew Keller, a top State Department official, said in a speech last year. “It actively controls the trade to ensure maximum profit.”

Intelligence gathered from the raid showed that the Islamic State issued licenses for people to loot, collected a tax on sales and prevented unauthorized people from stealing from archaeological sites.

Dealers and brokers are becoming more aware of the illicit trade, which should help reduce the demand for the items. The FBI last year warned art dealers that anyone purchasing looted items from Syria or Iraq could be prosecuted under laws against financing terrorism.

“This is not a victimless crime,” Davis said.

Despite the Islamic State’s looting and rampage, the ancient part of Palmyra, aUNESCO world heritage site, appears to have remained intact. Last year, the militant group’s initial destruction of the city included the Temple of Bel, the Arch of Triumphand Baalshamin Temple.

“There is still quite a lot left,” Al-Azm said. “It could have been a lot of worse.”

Syrian and Russian officials are just beginning to assess the damage. On Thursday, Russian engineers arrived in Syria to help clear mines and improvised explosives from the city.

UNESCO’s director general, Irina Bokova, spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin about efforts to preserve the ancient city now that it is in Syrian government hands.

There has been limited new damage. Statues and other items that had not been removed from the main museum before the militants seized the city were defaced, said Michael Danti, academic director of the Cultural Heritage Initiatives at the American School of Oriental Research.

His organization, which is working with the State Department to document damage to archaeological sites in the region, examined recent satellite images that also showed new damage to the Valley of the Tombs, the Western Necropolis and Southeast Necropolis.

“They tend to destroy the most significant parts of a site,” Danti said. “They choose targets that have multiple meanings for different audiences.”

Over the past year, the Islamic State has flooded the market with items looted not only from Palmyra, but also from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and other areas the terror group controls in Iraq and Syria.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” Danti said. Among the items on the market are funerary statues, illuminated manuscripts and Roman coins.

At its peak last year the Islamic State controlled about 5,000 archaeological sites, according to the State Department. Since then the Islamic State has lost 40% of the ground it controlled in Iraq and less in Syria, according to the Pentagon.

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Law Enforcement Focuses on Asia Week in Inquiry of Antiquities Smuggling

By TOM MASHBERGMARCH 17, 2016

Homeland Security Investigations officers removing a piece of art on Wednesday from a gallery on East 67th Street in Manhattan. CreditTina Fineberg for The New York Times

In the seven years since its founding, Asia Week New York has grown from a small promotional effort by a few Manhattan art galleries to a splashy, 10-day event that combines museum exhibitions with art dealing. Last year, organizers say, it led to $360 million in sales.

But this year, Asia Week, which ends Saturday, has become the focal point of an aggressive and unusual law enforcement effort.

Federal officials working with the Manhattan district attorney’s office have seized on the festival to orchestrate a series of daily raids that have netted more than a half-dozen antiquities that the authorities say were looted overseas, then smuggled out for later sale by auction houses or dealers.

“For too long, those engaged in the criminal trade in antiquities have viewed the occasional seizure as simply the cost of doing business,” said Matthew Bogdanos, the assistant Manhattan district attorney who obtained search warrants for the raids.

But the seizures have upset dealers who say the sudden confiscations are a heavy-handed approach. Lark Mason, an Asian antiquities expert and dealer who is chairman of Asia Week, said gallery owners are ready to work with law enforcement when questions arise about objects.

“Why are they not approaching these galleries instead of treating them like criminals trying to do something underhanded,” he said. The items seized this week were all publicized by their vendors online and in catalogs, he said, not sneaked “in to be sold in some smoky back room.”

The seizures are part of Operation Hidden Idol, a nine-year investigation into antiquities smuggling that officials say has netted more than 2,600 items and reams of data about illicit trafficking. Typically, the authorities say, the smugglers create false paperwork to certify an object was acquired lawfully, often fooling purchasers and other dealers down the line.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance, said the raids ensured that items could be confiscated and that alerting dealers beforehand might send the objects underground. Many seized items have been returned to their countries of origin, Mr. Vance added.

Late Thursday, Homeland Security Investigations agents and the district attorney’s office added to their tally of confiscations by seizing several items from the Nancy Wiener Gallery on East 74th Street, which specializes in Asian objects. Officials said they removed a limestone sculpture of Hindu deities valued at $35,000 and a bronze Buddha worth $850,000, as well as business records.

