Priceless ancient Treasures torn out of the ground precious art ripped from walls and sold to the highest bidder 224 26 welcome to a multi-billion dollar Black Market nobody wants to talk about until now the grandest of Mankind's achievements reduced to obscene Commodities the spoils snatched up by wealthy collectors from Shady middlemen laundered through a network of liars and thieves it's a global crime wave where the cash ends up in the pockets of the world's worst criminals while nobody asks the big questions how can it still be happening welcome to a modern tragedy history itself dug
up destroyed sold off this is loot to understand the scale of looting historical artifacts look no further than modern Syria sophisticated and cynical religious Invaders literally dig pieces from the ground and sell them to Black Market dealers in Western countries to buy weapons and fight a war against the same countries Madness quite possibly the trade's main target buyers are ironically history enthusiasts and art afficionados in the United States and Europe representatives of the societies which Isis has pledged to destroy but when zealotry combines with political instability and the lack of international Courage the very history
of the world becomes a commodity people need to realize that they're taking part in international crime if they stop buying then they stop the market there will be no need for for the market it will become unfashionable welcome to loot in Syria a multi-billion dollar murderous mess and it isn't finished [Music] yet Ground Zero Syria an ancient land blessed with stunning archaeological wealth so Syria has always been this important area both for settlement uh and for trade and then obviously also for Invasion um so I think that's why archaeologically it's a very rich area home
to a dazzling past and a proud country it's the perfect setting for any ambitious fanatical religious group to gain a foothold the big moment came during the start of the the war in Syria in 2011 when very early on um cultural heritage became a casualty of of of of the war itself for Syria 2011 will be a fateful year and it will be D-Day for its Priceless cultural [Music] heritage Isis this Savage terrorist organization goes by many names Islamic State Isis dases ISO it's a stomping ground for Mad Men Misfits and murderers their plan to
drag the world back into the Dark Ages and to establish an Islamic caliphate within a politically vulnerable Syria but behind their brutality Islamic state is fighting a very modern war their weapon of choice social media but how does an organization like Isis help fund an invasion that's right with the proceeds of looted ancient Treasures how much Isis earns from looting ancient artifacts is difficult to assess the group clearly encourages and facilitates the trade and the biggest irony the riches pouring into their coffers will come from the same people they're hellbent on slaughtering while those trying
to stem the tide will face scenes of appalling horror and immeasurable loss [Music] it all starts during what will become known as the Arab Spring the Arab Spring uh started in Tunisia with people uh in Tunisia taking the streets because they uh were upset about the political and economic situation December 2010 a fruit seller in Tunisia sets himself a light in a desperate protest against the country's brutal autocratic regime his suicide Sparks violent protests across the country there's extraordinary anger here mixing with the smell of tear gas either this is the first Arab revolution of
the 21st century or it will be brutally suppressed it feels like change is in the air long repressed people across the Middle East and North Africa follow T isu's lead they rise on mass then it continued to Egypt Yemen Sudan and um I think it it has affected a lot uh the views of cultural [Applause] [Music] heritage in Egypt thousands of protesters converge onto Tahir Square government Forces fight back they let gas canisters and rubber bullets do the talking there are plenty of people here bent on confrontation they of course would call it retaliation inspired
by what they see happening across the Middle East syrians take to the streets a bloody military Crackdown will lead to tens of thousands of Civilian deaths Millions displaced at a protracted Civil War a festering wound has been opened within Syrian Society ready for radical islamists to infect and Syria's Peerless ancient past will bear the brunt of it all the Arab Spring has affected uh Heritage positively and negatively negatively it raised the rate of looting it raised the rate of land grabbing where many of the archaeological sites were taken for unplan development for illegal uh land
sale the men and women in the streets record everything and broadcast it to the world it's a social media Revolution protesters communicate and organize online and there's precious little the government can do to shut them down it changes the way the world reports and consumes its news you don't need a Cadet ship to become a Frontline reporter all you need is a cell phone it's a shot across the boughs for traditional media to comp compete with bloggers and YouTubers they'll have to Dish up the same clickbait and that will play right into Islamic State's hands
social media will become a formidable weapon in their Armory it'll be used not just to recruit but also to loot it's not the first time social upheaval war and Invasion have offered opportunities for rampant looting the removal of Art and cultural heritage uh kind of furthers this this destructive advance that comes from conflict and control so the the Romans for example there's there's plenty of evidence even in in Roman art of of Romans sacking and pillaging uh the the areas they conquer and bringing home symbolic spoils uh this this has been a feature of conflict
