 So, we have with us a number of panelists and we'll start by continuing to discuss some historical examples highlighting some of the groundbreaking successes as well as the limitations of previous preservation initiatives during conflict. And then we'll transition to hear a number of examples of contemporary initiatives responses to conflicts that are going on even now as we sit in this room. So with that, I'd like to introduce our first panelist. We have Julian Esteban Jepapriya, who is an associate professor in the architectonic division of the Polytechnic Institute University of Valencia. And he's written widely on architectural conservation in the context of Spain, particularly during the Second Republic and also during the regime of Franco. And today he'll be sharing his thoughts with us on the Spanish Civil War and cultural heritage. Thank you. Well, thank you, first of all, Jorge for your invitation. I will speak about this participle war and cultural heritage. For the majority of the world, the story of the 20th century cannot be conceived without war. This short century begins as known by British historian Hausmann in 1914 with the World War I and it ends in 1991 with the fall of communism. During the century, major conflicts often overlapped it always with serious international implications. The years with the highest intensity were from 1914 to 1945 with two world wars. In between this war, from 1936 to 1939, you will find the Spanish Civil War in which a group of rebel militaries, baked by the most radical right-wing groups, rose up against the democratic government of the Republic. Despite its strict location in Spain, the conflict was a phenomenon with deep international roots in which we find high-contrast situations such as the assistance provided by Russia and Mexico to the Spanish Republic, the support that Germany and Italy provided to the military rebels against it, and the neutral position adopted by France and England, where the international advocates fired from different countries, including the United States, fought for the Republican side. The issues would make it a clear prelude to World War II, which would break out within a few months after the end of the Spanish Civil War. But this war was primarily a confrontation between the Spaniards whose ideological and religious conviction radicalized until they became irreconcilable enemies. At this base, there were core issues at stake, issues such as religion, education, freedom, material and moral progress, property and the privileges of class. In this dynamic, global capitalism and communists were not allies in a determined manner against fascism, as they would be some in the rest of Europe. In this conflict, as in the other European wars of the 20th century, the destruction of the past, or rather the socials, mechanism linking this individual experience with previous generations was one of the most characteristic phenomena, and its score, the damage of the culture heritage, was particularly serious. The period of the Spanish Civil War should be considered for all practical purposes as an extraordinary situation, given that during the Hermit conflict missions were taken in the two Spain's that were aimed at the protection and restoration of our heritage in danger of destruction. The institutions established themselves and their functioning should be considered extraordinary. Their study should cover diverse aspects such as destruction, dispersion, conservation measures, damage assessment, recovery and the restoration of the affected goods. Finally, the management of the memory of the events must be also considered. After the first days of the military uprising in July 1936, Spain was split in two. One side loyal to the constitutional government of the Republic, and one side occupied by the military and its supporters. The physical limits dividing both sides would change with the evolution of the conflict until the final victory of the rebels. In the first area, the Republic One originated what has been defined as the period of the dual power, referring to the situation established between the people and the Republic Constitution. The reality is that the anarchist and socialist unions became the real masters of the situation, with an almost disjointed state apparatus, because the only path the government had left was to support the popular defense initiative with weapons. The occupation of convents and palaces, piqued with art along with the burning of charges as symbols of those who rebel it, was the immediate reason behind the creation of the board of confiscation and protection of the artistic treasure. The establishment of such a board took place thanks to the concern of a group of members from the alliance of antifascist intellectuals, most of who belonged to the Communist Party. The board developed an important task in the realm of conservation of cultural property outside the Ministry of Education. The situation normally saw it in nearly 1937, when the liquidation of the revolutionary powers in favor of the government was completed. The Ministry of Education then was able to set the structure what would govern the policy of fine arts and heritage conservation until the end of the war, through the creation of the central board of artistic treasure. And in 1937 was marked by two cultural events of great public importance, the Spanish participation in the international exhibition Arts and Techniques of Modern Life held in Paris and the celebration of the International Congress of Antifascist Writers held in Valencia. However, the military setbacks suffered by the republic from the autumn of 1937 and the bitterness of the political struggle within the field came to set back the work of communists in the Ministry when administrative centralization was almost complete and was beginning to reap the fruits of that work. Madrid was an exceptional case in the panorama of the territory that's remaining in the republicans' hands, both for the importance of immovable property which was in the city, as well as for the significance of the capital itself, which affected the siege of the rebel army and every bombardment that led to the departure of the government from Madrid to Valencia in November of 1936. The board of confiscation and protection of artistic treasure came to Madrid to take charge of protecting existing artwork in building ceases by political and union organization mobilized in defense of the republic. Instead in the command of the descalfa reales, the board was divided into a number of committees and working groups dedicated to visit, seize and transfer assets at risk, establishing a regulation that would last with a slight modification until the end of war. The government suspended restoration of work both ongoing and scheduled. Regular monument inspection worked by conservation architects and other members of the superior artistic treasure board could not be performed normally. However, the new condition required performing other jobs of even higher intensity which included safeguarding measures, photographic archiving, inventory of seized personal property, also dissemination and awareness activities such as brochures, posters, sign of monuments and airmate surveillance. The protection of indenture property due to the war mainly referring to museums, libraries and buildings. The construction of the times and refugees for restoration of movable goods and transfer of the most important collection, uniquely those in Madrid. And the takedown protection and transfer of property located on the front line or affected by bombings. In the Prado Museum of Madrid, protection work was carried out in October of 1936 when fear became reality and the bombing of the Museum and the Academy of Fine Arts began and every day it was raised of damages. Thus began one of the most unique episodes of the civil war, the evacuation of the most significant work of art from the country's most important art repository. A symbolic and risky transfer was carried out with the limited means that were available first to Valencia and then to Barcelona and the border. And finally, living for Switzerland. This experience now by the League of Nations would also shift to evacuate the treasures of the Lubric Museum toward the south of France at the beginning of World War II. The monuments protection work was carried out by various agencies, city halls, the works on fortification in common and the reform, reconstruction and sanitation committee of Madrid, which operated under the Ministry of Public Works. It was a joint collaborative effort that intervened in the protection of various monuments in Madrid. In Valencia, the capital at the time of the republic, adaptation work was carried out in the Torres de Serrano and the Colegio del Patriarca to hold the works that were being moved from Madrid. As explained by Joseph Renau, managing director of fine arts to the League of Nations in Paris in 1937, two facts were key to the heritage protection in Spain during the war, the popular collaboration and the technical missions adopted for conservation. These two issues occurred in parallel and sometimes intermingled with 16 results. It is true also in this world that some intellectuals couldn't find themselves in the democratic turmoil posed by the popular reaction against the military coup and also added that almost from one day to the next, the republican cultural policy had to change time. It no longer contained other models emerged from liberal and well-meaning minds. The personal and political commitment of politicians and technicians would end up dragging them down during the sinking of the republic towards exile or difficult assimilation in the US state. In nationalist Spain, that is the Spain occupied by military rebels, the period of civil war should also be considered an extraordinary situation with the creation of the committee of culture and education. And the first stage from October 1936 to January 1938, rules with military background and form were established in relation to artistic heritage. The most important were those issue in December of 1936 for the creation of the board of historical culture and artistic treasure in charge in each province and in January of 1937 for the organization of the Banward Artistic Service which was responsible for the rescue of buildings and the collection and custody of work of art in the liberated areas. Installed in real life, these walls were ordered to collect data on heritage damage since the proclamation of the republic in 1931. The Banward Artistic Service counted a total of 44 agents by June of 1937. They were teachers, architects, archivists, painters and collectors, all of whom had precarious means. The remaining agents were placed on reserve and waited for the takedown of Madrid. The criterion used by the Banward Artistic Service was to no undertake any full protection of ornaments or to remove from its place elements whose destruction was possible, therefore they covered