Seizures cannot be good for the Asian antiquity market. But it is not clear what impact they are having this week on sales, gallery owners said. Many collectors are savvy and familiar with widespread reports about Subhash Kapoor, a former Manhattan dealer who is accused of having run the largest antiques smuggling operation ever uncovered in the United States.

Mr. Kapoor primarily dealt in objects from South Asia — India, Pakistan and Afghanistan in particular — and those are the sorts of items that have been seized in the past week by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations. There have been fewer reported instances of stolen antiquities from Japan, China or Korea turning up in the United States.

“Historically, Asian governments haven’t monitored their antiquities in the same way” as nations like Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt, said Leila A. Amineddoleh, the former director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation. “It makes them vulnerable.”

Mr. Kapoor, who is awaiting trial in India, has been the pivotal figure in Operation Hidden Idol, and the sheer volume of illicit artifacts he is said to have donated or sold — hundreds are in museums around the world — has raised questions about the level of scrutiny being practiced in both the art market and the museum world. Museums in the United States, Australia and Singapore, among others, have returned items obtained from Mr. Kapoor, many valued at well above $1 million. The Antiquities Coalition, which fights illicit antiquities trafficking, said major dealers and auction houses have the resources to conduct due diligence and should coordinate more with law enforcement and source countries.

“The burden of proof should fall on these global businesses,” said Deborah M. Lehr, the coalition’s founder, “not on the individuals and countries who are victims of the illicit trade, to validate antiquities before any sale.”

Some experts say many problems would be solved if law enforcement shared information about suspect items rather than publicized eye-grabbing confiscations. The Committee for Cultural Policy, an advocacy group for collectors, has called for a digital system under which museums and collectors could document items publicly and address foreign claims in a neutral forum.

“Instead of allowing auction houses, art dealers or collectors to research pieces beforehand, authorities wait for them to be offered for sale and then seize them with great fanfare,” said Kate Fitz Gibbon, a lawyer for the committee. “The first anyone knows that an artwork is stolen is through a Homeland Security press release.”

This week’s seizures are far from the largest set of raids conducted by federal agents tracking illicit antiquities. In 2008, hundreds of federal agents swooped down on 13 locations in California with warrants for objects at institutions like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.

The bulk of the items were from Southeast Asia, and the man accused of directing the smuggling ring was convicted last year of making false declarations while importing antiquities.

Cases that involve prosecution are rare, though, and penalties are often light. In one New York federal case, an antiquities dealer in 2012 admitted smuggling ancient coffins and funerary items worth $2.5 million into the United States using false documents. Though prosecutors asked that he be sentenced to at least four years in prison, the judge gave him 200 hours of community service and a fine of $200.

Mr. Bogdanos and Mr. Vance said stern justice must be meted out to antiquities smugglers and to anyone in the trade who falsifies documents that accompany items.

“If you don’t send that message, you don’t deter others,” Mr. Vance said. “Antiquities raiding is not an acceptable business model.”

Correction: March 22, 2016 

An article on Friday about seizures of antiquities by law enforcement officials during Asia Week New York, using information from the website of Leila A. Amineddoleh’s law firm, misstated the connection of Ms. Amineddoleh, who commented on Asian governments’ monitoring of antiquities, to the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation. She is a former director, not the current one.

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Mapping the Destruction of UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Posted on Mar, 16, 2016

Contributed to WCHV by Danielle

Over the last few years the world has been watching helplessly the growth of intentional destruction of heritage sites in the Middle East, and therefore, tracking and finding ways to protect these sites is a critical goal.

The Washington, D.C.-based “Antiquities Coalition” was recently launched to create a map of Culture Under Threat in order to highlight the massive amount of deliberate destruction happening to historical sites in the Middle East and North Africa. This map include treasured sites like St. Elijah’s, Palmyra, the Mosul Museum, and the Mosque of the Prophet Younus and many more that the ISIS terrorists have intentionally left in destruction. The map only includes public data showing museums and sites designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The map also highlights 700 heritage sites throughout the 22 states of the Arab League, of which 230 have been destroyed. The mapping application includes a swiping tool to see the loss of heritage sites in the Middle East and North Africa since the 2011 Arab Spring. It is the goal of organization to help raise awareness about the extent of the destruction across Iraq, Syria, and the entire region.