uh for for Millennia it seems to be something that people do to to subjugate others is to to take their cultural heritage in modern times the graph continues as Syrian government soldiers gladly take Kickbacks for studiously ignoring the frenzied plundering of ancient sites Rebels swap loot for weapons in Lebanon and free three Syrian Army brigades take a cut of the Antiquities trade in the areas they control there was a pre-existing looting um culture if you like there was a culture of elit trade and looting already established in Syria there were dealers already in place there
were roots in place there were smugglers in place in a way what Das did I think I think they came in um and they took control of what in the past had been an illegal Network and they effectively legalized it essentially when they first started to take over cities and and and territories in Syria um They Came Upon a pre-existing situation with regards to Looting of Antiquities that was already ongoing they didn't start that but Islamic State will take the art of looting to a whole other level if they're going to get the caliphate of
their dreams the treasure chest hidden beneath Syria's ancient soil will deliver the cash they need to fund it the taking of these materials and the supporting of these networks of lootings result in the the the killing of human beings and this became very clear with Isis they turned this into a trade through which they could support the purchasing of weapons the enslaving of people and the killing of others a decade earlier the Insurgency that rips Iraq apart after the 2003 US invasion had much to teach Islamic State it is a lesson in looting that will
serve them well in years to come the ground beneath their feet is a treasure trove the alistic trade in Antiquities and other cultural objects really began to be perceived as a problem I think for the International Community generally the the objects being taken they were large historically important or artistically important objects and they'd be going into major museums um in North America or Europe so the actions that followed and policy that followed tended to focus on large art Treasures so where back in the 60s it wasn't really worth anybody's while to go digging out small
Antiquities in a site somewhere and then transport them onto the market um now it is it is profitable because they can be sold on the internet they could be sold over social media but Islamic State learns something else in Iraq large and well-known Antiquities are expensive to move and difficult to sell but smaller artifacts dug fresh out of the ground that's another story so in a way I think the mindset behind public policy is still thinking in terms of treasures they're thinking in terms of big auction houses they're thinking in terms of big museums and
they're not really focused on the fact that a lot of the trade now is in small objects which won't be sold at Major auction houses they won't enter major museums they're going to enter small colle actions um but they're still generating money they're still generating large amounts of money which can be used by groups such as Das and other armed groups um you know to further their violence in 2013 Isis makes its move in Syria by inserting itself into the ongoing Civil War while its fight against the Assad regime develops Isis will cleverly fund its
war with profits from smaller artifacts that are easily moved and marketed Syria's archaeological landscape is one of a kind Antiquity is part of the texture of everyday life it's one of the things that makes Syrian Antiquity so special but it also makes it vulnerable with more than 15,000 archaeological sites in Syria it's an embarrassment of riches but when those objects are stolen the knowledge they represent is lost forever cultural objects without the people they represent without the cultures that they represent you just have an aesthetic object but there's no history there's no collection it's dead
it's just a dead atifa in Syria every Spade full of dirt can turn up a bucket load of ancient objects like these they're hardly in short supply so does it really matter if some of them are shipped out of the country should collectors feel guilty about where they've come from and from whom there is uh an argument that's made in some areas of the art world and the the dealing of Antiquities and the collecting of Antiquities that these activities save these objects from destruction usually in areas of conflict people say ah but we are saving
these objects we're keeping them here in the safe of the West one of the first problems with this argument is that it very conveniently gives people an excuse to do exactly what they want to do it very conveniently gives people an excuse to break the law cultural heritage and Antiquities obviously belong in their own context the idea that you can somehow separate a cultural artifact just seems fundamentally wrong but unfortunately if these items move into the private Market there's no guarantee they're going to be protected either so uh this idea of we are saving the
object is actually a bigger crime because um you are destroying the whole site in exchange of the object that you want to keep in your Cabinet of Curiosities but there's never any shortage of people willing to turn a blind eye so as fighting reaches Fe pitch across Syria lutters are primed and ready to go Islamic State's plan for world domination begins with its own nation state for the people forced to live under its rule it will be a living hell so strict is their interpretation of Islam even alqaeda disowns them in June 2014 Islamic state
gets its wish they announce a caliphate in Syria and Northern Iraq eventually they'll control an area the size of Austria and impose their brutal rule on almost 8 million victims but they won't stop there the aim is to take their Twisted ideology to the world social media is their Outlet of choice I Isis takes its murderous campaign to the world over 2,000 people will be murdered outside Iraq and Syria in more than 140 terrorist attacks particularly that attack which was absolutely terrible which had focused and targeted children and young people which was absolutely appalling other