only the smaller and most important areas such as doorways and glass windows. They however only acted in places of utmost importance regarding movable heritage. It was decided in view of the experience of the deposit found in the republic zone that only the essential would move. In a second stage from April of 1938 to January of 1940, the administration of the new state was organized into ministries. The fine arts for views would fall under the Ministry of National Education. A number of provisions during this period addressed the protection of heritage since the confidence and victory based of the progress of rebel troops forced them to take measures that had the dual purpose of regulating an extraordinary situation caused by the civil war and move on the future of the new state. For this reason the service of defense of the national artistic heritage was created with the goal of organizing the recovery task of artistic heritage and showing the protection of monuments. The work and education during the 16 months that Muguruza was in charge of the service were of great intensity but poor results. Most of the efforts by those responsible were consummated in the organization of the service and defending of ways to provide the success to the some commissariats in which the service was divided. They also put effort into foreign propaganda via visits of foreign guests to counteract the public propaganda and domestic war routes. Small urgent conservation actions on monuments damaged during battles and the recovery of dispersed heritage by the effect of war. In August of 1938 rules were dictated on hopes on commissioners so to govern. Months later, alternate commissioners were added to the service known of the commissariats were provided with the necessary means to carry out the work of any substance. An issue that contrasted with the attention received by the devastated region service which was created following the Belgian example after World War I and that's perhaps best represented the scope and objectives of national movements. Regarding the integration of monuments, it should be emphasized the almost total absence of financial means to address repairs. Previous donations, however, allowed the restoration of the Cathedral of Següenza by the architect Torres Valbaz which had been seriously damaged by the nationalists due to the fact that Republican forces had taken refuge in heat. The damage was explained by stating that it had fallen like one more month. In other cases, agents were only able to avoid imminent ruins by tackling them with the available means. During 1938 works in Teruel and Teruel were addressed while of the Cathedral of Huesca. The apps was repainted a collapse of which would have entreatened the altarpiece. Economic investment were almost always symbolic but propaganda spread in a different way. For instance, the choice of Teruel as an emblematic city even for monuments intervention was brought to light in one of the radio talks broadcast at Radio Thragota in late 1938. Another activity to which notable efforts were dedicated was the programming of areas to occupy in the case of Catalonia from December of 1938 and following reports of people sympathetic to the new regime in Republican areas from those the escapades to areas held by the nationalists. A detailed plan of occupation was prepared with maps in which the objectives were designed in coordination with the column of order and police. The procedure began with the ceiling and taking into custody the premises to ensure their safety. This was followed by a transfer of objects safety and the organization of large storage spaces for the general and transfer of recovered artifacts prior to the inventory and classification for the subsequent write-on. A spatial concern was required to the large deposits created by the government of the Republic some of which were the most recent and largest storage spaces. Between April and November of 1939 from the fall of Madrid to the passing of Mouruta from the Commissariat hectic activity began in order to solve the problem to return Spain of heritage that the government of the Republic could move to Geneva and Paris. Effort to the new and international recognizes government were highly effective especially given the delicate situation in which Europe was during that time and found all the support and Montserilla the central board of artistic treasure of the Republic had been denied. Effort to recover the assets that had left Spain were completed in several steps. For instance the second of the two expeditions from Geneva to Madrid would occur a few days after Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939 and in February of 1941 the result of an agreement with France saw the return the return to Spain of thousands of documents belonging to the archivist of Simangas. Propaganda was carried out by both sides using the destruction of heritage as a weapon. This propaganda went and interpreted through the war and it used all available means at its disposal press radio photographic reports and more numerous were the trips of foreign technician to see what was happening to the Spanish heritage. The strips were used for the purpose of propaganda by both sides. Such techniques were used to endorse the actions as well as the promote the instruction of the opposing side. Of all visits perhaps the most prominent were the ones made by Frederick Kenyon former director of the British Museum and be by James G. Mann curator of the Wallace collection in London in the middle 1937 to Catalonia Valencia and Madrid. Both of them supported the action that the Republic government was courting out with articles that came out published in the Times and in the journal Musaion which was dependent of the International Museum office. Underlining these visits and in the interest of the Spanish cultural authorities was the verification of the need and results obtained in the transfer of artworks from Madrid to Valencia which nationalists had criticized and feising both economic and building their interest. The executive board of Madrid published a brochure that systematically explained the reason that had left to the application of the evacuation measure of artworks from the capital presented them in front of the International Museum office. Such reason included Franco Ernie's strikes, the harsh winter that changed the environmental condition of motion and the lack of premises in Madrid with the proper dimension and condition but as openly admitted the evacuation was based on political and military reasons by the Republican government beyond technical considerations. Priority was given to the view that all works of art and objects of political or artistic heritage should be depositioned in the site where the government resided. That serving as a sign of identity that legitimize the move government on which lead the superior responsibility of safeguarding such objects. An important issue was born among the victors that is the nationalist after the war. The need to establish the official history of what had happened. The war was the legitimize what had been done, hide what was not in their interest and misrepresent what so new even be ambiguous which included the destruction, the fireman and the special of assets, the role and performance of the Republican relation to heritage and in contrast the action taken by the nationalist leaderships. So they devoted themselves to it from within and from outside the defense service of national artistic heritage. The text writing in this regard tried to establish value thesis and antithesis and the treatment of heritage from each of the two sides. The symbolic value and consideration as a hallmark of the defining values were unique to the national camp where the public destroyer of and danger in them. The only thing missing along with fabricating the official history was the silence, the memory of the previous phase including its protagonists. The efforts of the republic in terms of heritage with the exception of the artistic treasure act of 1933 were buried in the text of silences which have survived it still to this day demonstrating its effectiveness. To conclude, to understand the end of the war period I would like to understand the end of the war period a number of situations still have to occur between 1939 and 1942. The intense dispersion during the war of pre-bate heritage required the establishment of criteria and appropriate returns procedures which consumed considerable efforts by the commissariat. The Spanish Civil War lasted from July of 1936 to April of 1939. Also its efforts as in the case in all wars lasted before a much longer period. For Spain the post war or the Franco regime would last until the death of the dictator in 1975 and to some extent the problems caused by the historical memory of the conflict still persists today. Thank you very much. Thank you, Professor Esteban Chaapapriel. I'd now like to introduce Zaki Aslan who is a conservation architect and the founding director of the Ikram Athar Regional Conservation Center in Sharjah, UAE and he'll be describing critical measures taken to protect cultural heritage in the Arab world during times of war. Thank you very much Will and I'd like first to thank Yorge for this invitation. I'm very honoured to be here at Columbia University. In fact when I studied in Canada we had several professors coming from this very school when I studied conservation in the early 90s. So thank you again for this invitation. In fact moving from the past to the present from the previous presentation I'd like to address as Will mentioned the critical measures to preserve cultural heritage during times of conflict particularly in the Arab region and the Middle East. As Will mentioned I am responsible for this regional office in the Arab region and we are based in Sharjah, the UAE. So I will be focusing practically on our work at Ikram serving the MENA region in particular in areas related to this particular topic. Of course we are addressing other issues such as reconstruction nowadays but I will come to this later during the presentation. It is two years since a meeting was held here in New York on heritage in peril by the Department of State and still that was addressed for Syria and Iraq when there was an exhibition in fact on the looting of the area of Mesopotamia but also in Syria but still ISIS is being active as you all know. So the cultural heritage of humanity in this particular region of the world has continued to be destroyed. Most of us followed what has been happening in Palmyra, Syria and some followed other news on heritage of outstanding universal value such as these pictures that you can see here from the weather site of Sana'a in Yemen which were also a main target. Since the Iraq war much of the region's heritage has been under threat and previous speakers also mentioned the Baghdad Museum and some destruction that occurred. This is the Al-Asqari shrine in Samara but also places