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Addressing the illicit trafficking of cultural property at the end of the market chain

13.03.2016 – Culture Sector

On Wednesday 2 March 2016, the Permanent Missions of Jordan and Italy to the United Nations, together with UNESCO, INTERPOL, and UNODC, organized the First Meeting on Art Markets of Stolen Works of Art as part of the partnership initiative “Protecting Cultural Heritage –an Imperative for Humanity: Acting together against the destruction and trafficking of cultural property by terrorist groups and organized crime”. It was chaired by the Ambassador H.E. Dina Kawar (Jordan) and Ambassador H.E. Inigo Lambertini (DPR of Italy) with the participation of other permanent representatives of member states, Ms. Emily Rafferty, Former director of Metropolitan Museum, as well as representatives of UNESCO, INTERPOL, UNODC, Antiquities Coalition and others.

Traffickers are also masters at coming up with fake documents that purport to show that the disputed object had been long held by mysterious collectors, now conveniently deceased. Such lack of evidence often means that the authorities often choose to avoid pursuing criminal charges in return for reclaiming the objects, which results in shady dealers getting off the hook, experts say.

To Fight ISIS, Art Dealers & Archaeologists Join Forces

Catherine Chapman — Mar 11 2016

Inspired by the destruction of ancient sites, the #NEWPALMYRA project is digitally rebuilding cultural heritage like The Temple of Bel located in Palmyra, Syria. Render by CEBAS VT.

Stretching 20cm high, the exaggerated feminine curves of Halaf terracotta figurines are a symbol of fertility, dating back to Neolithic times in Syria.

Neil Brodie is an illicit trade expert who spent three months searching for these items online, now on a list of cultural objects at risk by the International Council of Museums, on eBay.co.uk. He found 60, sold by seven dealers typically based outside London, for an average price of £102. Brodie thinks the majority are fake, but the rest could be from ISIS-held areas in Syria and Iraq. At an art auction, similar figurines could be worth up to an estimated $1,500.

The value of cultural heritage has always been a contentious issue within the world of art. Things intensified in 2014, when, as a global society, we began to bear witness to the irreversible amount of cultural cleansing being performed by ISIS in places like Mosul, Raqqa, and now Palmyra. While an unknown amount of antiques and artifacts have either been lost or destroyed, in a once divided scene of archaeologists, museums, collectors and dealers, a coalition of culture is starting to fight back.

A screenshot of The Antiquities Coalition’s Map of Culture Under Threat. Photo: The Antiquities Coalition

“There’s tons of material that could be from Syria,” says Brodie, who has been searching for pieces amid reports that looting by ISIS is being fuelled by demand from established antiquity markets like the US, Europe and China. “It could have come out of Syria 20 years ago or it could have come out last week. I don’t know. There’s no way of knowing.”

Plundering culturally rich locations for objects to be sold illegally on the legitimate market has been around since the discovery of buried treasure, and is a problem not confined to ISIS alone. Despite the presence of nation-based cultural property laws, conflict areas around the world face the loss of heritage, which archaeologists like Brodie believe will not be stopped if commercial values continue to be designated to these ancient items.

Yet, the situation in Syria has given way to something else entirely. Many, including Brodie, warn of how exaggerated numbers related to how much ISIS is making from the illicit sale of antiquities—reported as the terrorist organization’s second biggest earner, anywhere between $4 million to billions—entice looting, rather than diminish it, potentially bringing further damage to monuments and archaeological resources.

“It encourages Syrians who are without jobs or other resources to become looters and treasure hunters in their own backyard,” says Kate Fitz Gibbon, an art and cultural heritage lawyer based in the US. “The US State Department and archaeological extremists have hijacked the Syrian crisis to claim that cultural losses are due to a multi-billion-dollar market in illicit antiquities backed by ISIS, which does not and never has existed,” she tells The Creators Project over email.

Archaeologists and antiquity collectors and dealers share a passion for the past and its preservation, a mutual devotion that has, historically, never been communicated. While most archaeologists insist that cultural artifacts should remain in their local contexts, campaigners for the trade take an international view that artifacts should be shared, especially when some countries, like Syria, do not have the appropriate infrastructures to protect their own heritage.