lives will be lost in sickening televised executions most people recoil from the horror but for some it's a rallying cry by 2015 Islamic State Signs up 80,000 Fighters with an army of that size the threat to Syrian Heritage looms large Dr Amar al-azam is one of Syria's most accomplished archaeologists and as Isis swarms over the Syrian landscape taking control of city after City he is deeply worried he will eventually go on on to help the international fight against looting but now his focus is on protecting one of Syria's most precious museums if it happened in
Iraq it could also happen here and I'm sitting in a museum and I'm looking at my museum and I'm thinking wow all right this is what happened in Iraq and we could be next we decided that we needed to put a plan in place a contingency plan both in terms of how we would quickly respond and adapt and also how we might be able to recover cover these items if they ever got looted and then um I got called up by uh someone from the uh Security Services said what are you doing and I said
well you know we're trying to put this contingency plan you you saw what happened in Iraq and I was really excited I was explaining and the guy just listened to me and listen and he said okay you will cease and desist immediately you are instigating um unhealthy thoughts you this is defe his talk as if something like that could Poss possibly happen in Syria but the museum is doomed ammer sensing the inevitable manages to escape to Lebanon now from outside of Syria what can he do to help save the country's unique Heritage in terms of
how we started to get material one of the things uh my initial concern and that's going back as early as 2012 2013 was really out of a response to please for help from friends and colleagues inside Syria they would basically they were calling us what can we do how can we save these items how do how do we protect our museums how do we protect our sites so my initial involvement was mainly with that as we started to sort of connect with each other and essentially we established this network of cultural heritage if you will
activists archaeologists Museum creators Etc within Syria and mainly in areas back then outside regime control and remember by 2015 2016 the regime the Syrian regime controlled less than uh 30% of the country the scale of the Looting was catastrophic and you could see it on satellite images you could see it uh with photographs that people were going out and documenting the the the destruction the Looting and and and they were sending it to us and and in turn we were using this information I was using that information to try and draw attention uh you know
raise awareness about what was going on the the damage was happening to to to Syria's um history and culture in Isis occupied territory the ancient Assyrian city of nimrood has stood for almost 3 and a half thousand years it's also blessed with some of the world's most iconic ancient works of art what Isis did with the selling of Antiquities was obviously very cynical because on the one side that they were they were saying all of this is religious and it should be destroyed and on the other hand they were you know was the basis of
their economy in April 2015 Islamic State ratchets up their propaganda machine the UN says this cultural cleansing constitutes a war crime but those of us who were watching from the from a distance were also completely completely devastated by what was happening at the time I was working on writing my textbook and it was particularly difficult because as I was writing the chapter on Nimrod it was exactly the same time that Nimrod uh was exploded and it it took all the strength I had just to just to move on to to write the next line to
just continue to write this book so that there would be um some record of it going forward so that future generations of students could learn about this when Isis is done over 70% of the ancient city is flattened and they broadcast every blow online UNESCO condemns it as an atrocity but that won't bring it back it's a big win for Islamic State propaganda and the Western media plays into their hands the world's reaction tells them that they've hit their Mark for Syrian archaeologists it's a grim foreshadowing of things to come the jewel in the Syrian
archaeological Crown is the ancient city of Palmyra on the Hub of trade routs that join the Roman Empire with Persia India and China it was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world and Isis has it firmly in its sights well Palmyra is this amazing City in the desert it's obviously very famous it's listed as one of unesco's world heritage sites Palmyra is one of the most amazing sites it was a multicultural uh world where people practiced many religions and spoke many languages in Antiquity um and one of the most beautiful places in Syria
one man has devoted his life to this most precious of places khed al-assad well best way to describe I think in the most simple terms is he was Mr Palmyra and had been involved in the U archaeology and and and restoration of of of this the main site from its earliest days um as a young man and then became the head of its Antiquities Department the ancient ruins are surrounded by the modern city of Palmyra which is where CED has lived and worked for over 50 years in 2015 ced's world will literally come crashing [Music]