of worship were targeted such as this church in Homs in Syria, the Umayyad mosque in Aleppo together with the souk as you all know and the Sufi shrines in Libya that you can see here on the upper part of the screen let alone the forts and important buildings that are symbolic to the people of this particular region. Documentary heritage has also been targeted such as this one housed by the institute Dijibt in Cairo which was targeted a few years, two years ago in attempt to erase the memory of the people who lived in Cairo at the time, since the time Napoleon established this institute. Museums have also been targeted in Cairo at the time of the Revolution so these are also pictures of such organized crime. One might reflect haven't we learned especially in the region from these past experiences Beirut for example in Lebanon Beirut's history was destroyed during the Lebanese civil war which lasted between 1975 until 1990 much also was lost in the name of post-war reconstruction in fact. However we can also look at other experiences Bosnia was mentioned in the previous presentations also where the reconstruction of the Mostar bridge was symbolic to the also to the I should say the reconciliation of the societies that lived in this particular city. In a similar context after the Second World War II as the previous session actually highlighted the establishment of the UN and UNESCO in particular led also to the establishment of other institutions the museum's office was also mentioned but there was a need also to create an international intergovernmental body at the time which actually our office belonged to which is ECROM. It is an intergovernmental body that was created since that time to guide restoration and conservation work in war-torn societies in Europe and beyond. So this is our headquarters in Rome. The more recent creation in 2012 of ECROM's regional office or ECROM Athar Regional Center in Sharjah in the UAE has been instrumental in the past years to address the challenges this region is now facing and together with professionals from the countries concerned and the region from the region and under the patronage of His Highness the Emir of Sharjah we have developed capacity building programs and guidance through several hands-on workshops together with educational programs such as the ones such as one actually being now accredited in partnership with the University of Sharjah we are developing now a master's degree program also that address also this area. This is in addition to the think tanks that we have and published guidance for those whose job it is to safeguard or salvage the significant cultural heritage of this particular region. We have also addressed issues of preparedness, improved legislation, post-war reconstruction and are continuing to do so at the moment. So these are few of the images of our latest activity. The one on the top on the right actually is the latest activity we led for Libya in the presence of the UN envoy to Libya. So these are just some pictures of our latest activities. In responding to the condition of the region during these conflicts and focusing on the times of war it is important to recognize the difference between war and conflict because sometimes it is hard to define that in this particular moment. In addition the overlap between before, during and after is inevitable. Sometimes we think we are doing work during time of crisis when there are still ten years to go to do other work. I mean the example of Beirut is actually a case in point in this regard. There is also substantial variance in preparedness in the different countries of the region and their understanding of cultural heritage and protection. Last year in May 2015, I mean here you could see for example the different types of the time frame where each country in this particular region has prolonged or shortened time of this conflict and these are classified under different heading, sometimes civil war, sometimes minor protest, etc. Last year the Guardian published an article on Palmyra titled is saving priceless antiquity as important as saving people and due to its importance for this particular region I'll get back to this but it is worth noting the image on the right from the British Museum here. I don't know how to use the, anyway, the right hand side image from the British Museum entitled Palmyra People in Stone. So that goes back to the discussion we had in the previous sessions. Now definition of complex emergency is at the heart of the work we do when we have these workshops or complex disasters because it involves several actors who need to be engaged in war-torn societies when during a humanitarian crisis there is considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal and external conflict which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency. So therefore cooperation is really important. So this highlights, this is why addressing disaster risk should be integrated with humanitarian aid and international structures such as those of the UN. You see here different UN organizations for example how they could collaborate to address this issue and how we could integrate our work as cultural professionals and cultural heritage bodies in this kind of framework. Abandonment and neglect result, oh sorry I should mention here that the reality of conflict in the moment includes variety of issues. For example people, exodus, death, street fighting, small arms, fire, mortar bombs, air raids, mines, etc. So where human capacity decline, social and financial disintegration as these images from Beirut's Civil War illustrates. So this is the reality of the situation. Now for example in Syria. That would lead into the following. First abandonment and neglect that result in places that look like this where plants, you see plants, wildlife, weatherings, waters, security, theft, etc. But also in looting where all parties are involved, not just ISIS although looting was evident before the war just not as such a large scale as these images from Syria show. So in fact looting of course increased between different times of the year. I need also to give you, I mean when ISIS entered Syria there were also, this is actually a letter from ISIS that gives a kind of a looting license ordering an appointment of a person who is able to secure the actions required with regard to antiquities under ISIS control. So it is interesting to see such evidence of documents in that regard. These pictures from apemia illustrate the looting in 2012 and 2011 in 2012 where you can see there is the looting increased when security decreased. It is needless to mention international strategic, sorry intentional strategic destruction such as those in Iraq and Syria is caused by political, idealistic and religious objectives as you all know. These are images that were presented actually also in the morning from different sites in Syria and Iraq that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. These images from Palmyra Museum include theft of some objects, strategic looting and destruction of cultural heritage. However if you notice on this map in the orange zone of the site where graves exist for ISIS these were more valuable and thus bombing was organized further away from this area of Palmyra. Sites that cannot be dismantled or don't have much sale value were largely destroyed. Of course in such situations satellite images and drones have a role in helping with documenting destruction when it is not possible to enter an area or when it is too unsafe and one can see what is happening during and from afar. We are collaborating with the various agencies actually working in this area together with UNESCO to monitor the situation of these important sites. Our work on first aid in times of crisis at ECROM that we initiated in 2010 comprises initial actions taken during a complex emergency to document, to secure, to rescue and stabilize damaged cultural heritage until specialized help is available. So these are images in fact from Beirut where excavations after the war in the second screen left only this particular monument and all the development took place in the empty area where which was largely excavated and now this monument for example became part of the new market. The steps of the framework presented on the screen that we developed in the past few years in our workshops and in our training efforts include situation analysis as you see site survey, security and stabilization of actions and in parallel there is a huge major focus on documentation risk management and of course on communication and collaboration with the different stakeholders involved. As mentioned already sometimes this work happens before and even after conflicts as each situation of course is unique depending on the case where we work. So this is practically the methodology that we have developed in our training activities. I'm not going to go through the details but this is just to give you an idea what we have been trying to do in these first aid programs that we have initiated five years ago. This situation analysis or this risk assessment really makes it important that we should understand the whole situation and the context from a macro to a micro level to inform the next moves. This is of course very complex in the Arab world in particular as there are so many actors and too many problems. Understanding the context starting from this macro to the micro environments will help us devise the required strategies at the right scale and at the right pace. So one has to analyze the region site and then going down to the building or the objects as this figure here illustrates. I mean this is something also we try to introduce in the I cannot move without the microphone in the museum risk preparedness work where we have to look at the region, the site, the building and then down to the object. In training first aiders, local people and the military are essential and the need to train diverse peoples from various backgrounds is really important. Not to mention of course the materials and the safety conditions at first. So we have been trying in fact to develop these national teams. Now we are going to have a course for example or a workshop next month for the region, for the countries concerned in the region where we will be having directors of heritage and antiquities coming to see how they can have a kind of ripple effect where they can train other people or guide teams at national scale. It is important to mention documentation in this context because it is important to document everything with a clear goal and objective of course using the available tools and the simple technologies that are available if possible while making sure that the damage is documented rapidly via photography and illustrations. So these are images of how the hands-on activities that we developed focus on this kind of work. Evacuation and salvage of objects or features can be also conducted only when the current location is unsafe