Before: Palmyra Mausoleum of Mohammad Bin Ali. Photo from militant social media account, courtesy The Antiquities Coalition.

After: Palmyra Mausoleum of Mohammad Bin Ali. Photo from militant social media account, courtesy The Antiquities Coalition

Although museums may be heavily dependent on donations by these antiquity collectors, however against the sale of looted material the legitimate market is, public examples of stolen artefacts in auction house catalogs have made the industry difficult to trust. And in spite of a lack of concrete evidence of so-called “blood antiquities” flooding the showrooms of New York or London, the prospect of terrorism being funded by the legitimate trade has called for the complete shutdown of the sale of Syrian antiquities, both by the UN and the US’ Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act (H.R. 1493). The bill, currently before Senate, will stop the import of antiquities into the United States that were illegally removed from Syria as of March 15, 2011, legislation similar to restrictions placed on cultural objects taken from Iraq after 1990.

However, since most looted items typically go underground for a period of five to ten years, according to US Homeland Security, establishing whether a piece has been stolen at this stage is on the borderline of impossible, making any policy seem reactive, rather than preventative.

“If you shut down the antiquities trade in the market countries, looting is still going to continue,” says James E. McAndrew, an international art theft expert and former member of the State Department’s Cultural Property Task Force. “The pieces are going to find a home and a buyer because it’s not always US-driven.”

McAndrew’s firsthand experience in dealing with investigations into the illicit trafficking of cultural heritage items globally, is that the most sought after pieces are likely to remain in neighboring countries—in Syria’s case, oil-rich destinations like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

While Saddam Hussein-era objects did make their way onto US shores—having since been returned to Iraq—McAndrew explains that previous claims of Gulf War antiquities showing up in US markets have yet to yield any results, and that the State Department’s $5 million award for any information pertaining to ISIS-financed cultural heritage items is unlikely to produce any returns either.

McAndrew and others feel that more needs to be done in source countries, efforts that international bodies and the 1970 UNESCO Convention, aimed at preventing the illicit trade of cultural heritage, have failed to address proactively. Time and time again, improvements to this problem have been obstructed by various art world agendas, but in the abomination that is ISIS, a new period has begun.

“Different entities, the archaeological community, collectors, auction houses and museums, are trying to reach across the table to come up with some solutions,” says McAndrew. “That’s finally the right thing to do.”

In September 2015, the State Department partnered with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to bring together a range of experts, all affected by the ISIS threat to culture and those objects yielding a bountiful information about our shared human civilization. Whether trader or excavator, all are solution-driven.

A digitally recreated Temple of Bel located in Palmyra, Syria, an example of digital recreation from the #NEWPALMYRA project. Render by Areebonary.

“What I think we can all agree on is that this is a major global crime,” says Deborah Lehr, Chairman of the Antiquities Coalition. “There are many players and it’s very complicated to determine what the tract is. It’s no different to what happens in the gun or sex trade.

Lehr is working with the University of Chicago and a team of archaeologists, economists and sociologists to produce an accurate estimate on how much money is being made off the sale of looted antiquities in the areas of Iraq and Syria.

“The biggest challenge in this field is that there’s no real information or statistics on the size of this illegal trade,” says Lehr, a statement that even the trade itself might agree with.

On the other side of the Atlantic, differences are also being put aside to find a way to tackle the illegal trade of cultural heritage, endeavors that may be too late for Syria, but will aim to prevent this happening in whichever country that next finds themselves amidst war and terror.

“In Britain, we have open dialogue with the trade to try to come together with some kind of pragmatic compromise between the interest of all groups,” says Brodie. “We could sit around for another 20 years doing nothing, or we could try to sit down and try to get some kind of agreement in place, which would probably be far from ideal, but would be better than nothing.”

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Noticia clasificada en: Terrorismo islamista

Un mapa interactivo elaborado por la oenegé “Antiquities Coalition” indica los 230 lugares históricos trascendentales desde un punto de vista arqueológico que han sido destruidos en Oriente Próximo por el terrorismo islamista, fundamentalmente del autodenominado Estado Islámico, pero también de otras organizaciones criminales como Al Qaeda o el Frente al Nusra. Otros 500 lugares estarían actualmente amenazados.