down when Isis um invaded the city many people including you know his sons and his family fled the city and in the process also tried to save some of the most valuable items or objects from the [Music] museum with Islamic State Fighters nearing the outskirts of the city khed al-assad packs up his family and sends them running with as many Priceless artifacts as they can carry but khed stays behind Palmyra is in his blood and he's not going to abandon it May 2015 the city of Palmyra Falls and right outside its gat one of the
most perfectly preserved ancient sites on the planet it's a Well orchestrated plan anything that can't be moved will be destroyed everything else will be sold evidence that Isis has sanctioned the Looting and sale of Antiquities to generate revenue for terrorism is a GameChanger I saw things online for instance from pyra being sold which was kind of ironic considering literally that the same time Palm was being overrun by ISIS so you had these kinds of things happening all at the same time and noome seemed to be paying attention to that but if the world wasn't paying
attention before Isis will make sure it's paying attention [Music] now with a vast area now under its control Islamic state is raking in funds from the usual sources oil sales taxes and real estate but being terrorists they'll also go places Sovereign Nations won't and with at least 4,500 cultural sites under its control Syria's ancient past is just another resource to be exploited so these guys were obviously making a lot of money because they were uh investing in in the Machinery in in in the fuel that you need to run the Machinery in uh in the
crews that are doing the digging and extracting this material and they were going literally you know side after side after side scooping up the loot isn't left a chance documents seized in a US Special Forces raid reveal an organizational flowchart better suited to an accountancy firm than a terrorist group hellbent on Mayhem and the head loot scooper is Abu saf after climbing the Islamic State corporate ladder saaf is handed control of the Dawan Al Raz literally the department of precious things that come out of the ground that means oil and Antiquities Isis sees cultural heritage
as a resource to be exploited like any other and we know this because Isis has a dedicated um department for the administration of the Looting of Antiquities you can see here for example this is one of their offices in the city of mish in the beginning Abu saaf and his band of jihadists aren't planning on getting their hands dirty they sell licenses to those who want to do the digging all they ask in return a 20% cut when Isis was issuing these these looting licenses and requiring in return that you pay uh a 20% tax
on your profit but then we see an evolution in that from initially simply issuing out licenses to people and allowing them to continue to loot to getting more organized in terms of uh getting involved in the sale itself so we see this gradual Evolution from initially just issuing licenses and that's the institutionalization process of looting to ultimately an industrialization of the process and intensification where now you're bringing in bulldozers you're bringing in entire Crews you're in involved in this uh looting trafficking and sale of Antiquities at every single level of the process and if you
don't think that this is producing good material here are some of the finds that came out of this one licensed site that was being looted not only uh these pieces of Potter but also these items all coming from a a Bronze Age uh tomb complex by 2014 almost 2 and A5 million Syrian refugees have fled into Lebanon turkey Jordan even Iraq and for those Left Behind desperation is growing the country is in freef fall and Abu SAA doesn't have any trouble finding willing helpers for some syrians it's a matter of survival that conflict Zone like
Syria are these most or in many cases subsistence looters um trying to just find something they can then somehow sell to make a little bit of money because the preservation of History won't feed their families people have lost their livelihoods they've lost their fields they've lost their crops they've lost their um jobs at factories or schools or whatever then they start digging around and looting before long Syria's landscape is pockmarked and scarred it's looting on an industrial scale when you bring in Machinery when you bring in when you hire people to to do the labor
you're essentially investing money and you're not going to put money into something unless you're getting a profit a return on it starving syrians are reduced to looting their countries past for one reason wealthy foreigners have a taste for Syrian Antiquities the more there is a market the more looting is going to continue um I understand that many communities suffer difficult economic situation but how exactly can Isis get their loot to Market once again the terrorists surprise the world with their social media prowess we noticed this new phenomenon emerging and that was the fact that these
looted items were now starting to show up as images that were being sent on social media platforms like WhatsApp I would see messages on Whatsapp you know from dealers trying to sell things so that's transformed I think the way material is bought and sold in the region the the the traffickers they they kind of Co-op the technology eBay was used um and Facebook was used well I think technology and social media have been you know kind of a double-edged sword on the one hand maybe it's easier to track things by using temporary technology on on
the other hand things that are looted in any country can be sold internationally ammer soon realizes there is something very significant about all these social media posts between 20 late 2014 early 2015 you have this explosion of of people on Facebook essentially trafficking inluded Antiquities the initial process started off as Gathering as many images from wouldbe middleman dealers Etc who were in possession of these photos and then basically collecting them And archiving them because we very I very quickly understood that this this is the only time we're ever going to see this stuff that's the