after identifying a safer location as well as a safe route. It is important to have a complete inventory and a list of priority items then one can safely handle, pack and move objects with the necessary equipment. In salvaging objects or features it is important to make sure that everything is documented every step of the way. Many things are lost or further destroyed in this process so labeling everything is crucial to prevent this association so we try to address these also during these workshops. Triage may include the condition reporting, prioritizing, drawing for example wet paper or stabilizing unstable architecture etc. So we have to develop the priorities and we address these also in the workshops we do. In a longer duration crisis, in a longer duration crisis in situ stabilization of immovable and valuable architecture the first intervention may be the last one or the only action taken in years to come. So it is important to know that. For temporary storage one may or should make sure that the material, the space, the people as well as are all well planned and secured. So these are images. Today we saw also the sandbags for example and this is what we try also to introduce in these activities we hold or we conduct at the center in Sharjah. Thus in the first aid cycle the during phase and here this in fact diagram illustrates the relationships between the during phase or the emergency response as well as the preparedness and after any crisis or disaster. So as you see here that during phase is part of a larger process before during and after so we have implemented and planned important courses that have addressed the very things I have talked about now in this context. So in the courses we do we address issues related to conflicts for example conflict resolution, skills, communication skills so it's not only related to first aid and civilization per se we address issues related to legislation, leadership, team building and also reconstruction in addition to illicit trafficking and looting etc. These are a few images of our latest courses where we have simulations of real I mean people feel like they are doing real salvage work where of course we also address many issues related to documentation this is all has been supported by the financial support that we received from His Highness the ruler of Sharjah who actually is very much interested to work with us in this particular field. These are also more images on the courses that we have so just to give you to put you in the atmosphere we have stabilization for example of walls of objects and this is a success story because in Egypt the people who were trained were formed a team, a national team in 2012 these were actually instrumental in protecting the Islamic museum at the time when there was a bombardment nearby and people tried to enter the museum so they were skilled and also they were skilled as well in salvaging objects of different nature so this actually we are trying to use this as a model to establish in the different countries concerned. I have also mentioned that we also had several think tank activities on the subject that resulted in guidance one is called the Sharjah initiative where we concentrated mainly on guidance to the member states where they could take certain actions related to different levels such as documentation and many others and we had also what is called the Sharjah statement in December 2014 where we looked at establishing an intervention mechanism and also establishing a kind of collaboration among the neighboring countries that undergo crisis. As I mentioned we will be having several activities coming up soon we have been involved also with our partners in many other activities related to reconstruction I was in Heidelberg University last week and with ECOMOS developing guidance for reconstruction the work after this period hopefully when everything gets calmer just I wanted to conclude by saying this is important even during this phase to think about the future and reconstruction because usually when things go back to normal we have major funding on the red line coming up from various donors where we have very little capacities and we are not very clear about the needs and once we understand the needs and when the capacities are built we then have less funding so it is important to prepare the next phase also beforehand and I'd like to conclude by reiterating that it is time to reflect and discuss what lessons we have learned from the past by route, Warsaw, Berlin, London but more importantly I'd like to conclude with a quote that is I think important particularly for this region because people are suffering in this particular part of the world from the article that I mentioned from the garden in which he ended his article by saying if anyone thinks that a difference between saving stone and saving people look on the faces of the ancient palmyrons the past is not a remote place it is the mirror of ourselves to cherish history and art is to care about the future only if we can imagine ourselves as part of a human story that connects those ancient faces from Palmyra with the people around us can we call ourselves civilized otherwise we are just animals without memory the ruins of Palmyra are not dead they are living and if it comes to it they must be guarded or protected from airstrikes for the sake of our future generations thank you very much for your attention thank you Dr. Aslan now I'd like to introduce Laura Kurgan who is an associate professor of architecture here at Columbia where she directs the visual studies program and also the center for spatial research today she'll be describing some of the recent results of that center's work regarding conflict urbanism in the city of Aleppo, Syria sorry I have the beginning of a call so I'm just making sure alright where's Jorge thanks for the invitation and I'm glad to be part of this very interdisciplinary group so I'm gonna start I'm gonna try to keep to the time I might go just two minutes or so over so in the midst of the civil war in how do I go forward in the midst of a civil war in Syria what myself and my team have done is an interactive online map to assess damage neighborhood by neighborhood to the built fabric of Aleppo, Halab one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world using high resolution satellite images today and I mean today an estimated 250,000 people most of whom are civilians but also including armed opponents of their side regime are surrounded in East Aleppo by government forces who have been trying to win Aleppo and possibly the civil war with the use of barrel bombs and since last year with the aid of Russian airstrikes the residents of East Aleppo are currently shut off from access to water, electricity and humanitarian aid according to the violations documentation center are currently considered the most reliable monitor of casualties in war I quote, during one week in Aleppo between the 21st of September and the 26th of September VDC documented 377 battle related deaths 369 are civilians and only eight are non-civilians here is a picture of Aleppo earlier this month I took it from the BBC website on September 1st, 2016 as I was preparing this talk it comes from the Aleppo media center a group of activists who have been prominent in distributing imagery from Aleppo on social media channels posting photos on Facebook as well as videos on YouTube throughout the war they are one of a small number of networks of trusted on the ground sources for international news outlets which for the most part are denied entry into Syria and seem to be too dangerous to go during the civil war you are familiar with their images even if you don't know the name the picture of the dazed five-year-old Umran Dakhneesh sitting in an ambulance after surviving yet another airstrike came from AMC as well this amazing photograph from the neighborhood of Sheikh Saeed in the southeastern part of the city was taken four weeks ago just as, and I quote the UN called for a 48-hour humanitarian pause to allow safe delivery of food and medicine to the rebel held east and government controlled west unquote the BBC headline read and I quote Syrian boy swims in crater as a battle for Aleppo rages unquote the AMC caption from the photograph itself in Arabic makes that into a claim and that quote said whatever Assad has done in Aleppo life is not over its children make a new life on every site destroyed by its rockets on Tuesday this week Reuters obtained see how do I yeah Reuters obtained and circulated this video taken by drone flying over the eastern side of the city the rain-filled bomb craters are now eerily empty here and likely in many other parts of east Aleppo and new ones join them every day the drone footage is from Tariq al-Bab or al-Hawanaya neighborhood in east Aleppo these craters were created according to Twitter user who will remain well he's not anonymous there of their Aleppo media channel on September 24th he posted the tweet a day before the drone footage was released to think about these images and the relation and their relation to a map we've created and this is the map that you can find on our website I'd like to backtrack a minute between September 2012 when the civil war found its way to Aleppo in July 2015 the city was roughly divided in half between the government controlled west and the rebel held east my students and I followed the front lines during the two these two halves closely in our seminar this spring and for most of that time between January and May the lines remained quite stable despite the barrel bombs and the airstrikes since July of 2016 those lines have been in rapid flux the changes in boundaries are the lines of violence imposed on what has now become an island of rebel held territory while their side regime tries to take control of Aleppo this line between red and green stands in for those of us not present there for the brutal battles destroying and dividing neighborhoods that have become home to diverse cultures and religion that have been home to diverse cultures and religions for centuries the stakes militarily, politically and symbolically are high Aleppo has always been the largest city in Syria and even today September 30th, 2016 after hundreds and thousands have fled or killed or been injured it still constitutes the largest stronghold of rebel held territory in all of Syria so I just want to get to the last image which which really shows that so the green is the rebel held territory a month and a half ago in an opinion piece in the New York Times Linnae Sergei Attar told the story of the last visit to Aleppo in June 2011 just as the uprising against the Assad regime was spreading across the country but before it had turned into war she visited and photographed her grandmother's apartment which sits very close to what became that front line between the two Aleppos that my students and I watched so closely from here five years later she writes from far away of the