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Egypt’s History Is Being Lost to Criminals

By: Tess Davis and Blythe Bowman

Posted: 04/30/2014 2:41 pm EDT Updated: 06/30/2014 5:59 am EDT

A 12th century proverb warns, “Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids.” That may have been true before the Arab Spring, but today, not even the pyramids are sacred. Egypt’s rich archaeological heritage is falling victim to looters, thieves, and smugglers and it is not alone. The illicit trade in antiquities — “cultural racketeering” or “trafficking culture” — spans the globe.

Egypt’s government is making headlines with its pleas for assistance in combatting this plunder, branding it the work of potentially dangerous and organized syndicates. The United States is a primary destination for the so called “blood” antiquities now flooding from there, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia. What does this mean in practical Research (SCCJR). Pillaging ruins may seem a romantic pursuit — see Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider — but it is first and foremost a crime.

In one of the art world’s great contradictions, while most countries have a thriving legal market for artifacts, few have any legal source. And it is more crucial to remember antiquities trafficking is not a victimless or even white collar crime. While auction houses, galleries, and museums boast a culture of respectability and sophistication, when digging beyond this veneer, we often find they are not far removed from brutality and violence. One just need read the headlines to see how many top collectors are tangibly connected by their beautiful objects to the Holocaust, the Cambodian Killing Fields, and the Egyptian bloodshed.

Unfortunately many questions still surround the illicit antiquities trade’s mechanics and scale. Official data are scarce as cultural property thefts often go unreported, and national crime statistics are usually recorded according to theft circumstances, not type of object stolen. Moreover, the antiquities market is largely fed by the clandestine looting of archaeological sites, both known and yet undiscovered. This means that, when estimating the size and nature of the illicit trade, the only true assessment is: we don’t know.

If we wait to answer such questions before taking action, however, there will not be a past left to protect. Research paints a grim picture of the scope and frequency of looting around the world. A 2008 survey asked archaeologists to share their personal experiences. Of the nearly 2,500 participants, working in over 100 countries, 79 percent responded they had had personal experiences with looting while in the field. What’s more, a quarter reported encountering on-site looting in progress, and nearly half that those experiences were not isolated. The data clearly indicate that looting — which again feeds antiquities trafficking — is globally pervasive, commonplace, and iterative.

Yet all this knowledge has not prompted change. The “source” countries home to sought after antiquities — the Egypts, Cambodias, and Perus — lack the means to stop the trade. The “demand” countries like the U.S. lack the will. The great work being done by Homeland Security Investigations, which Egypt just announced will return eight recovered artifacts to Cairo next month, is sadly the exception not the rule.

There is clearly more that needs to be done. This month at the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, during a roundtable organized by the nonprofit Antiquities Coalition, the Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim urged academia, governments, and the media to give this issue its due. He is right: we need more — and better — research, policy, and coverage, that recognizes antiquities trafficking is not just a matter of preservation, but one of economics and even security.

In the meantime, it seems more tax dollars go to funding this transnational crime than fighting it. For example, the National Gallery of Australia spent $5 million on a single looted Indian artifact, purchased from the infamous smuggler Subhash Kapoor in 2008. If the museum had donated that money to the Antiquities Coalition for advocacy, SCCJR for research, or Egypt’s government for site protection — how much good could have been accomplished?

So what is the solution? We could elaborate on law and policy, but the best answer is the simplest. To borrow a phrase from WildAid’s landmark anti-ivory campaign, “when the buying stops,” the looting will too. Those who purchase antiquities must ensure these objects are not products of theft, civil unrest, or outright war. If one can afford a masterpiece, one can afford this due diligence. And for the rest of us? We must at least demand such responsibility from our publically funded institutions like museums.

If we don’t, Egypt’s great past may go from one of the world’s wonders, to one of its great cultural tragedies.

Tess Davis is an attorney and affiliate researcher in the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow. She previously served as the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation and is working with Cambodia to combat the illicit trade in the kingdom’s antiquities.

Blythe A. Bowman is an assistant professor of Criminal Justice in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government & Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has researched and written extensively on archaeological site looting and the illicit antiquities trade.

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