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Armenian Genocide archaeology at risk in Syrian Civil War
Ararat magazine recently reported on Syria and the Mass Graves of the Genocide, warning that the Syrian Civil War could endanger archaeological evidence of the Armenian Genocide....
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styles of political violence: protest, revolt at Syrian Embassies
The Syrian Civil War has continued and worsened. At news of the latest massacre in Homs, protests erupted around the world. I will not try to discuss events in general; others can do that better. I...
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@samarkeolog Twitter archive: illicit antiquities trade elsewhere
Partly to help me (publicly) archive material from before my @conflictantiq Twitter feed on looting and destruction of cultural and community property, partly to help me clarify (for myself) what I...
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Syria: conflict antiquities and funding of regime and rebels through looting...
Happily, WordPress have unblocked (my access to) my blog. As Dorothy King says of the Syrian situation, the ‘[l]oss of life [is] terrible, huge compared to looting going on’. Our primary concern must...
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@conflictantiq Twitter archive and Conflict Antiquities’ plan for news sharing
First of all, I want to apologise to subscribers for the @samarkeolog tweet archive “spam”. I turned off every notification I could, precisely in order to save (Twitter) followers and (Facebook)...
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Syria/Lebanon: Syrian-Lebanese antiquities-for-arms trade
In the past week, two investigations have explored the Syrian antiquities market in Lebanon. One has found material evidence that armed groups are managing to fund their fighting through looting,...
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Syria: ‘Men With Guns’ in the antiquities-for-arms trade
This is just a note on the “Free Syrian Army” (or Free Syrian Armies, or Men With Guns) and the discussion of which armed groups were involved in the Syrian-Lebanese antiquities-for-arms trade. Men...
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Syria: antiquities-for-arms trade – Sky News interview
Yesterday, Sky News invited me to give a live television interview (at lunchtime today) on the illicit trade in Syrian antiquities, which was nice but a bit daunting, as I’m inarticulate at the best of...
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‘smuggling antiquities [through Turkey] is the route to easy money’ in the...
Le Temps have managed to capture a Snapshot of a Syrian Smuggler: Arms, Antiquities and Jihad along Turkey’s Border [Ayham, Profession Contrabandier]. Complementing the evidence of the Syrian-Lebanese...
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army, paramilitaries and foreign security forces facilitate illicit trade in...
Archaeologist-journalist Joanne Bajjaly has managed to get some great insights into some of the networks engaged in the ‘systematic’ pillage of Syrian antiquities. Evidently, the looters and smugglers...
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Emergency Red List of Syrian Cultural Objects at Risk
In order to help law enforcement agencies and ‘other professionals concerned by the smuggling and illicit trading in cultural objects’ (who are, or should, not be only cultural heritage workers, but...
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Who’s smuggling antiquities from Syria to Turkey by air?
When I explained how Assad’s army, opposition paramilitaries and foreign security forces facilitated the illicit trade in Syrian antiquities, I noted that at least some antiquities were ‘transported by...
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Turkey/Syria: Carchemish – excavations on the border of a warzone
On a site where once three empires clashed, where now three shifting forces fight over the scraps of a nation-state, archaeologists keep their heads down literally as well as metaphorically, as...
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The Tomb of Suleyman Shah is surrounded by ISIS. And Turkey will retaliate...
Salafist paramilitaries such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)/Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)/Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ‘have destroyed several tombs and...
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Leaked tapes of secret plans: Turkish state conspiracy to provoke a war with...
When I blogged how iconoclastic Salafist paramilitaries(1) in Syria had surrounded the Turkish exclave of the Tomb of Suleyman Shah with the intent to destroy it, and how Turkish special forces were...
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Should cultural monuments become an active issue of the human rights agenda?
Director of the Djulfa Virtual Memorial and Museum, Producer of the New Tears of Araxes and South Caucasus Specialist for Amnesty International, Simon Maghakyan has asked, ‘when does targeting...
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Iraq/Syria: ISIL/ISIS fundraising by antiquities trafficking
There is now secure (if imprecise) evidence that, like the other parties to the Syrian civil war, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham/the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) is using the looting and trafficking of...
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fear, concern and propaganda are spreading false information about...
Whether due to panic, concern or strategy, false information is spreading about political violence against cultural property in the Iraq-Syria conflict. The true news is tragic enough, and any false...
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Iraqi and Syrian conflict antiquities: ‘somebody, somewhere is buying the stuff’
Esquire‘s Charles P. Pierce (@ESQPolitics) picked up on the use of antiquities trafficking for paramilitary fundraising in Iraq and Syria and highlighted that, there’s not much you can do about bank...
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Iraqi and Syrian antiquities are being smuggled onto the black market to fund...
In the Las Vegas Guardian Express, Steven Killings (@steven_james201) noted a case in 2008 where Iraqi security followed a ‘tip that important Iraqi monuments were going to be smuggled’ out of the...
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