siege of the eastern side and of a striking moment in which the opposition tried and managed to momentarily break the siege by burning tires in order to blind the Russian air jets providing air support for the army's attacks she talked about what she read on social media some said that and I quote this battle would again tip the scales of the war others claimed that the rebels victory meant the bloody end was again close so this was August 14th this year she talks about what that victory in Aleppo would mean for the Syrian's like me who believed in a just revolution who wanted to end the oppressive Assad dynasty the meaning of victory had changed victory now includes things we'd never imagined five years ago to not mourn the death of yet another friend to take a Syrian beggar child off a Turkish street Lebanese or Jordanian street and send her back to school to end forced starvation of Syria's living under siege her final wish for victory though is to well Syria's broken map together and such that her country would become recognizable again it is a dream that seems now to be receding farther and farther into the distance Syria's war is something she reads and watches about on YouTube and Twitter she studies the maps with a great deal of ambivalence she tells of zooming in and out of the green red green divide animated by the intimate knowledge and memory of her city she doesn't like the maps with the red and green blobs showing a shifting front line a favorite tool of the dispassionate Syria analyst but she follows them nonetheless these wretched maps rudely superimpose their lines of over the landmarks of my life on the east of the on the east are the people I grew up with and love and on the east are the people I grew up grew to love through the revolution men and women and children who defied all odds and stood chanting in the face of one of the most ruthless regimes in history on the west on my streets my school my university my home I study these maps and calculate how far my home sits from the moving front line as my neighborhood shifts slides from west to east from red to green it'll be the next target of mr. barrel bombs or will it be left to the mercy of the rebels who promise not to loot or destroy private property or to kill civilians unquote the internet see with the map is something very few of us here have her concern is about its distance from her city which needs to be taken seriously a dispassionate analysis of the story of those maps would seem to verge on criminal behavior and yet she watches studies attaches herself to the map and seems to trust as much as she loves the image it offers so we have made one of those maps and I want to talk to you today about what those kinds of terrible maps can do and show and say first your reminder it's risky to talk about a war zone in the middle of a war things can change quickly and it's not always or ever or even often clear what that what things are happening on Tuesday the Reuters drone footage of Aleppo appeared it did not come with much context drone footage obtained by Reuters shows extensive damage in eastern Aleppo was the headline we wanted to find out what was being photographed and how or why Reuters managed to fly a drone over it so Nadine Fatale who is currently a research assistant at CSR and also speaks Arabic went to look for things on Twitter and YouTube which might tell us or even show us some of the same side on the ground and indeed she found this image under the hashtag at holocaust Aleppo which has been prevalent since the siege in July she messaged the person and posted the tweet and asked which neighborhood the photo was from and provided the link to the Reuters Reuters drone footage he replied as you can see in the slide at the bottom Tariq al-Bab neighborhood in east Aleppo this neighborhood is also highlighted on this YouTube map that two graduate students who were research assistants at the center this summer Violet Whitney and Michael Storm made to spatialize multiple YouTube channels coming out of Aleppo this one map here this channel that's represented here is called the Halab news network and you notice that this neighborhood Al-Hawinawe shows a concentration of YouTube video I'll come back to this map later so I can show you where that drone was flying thanks perhaps to the same kind of map that left Linnae Sergi Atar so disconcerted the map has multiple dimensions and scales and political perspectives it might look like a passionate overhead view but navigation to this neighborhood the spot with the aid of a newspaper article from the New York Times a drone video a tweet a YouTube video three high resolution satellite images and data from the violations documentation center UNISAT Human Rights Watch all of these things can be added to the map when we look at the spot now that gets you right to the spot you can ask what did it look like in 2012 in 2014 in 2015 does it show damage from UNISAT data just a little that's in 2015 does it show bomb craters that were documented by Human Rights Watch and there are a few while the before and after often miss the moment of impact of an event we can look for it in other ways with social media for instance and as we have shown as well as multiple other data sets so the map can be delaminated into multiple perspectives of the different organizations that it represents to create this interactive map we acquired three commercially available high resolution satellite images and they've become a primary resource in studying Aleppo so we will add more images as significant damage occurs so let me get to the right so over the five years of the civil war in Syria many buildings and neighborhoods in Aleppo have been destroyed from its symbolic center in the old city its mosque and the souk there's many other ancient heritage sites craters mark the building streets and parks by 2016 a conflict ecology has become visible in the overhead images the three satellite images tell us some of the stories of this ongoing erasure and its varied aftermars deaths, departures and the haunting green growth of vegetation and the damaged spaces it too is an outcome of a sign of neglect neglect and the inattention to this war some purposeful and some inadvertent so you might ask at this point why just a map we've learned from talking with journalists and humanitarian organizations that their work is not meant to be comprehensive journalists work on deadlines and humanitarian agencies respond to particular crises and public reports for specific reasons at the university we have a little more time for reflection and we've tried therefore to create a comprehensive view of Aleppo during the war it's the direct reason for which we made the map through examples like the ones I'm showing today we hope that this will become available as a resource to others and something in fact which others might add to and I think there's many people in this room who I hope that this will become the case so please watch the space you'll start seeing case studies being added quickly to our site in fact we're launching the work of our students and three new case studies next week in a lunchtime presentation as well as three methodological case studies we've worked on over the summer the work experiments with methods of documentation such that the map itself becomes a research and navigation device for events that occur in Aleppo our three primary experiments involve combining data sets from multiple sources onto one map as well as creating data from geolocated social media we use the overhead imagery as a navigation device for finding out about and documenting specific events on the ground our first experiment was trying to overlay unisat damaged data onto a 2015 image of Aleppo to investigate the patterns of destruction the New York Times when they published the unisat data showed damage in East Aleppo our map can be more specific it can show you the neighborhoods in particular which were damaged and which one of those neighborhoods were informal or in the GIZ definition from its extensive documentation and planning prior to the war parts of the city were illegally occupied by migrants from rural parts of Syria so you can see over there which areas and I just want to remind you the beginning photograph was from one of these informal neighborhoods Shakespeare Saeed at the beginning of the lecture our second experiment is in mapping YouTube video which has come to be known as Eyes on the Ground of the Battlefield the YouTube video from Syria is often labeled and posted with neighborhood name and date and that allows these captions to combine it with our neighborhood map of Aleppo we have therefore specialized multiple YouTube channels onto a map and are noticing concentrations of the video in specific neighborhoods the very same neighborhood I've been talking about all this time these maps show correlations with the patterns of damage on the unisat data and the disproportionate destruction in East Aleppo in 2015 current YouTube video shows escalations also in that escalations to that pattern the third experiment is perhaps the most ambitious frustrated by our ability to obtain high-resolution imagery that is available to the UN, Human Rights Watch and the New York Times we decided not to wait for the release for this data to become public working with remote sensing analysts, Jayman, Frandon, Hook we have made change maps in Aleppo for every two weeks of the war Jayman created an algorithm for analyzing low-resolution Landsat images that can show us where images are changing the most from week to week and then we can use that to guide our investigations in higher resolution imagery or social media we ground-truthed it with a 2016 image that we did manage to purchase and fill the gaps where unisat might not have yet updated their data our last example from our map is a case study under development for Costello Road which is what cut Aleppo off from aid a strategic pathway to the rebel-held east of the city once that road was taken by Assad's army the current siege began for real here are low-resolution changed maps pointing to the damage on Costello Road over-relayed onto high-resolution images showing checkpoints and a destroyed bridge the zone of the city has not turned green again and it is still occupied by the Syrian army so quick shift the topic of this symposium is preservation and war so in addition to to its people the built heritage of Aleppo has certainly been targeted over the last four years beginning on September 29th 2012 two days after our first satellite image was taken six the 600-year-old covered market in the center of the city was burned in the same days of fighting the historic passport office overlooking the citadel was bombed by Syrian government forces the ancient city of Aleppo the citadel was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1986 as an exceptional reflection on the social, cultural and economic aspects of what was once the richest cities of all