only record we have of this item this this cultural heritage item that had never been seen since it was buried in the ground for Islamic State it's a win-win they flog whatever they can behind the scenes and destroy the things they can't to win points in the propaganda [Music] war in 2014 the US Congress is told that the sale of Antiquities is Islamic State's second biggest money spinner behind oil sales it'll even get to the point point where social media sites are publishing the equivalent of looting for dummies guides videos are uploaded uh sometimes showing
people how they're looting and instruction manuals effectively on what what looting uh that's happening I even saw a video of a guy doing this kind of funnyl looking dance as he's looting a site with a metal detector so all kinds of things you can see pretty much online um and and you know Facebook certainly is not helping let's just say Abu saaf now curator of Islamic State's own Antiquities Department takes advantage of looting at classical sites he knows that Greek and Roman ruins mean finding conveniently small and potentially high value items like coins and jewelry
it's a smart move the Mediterranean is full of Greco Roman sites so small Roman artifacts they could come from anywhere and identifying them as loot is tricky it's also easy and cheap to smuggle a coin or ring across a border most buyers of these artifacts have no idea they're handling stolen objects and they certainly don't know their money is funding Islamic State's Gastly Mission the trade's main target buyers are ironically history enthusiasts and art afficionados in the United States and Europe representatives of the societies which Isis is pledged to destroy but can ignorance of these
artifacts dubious Origins continue to be used as an excuse so I think if people begin to associate uh that kind of conflict with antig themselves then hopefully uh there' be a bit of a conscience uh in people that will prevent them from being bought in the first place as World authorities clamp down on the illegal trade Islamic State responds by using encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp so if you look at these faceb the content of these Facebook groups you'll find someone will post an object or an item for sale there there's often coded language
for how they do it and as soon as somebody gets interested very you know after two or three posts you'll see let's talk privately I hate to sort of jump on and everyone's beating up Facebook bandwagon but certainly it's true uh they are certainly perpetuating uh and I'm sure if we look at these leaked documents that come out recently we would find something about uh the Antiquities being uh another area which Facebook has not clamped down on it's a way around the inconvenient fact that glorious ancient objects don't just appear out of thin air if
it's an important piece it will have been studied exhibited and written about in the history of Art and archaeology we use the term provenance to uh describe the history of of an object that's been around for a long time the history of of a work of arts or an Antiquity that has been known for a couple of hundred years for historians archaeologist those who study the past um provenance is a is probably among the most important things to have uh it provides context where something is from even the most amoral Auction House staffer or dealer
won't put up a major piece for sale without a backstory or some sort of History within the study of cases of trafficking of Antiquities we've been able to document a lot of false provenances a lot of false backstories a lot of fake stories that have been developed by these Janice figures and other intermediaries to mask the illicit origins of Antiquities and to to to make a plausible story of legality uh for collectors and other buyers to buy into to conveniently to believe so to speak with looted objects that documentation can and often is fabricated by
the dealers and middlemen who take the loot to Market they're not necessarily completely believable but they're just enough for uh a buyer to to suspend their disbelief or to cover their own own uh potential culpability when it comes to uh buying loot you also see uh uh attempts to move Antiquities through multiple different uh Transit ports so multiple different uh cities and locations so that it can gain paperwork as it moves through these Transit ports [Music] it's 2015 and thanks to a US Special Forces raid Abu saa's methods are revealed the 7 terabyt of material
they find is the largest intelligence Hall in Special Operations history amongst the data is a catalog featuring thousands of small but incredibly valuable objects by focusing on these small Greek and Roman objects Abu SAA and his team were able to evade law enforcement which tends to Target Big Ticket items by August 2015 half of Palmyra has been raised and khed al-assad's life work shockingly vandalized as seen in news reports from around the globe and when you come into the museum Hall itself here the thing that strikes you above all else is the particularity of the
destruction okay look at this this isn't War this is Politics the eyes and the face gone the body The Carving work there intact next door the face gone the carving of the body intact khed has remained in the city until the end he must have known what was coming Isis being what they are eventually decided to arrest him and uh executed him um you know just in in the most hideous horrible way along I think there was that day they executed eight or nine people and he was one of them they just you know killed
