The Rise of Violent Extremism

The twenty-first century began with the shocking destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. However, nobody expected that these horrible acts would be followed by the rise of violent extremism in Mali and the Middle East. And I could not have imagined the challenges UNESCO would confront with the brutal and systematic destruction of emblematic cultural sites. Culture has always been the victim of war and conflict—as collateral damage, or from looting of sites. But this phenomenon was different. The destruction was used as a tactic of war to intimidate populations, attack their identities, destroy their link with the past, eliminate the existence of diversity, and disseminate hatred.

In 2012, the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) interviewed someone said to be part of the extremist group controlling Timbuktu in Mali. “There is no world heritage,” he claimed. “It doesn’t exist.”⁷ This attitude captures the challenge the world has faced with the rise of a violent extremism that has perpetrated the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage as well as mass atrocities against people on cultural and religious grounds—in Afghanistan, Mali, Syria, and Iraq.

Many questions have emerged from these actions, such as: How do we apply the international legal and institutional regime to keep pace with the new forms of “modern” warfare by nonstate actors? How do we make a convincing case that heritage is not only about bricks and stones but about humanity in its diversity, and that it gains meaning from being inscribed in the lives of people and local communities? How do we convince the humanitarian and security community that heritage matters, and that destroying heritage means destroying the social fabric of societies and depriving people of their identity?

My experience in these years has strengthened my conviction in the growing relevance of heritage and culture. And not only mine. In the face of deliberate destruction and looting of cultural heritage by extremist groups, a new understanding of why cultural heritage matters has emerged, an understanding that protection of heritage cannot be separated from the protection of human lives in times of conflict, and that it is a key security imperative.

My own conviction grew stronger that protecting cultural heritage is not a luxury that can be left for better days, but that it is vital for peace and reconciliation. Often the first victim of war, culture also heals, and can restore ties that have been broken. The destruction of the Old Bridge in Mostar during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and the Buddhas of Bamiyan were warning signs of a phenomenon that ran counter to an already widely accepted approach, both legally and ethically, that protecting heritage is a global public good.

Then, in 2012, the unthinkable happened. Extremists took control of the northern part of Mali and destroyed the city of Timbuktu’s ancient mausoleums and mosques. About 4,200 manuscripts of the Institut des Hautes Etudes et de Recherches Islamiques Ahmed Baba (IHERI-AB) were also burned. Timbuktu was considered the center of Islamic learning from the thirteenth century, and at one time counted nearly 200 schools and universities attracting thousands of students from across the Muslim world. It is thanks to this history of enlightenment that the entire city of Timbuktu was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1988.⁸

The case of Mali was a serious wake-up call. In January 2013 the extremists were pushed out of the city and most of the north of the country by Malian government and French forces. A few months later the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2100, establishing the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), whose peacekeeping mandate included the protection of cultural and historic sites, the first time such protections were included in a council resolution establishing a peacekeeping operation.⁹

Working closely with UNESCO, MINUSMA engaged in a number of activities through its Environment and Culture Unit. These included the training of civil, military, and police personnel to raise their awareness of Malian cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible; support for the program coordinated by UNESCO and the Malian Ministry of Culture to rehabilitate the damaged heritage sites; and support for the resumption of cultural events, contributing to the transmission of intangible heritage and social cohesion.

This inclusion of heritage protection in the peacekeeping operation was a breakthrough in linking heritage protection to peace and security. It was a true recognition that heritage—both tangible and intangible—plays an important role in peace and reconciliation. While this aspect of MINUSMA’s operation was omitted by the Security Council in its 2018 mandate renewal,¹⁰ it is nevertheless an important reminder of why heritage and culture matter. What has remained is the training of UN peacekeeping forces on cultural heritage protection, with the strong involvement of experts from the Blue Shield network, a nongovernmental organization established in the late 1990s to “protect cultural heritage in emergency situations.”¹¹

The conflict in Iraq and Syria and the rise of violent extremism created a new environment: a huge humanitarian crisis, paired with unprecedented deliberate destruction of the rich and diverse cultural heritage of Mesopotamia, known as “the cradle of human civilization.” The aim was obviously to destroy the history of diversity and eliminate the culture of coexistence that is the DNA of this region.