humanity on September 30th four years ago today as it was burning the director general of UNESCO called attention to its destruction the human suffering caused by this situation is already extreme the fighting that is now destroying cultural heritage that bears witness to this country's millennial history valued and admired world over makes it even more tragic she reminded the Syrian government that it was bound by the Hague's convention to do its utmost to safeguard this heritage from the ravages of war I'm not going to show you a map that we've made but we've documented 220 destroyed heritage sites and would love help in mapping it Raphael Lemkin's conception of vandalism serves as a motivating rationale and theoretical frame for our work on Aleppo the Polish Jewish lawyer Lemkin coined the term genocide during World War II and campaigned tirelessly for the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948 and it entered into force in January 1951 after 21 states had ratified it but as we learn in Robert Brevin's book The Destruction of Memory already in 1933 Lemkin had described what he then calls offenses against the law of nations I'm going to skip this part but I'm trying to make the distinction here between vandalism and barbarism which people were making this morning and I want to also talk quickly about the judgment of the International Criminal Court because although it is an amazing thing that the International Criminal Court did arrest someone what they did not do was prove that the building had been, that the guy confessed he said he admitted that he had done it so the prosecution did not need to prove that the building had been demolished and so many cases have come before the International Criminal Court and tried to prove it and failed so Andres Riedelmeier have failed a few times the wars in Bosnia etc so that was another whole page of the paper which I don't have time to do but I want to end by saying that the destruction of memory or the intentional attack on cultural and religious symbols is now justifiable as a crime of war even though they didn't have to prove it so of course trials for crimes of war against people and buildings might be far in the future for Syria but evidence is being collected all the time but for what tribunal they're actually not part of the International Criminal Court right now nevertheless one of the ways of challenging the destruction of memory is the preservation or the creation of the memory of destruction this is something that we hope our map will contribute to and keep contributing to in the future thank you Thank you Professor Kurgan I'd like to introduce the final panelist of this session Zainab Bahrani who is the Edith Parada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art History and Archaeology here at Columbia where she directs the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments Project and she'll be sharing with us some of the recent results of her work Hello everyone thank you for inviting me to present this work to you today some of the other speakers did speak about history going back maybe a hundred years and I think another speaker went back a couple of thousand years but I hope you're ready for this because we're going back about five thousand years now so to begin with the the beginning about two thousand five hundred years before Christ a Sumerian Monument was erected in the south of Iraq it carried a lengthy text about border disputes and warfare one small aspect of the text that hasn't really been recognized is rather interesting among the oaths that were sworn at the end of the war and listed on this steely on the left of your screen are oaths to the various gods that the warring parties would neither destroy nor dislocate the monuments it's written on the monument itself so that the earliest monuments and texts we have about warfare in fact already worn against such destruction we often hear or read that cultural preservation is a modern western concern and that laws of war concerning to what is now referred to as heritage are aspects of modernity alone this is not the case although today I want to speak to you about the current genocidal violence in Iraq and Syria and the strategies of historical erasure that are part and parcel of this genocide of our people first I would like to go back in time to ancient Mesopotamia because the eradication of the past of Syria and Iraq is the eradication of this history a history that the local populations consider to be their own particular heritage the ancient Mesopotamians who lived in what is now Iraq northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey were probably the first people in the world to create inscribed monuments whose purpose was to endure into the distant future we read in the ancient texts that their monuments were conceived of specifically as things meant to be present for all time these works were made of various materials and forms including freestanding steles or slabs of sculpted inscribed stones relief sculptures carved onto the cliffs of the mountainside and magnificent works of architecture their monumental buildings were both religious and secular in nature the ancient Mesopotamians also had a literature that praised these works as remarkable and astonishing things that future generations could and would admire in the ancient texts future generations are also asked specifically to preserve these works when monuments and architectural edifices were destroyed when cities were ravaged by war laments and requiem were written and sung on behalf of the destroyed built structures just as they were for the people who had been killed enslaved and devastated by war they considered them as aspects of the same destruction these things acts of war and discourses of war were defined as part of the May M.E. it's a Sumerian word which is a list of concepts and things that are associated with civilization the May include the arts music, sculpture and all kinds of positive creative things and activities that include aspects of life that are negative such as warfare for the Mesopotamians seeing war as part of the May was a way of acknowledging that warfare is an inevitable aspect of civilization so that then rules of war were also created so let me return to this monument the stele erected by Diana Tum Avlagash the Sumerian ruler in modern Telo in Iraq is the oldest known public monument in history the oldest known public historical monument in history it is a monument to victory but at the same time it's also a contractual agreement a peace treaty set up after the battle is over the Sumerians already practiced what we later call in Latin use ad bellum or just war the act of war against another city state was not acceptable unless it was defensive before the battle with Oma Diana Tum the ruler who made this monument or had it erected Diana Tum went to a dream oracle to receive the divine message sanctioning the war and he justified his battle as a defense of his territory Lagash so already in the middle of the third millennium BC the Sumerians practiced diplomacy as well before a war envoys were sent to try to find a diplomatic solution for border conflicts it was only when these failed that a messenger would be sent with a declaration of war in advance of the actual attack the taking of the lives of others even for the king and his military was a source of great anxiety and required justification and sanction from the gods among the oaths that were made repeatedly were these oaths related to the protection of monuments kings had to swear that they would not transgress borders but also that they would not destroy monuments so the destruction of monuments was already defined as an act of war extensive information about restoration and preservation of works of historical architecture also exist especially in ritual texts I'll now jump forward about 2000 years from the Sumerian to the Seleucid era during the reconstruction of a building the brick god required prayers instructions for architectural restoration dating to Hellenistic Babylonia that's the fourth to the third centuries BC say and I quote quote when the wall of a temple falls into ruin in order to demolish and re-found that temple the diviner shall investigate the site for ancient remains the builder of the temple shall put on clean clothes and put a tin bracelet on his arm he shall take an axe of lead remove the first brick and put it in a restricted place you set up an offering table in front of that brick god of the foundation and you offer sacrifices end of quote these instructions for restoration ritual shows that architectural rituals and preservation rights that had begun in Sumer in the fourth millennium BC still existed in some form thousands of years later in the fourth century BC the text orders the Kalu priest to remove the first brick and place it on an altar the Kalu priest was then to sing the Lamentations according to the age-old Mesopotamian tradition of laments and dirges sung for the destruction of cities and their architecture these laments had been sung for the destruction of cities and for the terrible loss of temples and their magnificent sculptures during warfare as early as the third millennium BC in the cellucid era ritual I quoted there was some sense that the original brick set up on the altar had to be appeased it was the representative of the brick god Kula its removal from the original context of the building was played out as a temporary dislocation while the repairs were being made as carefully as possible following the original ground plans of the building when an ancient wall had to be built down and rebuilt a process of mourning had to take place in order to bridge the gap between the existence of the old wall and the rebuilding of the new one but the text also makes clear to us that the building site had to be surveyed first by the baru the seer priest so that nothing would be inadvertently missed or damaged in the process of reconstruction the ancient Mesopotamias were constantly concerned with the reverence and respect of the remains of the past and Mesopotamia is the earliest place where we can study such deep historical consciousness through both textual and archaeological evidence we can even say that the reverence for the past and the concern for the preservation of ancient cities was distinctive of Mesopotamia and that these concerns are at times somewhat similar to those of our own time a lengthy compendium of omens known as Shumma alu in Akkadian meaning if a city dot dot dot after its opening lines shows the concern with preservation well the text provides a long list of omens that have to do with conservation and preservation practices and makes clear that they are intended not only for the king and those in power but also for common people so the omens I'll give you a sample of the omens they go something like this if a man repairs a sanctuary he will have good luck if a man tears down a sanctuary the river will