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Tax and spend: laissez-faire Islamic State capitalism for the illicit...
As I explained in the last post, according to (a so-far-offline part of) die Zeit’s international investigation, the Islamic State permits illicit excavations in return for 12.5% tax of the income of...
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Hoe IS illegal kunst vernietigt en verhandelt om de strijd te financieren
Ben van Raaij and Nell Westerlaken have published a (Dutch-language) discussion of looting and destruction in the Islamic State, how IS destroys and deals in illegal art to finance the war. Higher?...
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Antiquities trade responds to exposure of false debunking with more false...
When I debunked antiquities trade representative Ursula Kampmann’s supposed debunking of still-unverified intelligence on Islamic State antiquities trafficking, Cultural Property Observer (CPO) (dealer...
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Aleppo’s Al Sultaniyah Madrasa-Mosque appears to have been destroyed
Hyperallergic have published my review of the evidence for the destruction of Al Sultaniyah Madrasa-Mosque in Aleppo, Syria, on the 7th of December. It appears to have been destroyed. In the article, I...
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UN maps devastation of Syria’s cities
Hyperallergic have published my post on the UN maps of the devastation of Syria’s cities, which show the harm to its civilian property, its communities’ neighbourhoods. First, those responsible for the...
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Antiquities looting under regime, rebels and jihadists in Syria
Assisted by researchers at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center (at Pennsylvania Museum) and the Smithsonian Institution, the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project (of the Association for the...
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Correction and clarification but no retraction
I did not comment on this matter before, because I did not know whether the back-and-forth e-mail exchange had ended. Now that Cultural Property Observer Peter Tompa has made a public comment on the...
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You, a white non-Arabic-speaking non-Muslim, do not want to sneak into...
This is a brief post with brief advice. I’m not even going to bother to add links to evidence of this statement of the obvious. It isn’t a comment on the individuals who have contacted me because, over...
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Operation Aureus-Hieratica: Egyptian-Spanish antiquities trafficking may have...
The details of Operation Aureus (within Spain, Operation Hieratica) – a massive and remarkable Europol-coordinated, Interpol-assisted, UNESCO-supported investigation – are beginning to emerge. (Paul...
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Resolution against terrorist antiquities trading is welcome, but why not...
Russia is drafting a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution to combat terrorist financing, which will specifically target illicit trading in antiquities by the Islamic State. Background...
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Terrorist antiquities trading and state arms smuggling between Syria and Turkey
The antiquities trade rules in the Russia-drafted United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution against terrorist financing have been reviewed by China, France, the United Kingdom and the United...
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Tomb raiders and the profits of doom
Lask week, the World Today published an article on the conflict antiquities trade by me and Sasan Aghlani (@Aghlani), a Research Assistant in International Security at Chatham House and PhD student in...
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United Nations Security Council Resolution 2199: ban on wartime-exported...
UNESCO has published the text of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2199.(1) As expected, it prohibits any international trade in Syrian antiquities that have been exported since the 15th of...
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Suleyman Shah’s tomb exhumed, mausoleum pre-emptively destroyed, Syrian...
It’s difficult to headline or even strapline the story of these events, but Turkey has extracted sarcophagi and other artefacts from a Turkish exclave that is surrounded by Islamic State-held Syrian...
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State arms-for-antiquities trafficking between Turkey and Syria?
Consolidating my attempt to piece together evidence of terrorist antiquities trading and state arms smuggling between Syria and Turkey (with testimony of antiquities trafficking by air), there is new...
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Was most of the looting at the most extensively looted site in Syria...
A few months ago, I pieced together a sample of satellite image data from the the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project (1) with historical data on antiquities looting and the development of...
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Conflict antiquities from Apamea do not finance the Islamic State – they...
Despite the headline, the Times has not presented any evidence of Islamic State-looted antiquities on eBay. Headlines Unfortunate sub-editing is always a risk. Hugh Tomlinson has suffered it before,...
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Islamic State-looted antiquities on eBay? ‘The stories are absolutely false...
With regard to the reports of Islamic State-looted antiquities on eBay, which Paul Barford and I have reviewed, there has been a predictable (and predicted) development. I’ve been contacted privately...
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Civilians may have been kidnapped and exchanged for arrested paramilitary...
In a scary (and strange) turn of events, civilians from Afrin/Efrin – a town and canton in Rojava, the autonomous region of Western Kurdistan (Rojavayê Kurdistanê) in north-western Syria – appear to...
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The inexact science of exact numbers: does anyone know how many...
I’m still working on some of the posts that I’d planned to publish before this one, but I’m not going to hold it back any longer. 750 or 1,000 or more or fewer? ‘More than 750 archaeological sites have...
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