them and uh left their body beheaded them and then left his body hanging there days after khaled's murder militants roll barrels of explosives into the 2,000-year-old temple of balamin [Music] cultural genocide is a reality and it has a long long history it's it's not something new and it's not something need to one specific group or another in the case of Isis it was all stage managed it was all part of this kind of what I call uh cultural heritage atrocity they commit atrocities it's the narrative that I am able to act with impunity and you
the International Community the rest of the world the local community are impotent to prevent me from doing that if nimod was the rehearsal Palmyra will be the main event its greatest monuments are raised to the ground and its epic Amphitheater is used to Stage bloody mass executions as the news hits headlines across the globe the world reacts in horror 2015 Isis continues its murderous attacks around the world in a case of Twisted irony isis uses the millions plundered from the illicit trade with the West to fund a tax on the west November the 13th a
coordinated string of bombings and mass shootings in multiple locations across Paris kills 130 people Global Law Enforcement wants answers how are these elaborate attacks financed terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda were kept afloat by obscenely wealthy donors but Islamic state is different it has a large well-resourced territory to pillage ammer al-azam and his fellow academics are on the case as they try to work out how much money Islamic State might be getting through its looting activities by looking at the 4,000-year-old city of telb us academics estimate how much Syria's ancient past might be worth in dollar terms
about 10% of the Bronze Age site was excavated by archaeologists before the Civil War they calculate that the Antiquities they found would be worth about $4 million on the open market that's one tiny proportion of one modest archaeological site in a country with 15,000 or so others multiply that across Syria and Iraq that's a vast sum of money ammer and his colleagues Lobby the UN and other International Bodies In A desperate bid to put a stop to the cultural Carnage as part of this whole push against Isis the UN Security Council it basically banned the
sale and trafficking of uh any Antiquities coming out of Iraq and Syria while that may be a good start World governments need to be aware that it's the smaller artifacts that are slipping through the net so I think policy makers have a problem and they have difficulty coming to terms with the idea that what they really need to be focused on aren't Major Art Treasures it's kind of if you like the brick or Brack of antiquity on May the 16th 2015 a pre-dawn military ra Nets them the top dog leader of the Isis Antiquities Market
Abu saaf is shot and killed left in his wake is a treasure Trove of information about his operations and clues for chasing down the artifacts Islamic state has sent out of Syria I think it was very good that suddenly there was some documentary evidence of the value of the trade to dases ammer Al and his colleagues are also using technology to chase down the people buying and selling Syria cultural heritage online I created this tool to look at sites like eBay for instance where we use machine learning uh natural language processing to effectively inform what
kind of objects are being sold online to better track uh the trade of antiquity so at least we can get a sense of where illegal stales are happening at least we can try to stop them but they're facing an uphill battle law enforcement is only looking for high-profile prosecutions and the media is only interested in big headlines many of the things stolen from Syria don't fit the bill and then of course this type of material is a lot easier to transport and it seems to me you know I mean materials just smuggled out anywhere you
want it I said before it can be in a rook sack on somebody's back it can be hidden in a car it can you know it can be sent by mail in 2020 Facebook responds to accusations that it's operating as a bizaar for the trade in looted Antiquities it bans the sale of all historical artifacts on its side so we found um groups that were posting material that we knew was clearly looted and traffic looted material and we contacted Facebook and said hey look this is this is a problem and we did this several times
and every time it would come back no no it doesn't you know it doesn't um contravene our community standard so clearly this is not something they're interested in doing it was just a publicity stunted uh loow hanging fruit with Facebook not coming to the party and World authori struggling to legislate and prosecute effectively new conflicts throughout the region offer looters New Opportunities conflict destabilizes the fabric of society that tends to protect cultural heritage on the one hand as uh competent authorities disappear security goes away uh the the ability to monitor sites um and prevent looting
is gone as for the best way to protect what's left the people on the front line in the battle to protect cultural heritage share a dream I think we we enjoy culture we study culture we interact with culture but uh buying culture I think needs to become an unethical crime we need to start with uh the the end user which is the West people need to realize that they're taking part in international crime if they stop buying then they stop the market there will be no need for for the market it will become unfashionable meanwhile
in Syria the war goes on half a million people have lost their lives and in 2018 it was estimated that over a quarter of the population had fled the country Islamic State which lost its caliphate is still a force the United Nations has said that over 10,000 militants remain active in Syria and Iraq the human cost of the Civil War is overwhelming and the loss of cultural Heritage is dire for many syrians their identity is bound to their past at all costs their past must be preserved for the sake of their future [Music] [Music] [Music]