swallow him up if someone relocates a chapel that man will go to ruin if a man repairs something old that man's god will come to him these are but a few lines from a long list of forms of restoration and preservation of things from images of gods to entire buildings and more limited architectural repairs the text even includes a section of concerns to surveyors who are planning to build it a particular location so that if a man plans to build a house and while digging the foundations he finds something in the ground he must follow particular preservation procedures all ancient objects found in the ground or the remains standing in temples or public places were considered to belong to the terrain they were propitious for the people of the land and their future this is made very clear in the omen texts despite millennia of wars and devastation the antiquities of the land never less survived in some form when in the 2nd century B.C. Adad Nadine Ache a ruler of the cellucid era when his builders found the statues of Gudea who had set them up 2000 years earlier the ruler had them placed in his now newly constructed palace not only did he collect them and set them up carefully for display but he ordered his scholars and scribes who could who were able to read the ancient languages and scripts which were by now very ancient indeed and to imitate the Sumerian methods of building and of writing inscriptions that he used in his own new palace they made inscriptions written in Aramaic and Greek in such a way as you can see on the brick on the lower right in such a way that they look like bricks inscribed with Gudea's name from thousands of years before this was one of the earliest forms of antiquarian collecting and study of the past that we have and it prefigures the interests and activities of the Italian Renaissance these were ancient forms of preserving the past and it's a way to form ideological links to the antiquity of the land this is true but they were also pious acts and acts for the pursuit of preservation of historical knowledge at the same time so I have gone over this ancient historical material in some detail for two reasons first of all to point out that preservation and conservation are not modern nor western ideas the historical evidence is to the contrary secondly it is exactly this history that's being wiped out today so rather than just following cultural preservation policy that highlights heritage primarily in relationship to tourist sites or concepts of global cultural heritage we ought to give some thought to the past and to the people who live with these sites and monuments the richly diverse culture and deep history of Iraq and Syria is exactly what is being targeted directly and systematically nevertheless while it is clear as UN and other laws have acknowledged that cultural destruction is an act of war and even a war crime that in August 2016 the ICC prosecuted this has been mentioned already in relationship to the tombs of Timbuktu this kind of prosecution has been somewhat selective and I would like to say to Laura that also the United States is not signatory to the ICC not only Syria so this kind of prosecution has been somewhat selective many acts of direct targeting by UN member states pass without much comment from the international community and even the scholarship on iconoclasm and destruction of memory has had less interest in these direct acts of targeting the historical landscape as a form of erasure and rewriting as well as a form of divisiveness of the population for the sake of conquest much of the work on preservation in war today is linked with government policies heritage is destroyed in war ancient sites are occupied or deliberately attacked but restoration is now also used and several of you brought up the word propaganda and how heritage is used for propaganda but preservation is also used for propagandistic purposes so restoration is now also used as a declaration of victory while many funding agencies here in the West appear to be more concerned with showcasing with the showcasing of new digital technologies than with the tangible material monuments some of these initiatives appropriate the heritage of Syria and Iraq in disturbing ways sometimes for their own profit since 2003 war has devastated Iraq and Syria our people are being killed and displaced they're enslaved and tortured cities are demolished in many cases it's clear that the attacks on monuments are part and parcel of the strategy to erase the local population and their history and to use culture to divide and wipe out history and people alike this aspect of the cultural destruction had little attention in comparison to the idea that we should rescue world heritage so just last week the president of France François Hollande announced a hundred million dollar fund to protect cultural heritage especially in Syria and Iraq these funds are for post-war restoration while part of the plan offers asylum in Europe and other artifacts that are in danger your intelligent audience so I don't think I even need to comment on this but what I had written down is that while this is an admirable pledge to protect culture the reluctance to take in refugees is of course in contrast to this concern for heritage a heritage which European powers and a great deal of scholarship today associates from the people of the land this is exactly what our earlier scholarship of orientalist and post-colonial criticism attempted to point out already in the 19th century collections of antiquities in museums such as the Louvre and the British Museum often presented their acquisitions as form of rescue and preservation from the ignorant populations to either understand or to value their past this renewed dissociation by politicians and funding agencies is all the more surprising given the fact that the reason for the ISIS attacks on heritage sites such as Nimrud Nineveh and Palmyra as well as the religious shrines and sanctuaries of anything from Christians to Sufis to Shiites and Yazidis the erasure of the presence and histories of the diversity of people in Iraq and Syria and the rewriting of the local history in their own vision cleansed of the lives and the histories of others here at Columbia we have been immersed in a field project that I actually first came up with the idea for this project in 2004 when I was working in Iraq in some sense it was a response to war but it was not a response to the current crisis in Syria and Iraq following ISIS the field work component was launched in 2012 it's called Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments our team is made up of people from Columbia University you can see us on the lower right a few of us anyway there's colleagues there we work together on site to map and to document monuments assess conditions with the hope that this information may be taken up for future work architecture and sculpture ruins in the landscape and carvings in the mountainside are all aspects of the historical landscape of this region that we document one can now see this work that we're doing on the link that I've written down here but a large amount of the catalog information is available only if you email us directly and we give you the link these decisions have been very difficult for us because in part we feared opening it up completely less sites become targets after we make everything publicly accessible so if you email us we give you the access but otherwise the catalog part is closed you can only see a certain amount of the information publicly and added difficulty to these sorts of decisions that we have to think about is that funding agencies here are often not willing to permit teams like ours to spend their funds in payment to local archeologists or facilities as a result much of the funding for cultural heritage preservation in Syria and Iraq actually has little to do with these lands so the problem of preservation and war we're facing also include the fact that state actors in occupying powers often have hasty restoration or preservation initiatives as a way to claim victory and this was clearly the case with the Russian statement that they plan to restore Palmyra soon after it was overtaken from ISIS archeologists responded by condemning such a plan and asking that no hasty restoration take place so our scholarship and field work I think has to work independently of government policies or the preferences of funding agencies so I think that the only direction or at least the direction that I would prefer to take is one where we remain non-aligned and to work independently as scholars, thank you Thank you Professor Bahrani and now I'd like to invite all of our panelists to come down and join us here at the front we'll have a brief question and answer period together and then I'd like to open up the floor for discussion from the audience Noon who didn't participate in this morning's session I'd just like to introduce myself once again I'm Will Reynolds I'm an adjunct faculty member here in the preservation program involved with some projects supported by the Department of Antiquities in Libya so I'd like to pose a series of interrelated questions just to get the discussion started and then hopefully we'll be able to turn it over to you in the audience This morning we discussed an awful lot about the role of evidence in the context of architecture and heritage being destroyed in conflict and we got the sense that this is ground that's rapidly changing right now due to some court cases and of course we heard about the case of Ahmed Al Fakia Al Mahdi in Timbuktu submitting to pleading guilty to destroying tombs in Mali we also live in a time where that ground is changing rapidly here in America where this past week the legislation that's now gone through Congress that might permit individuals to seek grievances from foreign governments directly and potentially also other entities beyond individuals that's something we could imagine in the future other countries might adopt a similar protocol and here in America we could find American assets frozen abroad because of the use of American munitions to destroy cultural heritage sites in a place like Yemen which seems to be ongoing even now so in that context I appreciated hearing from Professor Bahrani that there's a certain obligation in the realm of scholarship to remain entirely neutral however the evidence that might be collected in some of these activities and certainly the training that is given by institutions like Ikram Athar could ultimately be used to collect just that evidence indeed I think a lot of my colleagues in Libya would be interested in collecting that kind of evidence that could really meet that legal threshold in an international setting and so my question to you the panelist is what really where does our obligation lie in all of this how much information should we be collecting and ultimately who will control that information and then when we offer training to colleagues in the