In Iraq, parts of the ancient city of Hatra were bulldozed, and Nimrud dynamited. There was also serious damage to Nineveh and Mari, among other sites.¹² In Syria, all six of the country’s World Heritage Sites have been severely damaged by fighting, including the Old Cities of Aleppo and Damascus. Al-Madina Souq in Aleppo, the world’s largest covered historic market, was burnt, and the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo has become a battlefield. Already by 2013, such destruction encouraged UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to make the decision to put all Syrian sites on the List of World Heritage in Danger, in order to draw attention to the threats they faced.¹³

The destruction continued, and in 2015 the Arch of Triumph and the Temple of Bel in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra were blown up by explosives. Then, on August 18th of that year, extremists of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS or Daesh) publicly beheaded Dr. Khaled al-Asaad, the renowned guardian of the city, who had helped evacuate the Palmyra museum prior to the city’s seizure. Before his brutal murder he was tortured in an attempt to force him to reveal the location of the museum’s hidden artefacts.¹⁴ Thoughts of Dr. al-Asaad are particularly poignant for me. Before the conflict, in 2010, I have fond memories of visiting Palmyra, accompanied by Dr. al-Asaad’s son Waleed, who gave me the gift of a small booklet with a dedication in French, “Palmyre: histoire, monuments et musée,” written by his father, that I keep in my library as a precious reminder of a life and a sacrifice for the protection of heritage.

By this time, with its devastating humanitarian consequences, the Syrian conflict was already firmly on the agenda of the Security Council. However, it was extremely important that the protection of the country’s rich and diverse heritage also find its rightful place on the council’s agenda. This attitude does not reflect a “weaponizing” of culture and heritage, as some have claimed, but a strong political declaration on the link between heritage protection, diversity, and peace.

In pursuit of this linkage, on February 22, 2014, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2139, to “ease aid delivery to Syrians, [and] provide relief,” and called on “all parties to immediately end all violence which has led to human suffering in Syria, save Syria’s rich societal mosaic and cultural heritage, and take appropriate steps to ensure the protection of Syria’s World Heritage Sites.”¹⁵ This was followed a few weeks later, on March 12, by a joint statement titled “The Destruction of Syria’s Cultural Heritage Must Stop,” issued by then UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon; Lakhdar Brahimi, the League of Arab States’s joint special representative for Syria; and myself.¹⁶ The statement launched an appeal to “all parties to halt immediately all destruction of Syrian heritage, and to save Syria’s rich social mosaic and cultural heritage by protecting its World Heritage Sites.” In the words of the statement, “The destruction of such precious heritage gravely affects the identity and history of the Syrian people and all humanity, damaging the foundations of society for many years to come. The protection of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, is inseparable from the protection of human lives, and should be an integral part of humanitarian and peacebuilding efforts.” I am particularly grateful to Ban Ki-moon and to Lakhdar Brahimi for raising their voices loud and clear in support of Syrian cultural heritage against the background of a huge humanitarian catastrophe.

It was time to act and send a strong message of UNESCO’s commitment to the protection of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq against extremism and destruction. To that end, in fall 2014 I decided to go to Iraq, which was largely occupied by ISIL, to talk to the authorities and local communities, and to see for myself how UNESCO could help. I subsequently chose the date of November 2 for the UN to mark for the first time the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists: in part to send a message that extremists not only destroy heritage, but persecute people and stifle free thinking and speech.

After meeting Iraqi leaders and visiting the Bagdad Museum, which had still not officially reopened, I headed on to Erbil, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. I personally presented the governor with the UNESCO certificate of the inscription of the historic citadel on the World Heritage List during a moving ceremony as a testimony of support to the people of Iraq. My conviction of the deep connection between the persecution of people and attacks on culture and heritage became even stronger after visiting the Baharka refugee camp in Erbil, most of whose inhabitants had fled ISIL. It was also strengthened by a long meeting with representatives of various minority communities: Christian, Turkoman, Yazidi, Assyrian, Chaldean, Shabak, Baha’i, Sabean Mandaean, and Kaka’i. This was the moment when I called for the first time what was happening “cultural cleansing.”¹⁷

The following year, 2015, was the turning point. At the end of February extremists published shocking images on the Internet of the destruction of the Mosul Museum. I immediately called both the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, and the president of the Security Council to request an emergency council meeting. It was obvious that a new approach was urgently required at both international and national levels to strengthen the link between protection of cultural heritage and diversity on the one hand, and humanitarian action, peacebuilding processes, and security policies on the other. It was a moment to have a different look at conflicts, to build peace, and to put words to the nature of the threat we faced. It was ultimately a moment to recognize something extremely important: that violent extremists do not seek only to kill or seize control of a territory, instead their primary objective is the complete annihilation of the “other.” Extremists do not choose between culture and people. They attack both—and we need to defend both.

This understanding was strongly supported by the reports of two consecutive special rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council in the field of cultural rights, Farida Shaheen (2009–2015) and currently Karima Bennoune, who have both defended the view that destruction of heritage is a human rights violation. In the words of Benounne, who has put the protection of heritage as the main focus of her reports, “Destruction of heritage is often accompanied by other grave assaults on human dignity and human rights. We must care not only about the destruction of heritage but also about the destruction of the lives of human beings. They are interrelated.”¹⁸