Among the most enduringly haunting memories of the Syrian civil war, as they will go down in history, are the pillage of Palmyra and the wanton destruction of its ancient artefacts and relics by Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), the extremist group that wants to take the region and the world back to the medieval times.
Palmyra, which has been variously termed as the “bride of the desert”, “jewel of the desert” and “Venice of the sands”, is an ancient city northeast of Damascus. It became embroiled in the Syrian conflict when Daesh took over last May and started riding roughshod over its valuable and unique heritage. The group took the people of Tadmur, a neighbouring village with a population of 70,000, as internal refugees.
The 10 long months of strife, before the city was liberated earlier this year, were enough to cause lasting damage. Now, the people and the city are both beginning to rebuild a semblance of life they once had.
Emma Cunliffe, a consultant for Heritage and Peace and an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, paints a heart-rending picture of life before and after Daesh. She terms the destruction in this area, a Unesco World Heritage site, as “ungodly”.
Because of its location, she says, so much of “amazing history has happened here. You’ve got the first cities, the first writing, some of the earliest codes.” It was once part of the Roman empire, and besides the sites referred to in the Bible and Jewish literature, here exist “some of the earliest sites that are quite sacred to Islam”.
Cunliffe said the fighting resulted in the abandonment of 40 ancient villages that go back more than 1,000 years and mosques that are 1,200 years old, which people still go to today.
British historian and novelist Tom Holland is one of the many who are enchanted by Palmyra, describing it as “an extraordinary fusion of classical and Iranian influences intermixed with various Arab influences”.
He talks of travellers from the west who sojourned in Palmyra on the way to the east, and the little-known fact that Syria was the western end of the famous Silk Road. Novelist Agatha Christie once stayed at the famous Zenobia Hotel, which now stands in a shambles.
Had the destruction of Palmyra not stopped in time, says Holland, it would have been a “loss for the whole world”. “This isn’t just about Middle Eastern history” but the relics in Mosul and Syria that were destroyed “were wellsprings of the entire global culture ... and global civilisation.” The stakes couldn’t be higher in terms of protecting and conserving them, he adds.
Perhaps that’s why the so-called liberation of Palmyra at the hands of the Baathist army — with the help of Russian airstrikes and soldiers setting up camp nearby, purportedly to defuse the 18,000 bombs planted by Daesh around the 2,000-year-old relic — was greeted with much cheer and exhilaration across the world.
Friends and foe joined in the celebrations. Simon Jenkins wrote in the “Guardian”: “The recapture of the Syrian desert city of Palmyra must lift the spirits of all who knew its former glory”. Former mayor of London Boris Johnson unabashedly wrote in the “Telegraph”: “Bravo for [Bashar Al] Assad — he is a vile tyrant but he has saved Palmyra from ISIL [Daesh]”, terming areas under Daesh’s control as a “foul statelet in the desert.”
A replica of the Palmyra’s Arch of Triumph, which was destroyed by Daesh, was made with the help of digital photography and displayed at Trafalgar Square. It is to be shown at Dubai and New York and later, at Palmyra.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent the St Petersburg Mariinsky Orchestra to play at the city in May to celebrate the recapture of Palmyra.
However, on the ground, much has already been lost. Statues and sarcophagi were defaced and smashed, heads severed, the Temple of Bel was destroyed while the Baalshamin Temple was blown up. Religious monuments, tombs, stones, marble fortifications, archaic living quarters dating back to the Roman emperor Diocletian were razed to the ground. The famous lion of Al-Lat, a 2,000-year-old statute of a lion holding a gazelle, was destroyed by Daesh’s demolition men. The Tower of Elahbel, Palmyra’s most distinct funerary monuments, the tombs of Lamiku and Atenaten and the Monumental Arch were also blown up.
The destruction by Daesh was, in fact, not restricted to “infidel structures”. Even Islamic structures were desecrated. A Mamluk castle opposite the heritage site endured its share of destruction. Shrines of scholars and intellectuals were ripped apart.
The tombs of Nizar Abu Bahaaeddine, a Sufi scholar who lived in Palmyra 500 years ago, was razed because Daesh zealots are against Sufism. Similarly, the tomb of Imam Ali, the descendent of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and revered by Sunnis and Shiites alike, was desecrated.
This was cultural vandalism of the utmost kind. Michael Danti, professor of archaeology at Boston University, says, “This is the antithesis of cultural heritage” as there are no appropriate words to describe what has happened.
Commenting on the utter destruction, Nancy Khalek, a religious and humanities studies professor at Browns University, says, “ISIS [Daesh] is arguing that their view is not corrupted but they are doing so in a very ahistorical way. They are claiming to be following a literal example but they are doing so in a very modern framework with the tools of modern warfare and institutions of modern nation states.”
The destruction of ancient sites is definitely part of the “ISIS [Daesh’s] propaganda strategy”, says Amr Al Azm, a Syrian professor of history and anthropology at the Shawnee State University, United States. Part of the propaganda strategy is the ability to be abrasive and bloody, commit atrocities and dress people in jumpsuits and parade them around and film the entire episode, he adds.
Muath Al Kassabeh, the Jordanian pilot captured by Daesh, was made to wear an orange jumpsuit and was filmed being burnt alive in a cage. In Palmyra, 82-year-old Khaled Al Asaad, the head of antiquities, was held captive for a month by Daesh, before he was executed last August.
The group interrogated him about hidden artefacts but he refused to divulge any information. The mutilated body of the antiquities scholar, who had been working on Palmyra since the early 1960s and authored many books on the subject, was strung on one of the columns at the site.
Expressing grief at the incident, the Director-General of Antiquities and Museums Maamoun Abdulkarim commented that Daesh had “executed one of the foremost experts on the ancient world”.
Although it is uncertain how long Palmyra’s “liberation” will last, given the current fractious civil war and which party is winning and that 300,000 people have been killed so far, Unesco is determined to safeguard the cultural artefacts, come what may.
Unesco’s Director-General Irina Bokova sounds resolute: “Palmyra is a pillar of Syrian identity and a source of dignity for many Syrians. Unesco is determined to ensure the safeguarding of this and other sites with all partners as part of broader humanitarian and peace building operations.”
Unesco is already working with Abdulkarim. It had sent a team of experts last April to assess the damage. The team found that despite the destruction, the “archaeological site of Palmyra retains a large part of its integrity and authenticity”.
At the 40th Unesco World Heritage Committee Meeting in Istanbul this month, measures to be taken to safeguard the Palmyra site will be deliberated upon and decisions taken accordingly.
Avenues should be opened up for Unesco to put greater emphasis on the pursuit of dealers of artefacts, especially in the West, as more precious objects from Palmyra smuggled via Turkey make their way into the markets in Europe and the US.
Danti, who is also a co-director of the Syrian Heritage Initiative at the American Schools of Oriental Research and monitors cultural damage in Syria and Iraq, says artefacts have become an important source of funding in what he calls as a “dual exploitative doctrine” for Daesh through highly organised operations.
Professor Fawaz Gerges from the London School of Economics agrees. Daesh have built “networks that allow them to traffic in cultural treasures” and have made “tens of millions of dollars selling artworks”, he says.
But Palmyra is a pot of gold in more ways than one. Apart from its rich artefacts, there are gas and oil fields that Daesh came to control. And as long as there are Daesh’s men controlling these fields around the city, the threat of the group recapturing it looms large.
Marwan Asmar is a writer based in Amman. He has a PhD in Political Science from Leeds University, UK.