field who are actively grappling with these challenges do we not have that obligation to train them to the highest extent possible so that they would be able to make a convincing case before the eyes of the world I'll say is this on I suppose what I would say is that maybe we can start by saying to funding agencies thank you very much and that's very generous but we don't want you to dictate to us what we ought to do I mean it's very nice that you provide funds but I think the problem today is that many funding agencies are actually shaping the direction of preservation work rather than just providing assistance I think in our case as we do capacity building especially of those who are leading from the country's concern we are trying to involve the people whose heritage actually is being destroyed so in a way I think it is really important to engage of course not only sometimes we have I mean talking about neutral ground what we try to do is to involve people from different sectors within the same country and you know well for Libya how we could gather people from different sides also the experts from outside who work in Libya for example I take Libya as an example but also elsewhere I think it's very important to engage with the local people to understand and get the facts from directly from the ground and then based on that we could develop the strategies and the way to go I think we all know that the international criminal court is a symbolic institution which is not to undermine its importance I think it's a hugely you know I think the US should definitely be part of it it's shocking that it's not but when things get tried in the international criminal court it's usually one of so many things you know and I think that the project we've tried to do with Aleppo you realize that there are so many sources for information the people on you know social media the people on the ground the satellite imagery produced by the stuff produced by NGOs the question is how to do it in a way that makes it useful as well and I think you know we've I've been working on this project now for a year and it's one of the hardest projects I've ever worked on because it's so confusing to know how exactly to put these things together in a useful way and especially we're from you know I don't speak Arabic for example but that's just one example but they are but people who do find it useful in various ways we need to figure out how to translate it that's a whole extra grant just for that so and it doesn't exactly answer your question but I think it's not I don't think there's any easy rules to say this is good evidence and this is going to work I'm going to use I'm going to take advantage of this luxury translator we're working with two concepts the concept of Bellico's conflict more than war and the theme of heritage conceived from the vision of the 20th century for several reasons first of all we don't have that Eurocentric view about heritage which was shaped in the 70s about heritage which was shaped in the 70s because wars are no longer wars they are Bellico's conflicts in which the cyberspace intervenes directly we're not talking about wars but about hybrid conflicts as Laurie was pointing out this morning with this double vision the only solution to preserve heritage is to work in the lines of what Zaki was proposing is to prepare people in the local place only when we convince people that we're talking about their heritage not about world heritage which is not recognized by the local community and when we advance in people's recognition of their own heritage is when we can claim some successes that the police in terms of heritage will not lead to any solution it's a topic for discussion it was a great time to pose it great do we have a roving mic? yeah I just want to make a comment you got to turn it on yes I just want to make a mention to this presentation of Miss Bararini your presentation seems to me it looked like a historical political presentation and somebody has mentioned already that the destruction the looting of antiquities in the Middle East has started always taking place by the ISIS forces or ISIS faction don't forget that all these destruction of antiquities and the looting of museums started during or after the invasion of Iraq by the United States and then you follow up later on for another conflict in Egypt as you are very aware of the ransacking of the Egyptian Museum on the other hand what Professor Esteban Chapapria said about the training of local people I do definitely agree but also you should take advantage of other institutions outside your countries who have had centuries speaking about France that they established the historic preservation in the 1800s and to take advantage of the Italians who are masters in preservation you should really take advantage of them and probably the monies that come to you from other countries are not thinking so much that it's a propaganda for those countries to contribute to the preservation just to look good so basically yes you should train your people to take advantage of the experience that other countries have had throughout many years Are there any other questions? Thank you for the presentation you struck me as I was listening that war is one of the times when locality gets redefined when suddenly even in a presumably an age of mobility being local suddenly acquires a whole new meaning meaning that is different from for example Laura the idea that Aleppo is one of the longest continuously inhabited those categories that are universal and applied from the panel about the importance of whether war is actually a difference or a sort of switching point into whose heritage is sort of at risk whether locality is the criterion whether continues in habitation as Laura mentioned sometimes the very experience of witnessing destruction whether or not that was your heritage in the first place makes it yours in some way I mean that's I think the question I think for the whole for the whole day and I mean I've become so familiar with many square feet in Aleppo right now I've never been there so I do think that that's an important question and I think the issue of the international criminal court does turn these things into into localities that have relevance for a global I don't want to say global audience but have a global relevance and also the spread of objects that the looting whoever was this morning said looting has been going on for 2,000 years and the spread of objects as even before the war was already there's the Pergamon Museum and there's objects all over the place so I think what's interesting today has been because often the destruction of memory and bringing Lemkin into it is barbarism and vandalism the same thing even though he couldn't get vandalism into the into the charter it seems today we're saying there is we should prioritize human life in some ways especially when it becomes easy for governments to say I want to protect culture that actually I've learned from today and I think there's something correct there's something correct about that but it doesn't diminish the importance of the destruction of cultural heritage either does that make sense? we have time probably for one more question first of all thank you to the panelists for a kind of heart breakingly interesting and productive discussion I mean I take it professor Barani that you were asking us to think about cultural heritage beyond the question of property logics which would be involved in any structuring of the problem of heritage destruction in terms of a future litigation I take it that you were saying that there was something to be learned from this deeper history other than that they did it before us and that one of those things is that those monuments were functioning as signifiers of difference and not merely they're not reducible to the objects about which over which one could make property rights kinds of claims and in so far as destruction of cultural heritage is a mode of symbolic violence in addition to a mode of material violence I just I wondered if the panelists would like to speak a little bit more to that question of what it is that is destroyed at the level of the signified what values beyond the material objects themselves are at risk and why this makes this moment of warfare so enormously important you know the cultural heritage discourse is so almost inevitably tied to questions of national and proprietary heritage so I heard you saying that there was something else in that earlier form of monumentality beyond the reduction to property of heritage so I put that question to the panel but to professor by Ronnie first well I mean I do think that because I've been thinking so much about Iraq and Syria I haven't really considered whether this is whether I would like to make this a universal statement or not but with regard to Iraq and Syria I think what's happening with the attacks on cultural heritage is that these cultural sites which were aspects of identity whether correctly or incorrectly I mean people are always saying well that's not they're not really genetically tied to the Assyrian or the Sumerian past you know centuries have gone by that's really not the issue though is it because if they consider these monuments to be their past their heritage then they have the right to feel that way about them but I think what's happened is that because specific groups are tied to monuments and not just religious monuments but also pre-Christian and so on that this culture has become instrumentalized in some way for destruction so just as it can be a marker or a sign of identity that is in some sense used for nationalism or for other aspects of group identity it's also now being specifically used to what I think of as divide and conquer so a landscape that was very multi-ethnic diverse multi-religious is now becoming well it's being emptied out not really becoming anything but it's just becoming a wasteland for me this is what's happening there and in antiquity the reason that I went into the issue of antiquity is because I think that we sometimes forget that there were other people in the past who had to deal with similar issues and we sometimes think we're inventing the wheel and so I just wanted people to realize that these sorts of issues had been considered in the past and that for them monuments were not just markers of nationalism or royalty but I mean this takes us into an entirely different realm because of course they thought monuments were alive I don't have time for this lecture now but you all know about you know entangled objects and think theory and so on and so of course for them monuments did have agency they were alive so attacking them was a very terrible thing that's another lecture another time okay well we'll continue the conversation over coffee which I believe is served but in any case if you could join me please give a round of applause for our panelists we resume at 3.30 3.20 there's coffee in the back of the room