42 Y E A R B O O K 2 0 1 9 fuel. Evacuation of artefacts and cultural objects from museums and collections can also be considered when the threat is imminent, in situ protection is impossible, and a safe refuge is available. In Syria, the directorate general of antiquities and museums (DGAM) evacuated hundreds of statues and busts from the ancient ruins of Palmyra and its museum before ISIS captured the area in 2015. The artefacts were moved to a safe haven in Damascus, as reported in an article by CNN correspondent, Frederik Pleitgen. Later, ISIS militants destroyed the larger artefacts that had not been evacuated from the museum together with some of the ancient monuments of the site. The museum of Ma’arrat Al-Numan, housed in the old Ottoman Murad Pasha caravanserai in north western Syria, contains a remarkable collection of Roman and Byzantine mosaics and artefacts from the Dead Cities, as well as Ebla. In 2016, local volunteers and archaeologists undertook efforts to protect a part of the collection by using sandbags and other techniques used since the first world war. The museum and its historic structure sustained heavy damage during several conflict episodes and aerial barrel bombings, but damage to the protected mosaics was limited according to a report by the Day After Heritage Protection Initiative. The lack of any reliable in situ protection for monuments and sites, especially when parties involved in armed conflict deliberately breach international laws and target heritage, led to the Italian proposal to the UN General Assembly in 2016 for including CPP in the mandate of international peacekeeping missions. The proposal involved creating the ‘Blue Helmets for Cultural Heritage’ or, ‘cultural peacekeeping’, a multitasking unit of military, police, and heritage experts to be deployed in conflict zones. The primary role of such a unit would be to implement international law, particularly the Hague Convention, securing sites and heritage places by deploying military forces, preventing illicit trafficking and looting of cultural properties, promoting heritage recovery and reconstruction, and providing technical assistance to local authorities. While the process of creating this unit is still awaiting high level political, financial, and international support, one can expect to see the cultural Blue Helmets embroiled in the same debates and ambivalences that exist around humanitarian intervention. There is great potential for such an international campaign for heritage peacekeeping to be labelled crusaders or neo-colonialists by opponents, as stated by Paolo Foradori in his online published work, Protecting Cultural Heritage During Armed Conflict: The Italian Contribution to ‘Cultural Peacekeeping’. Strategies for the protection of cultural heritage in times of conflict and crisis should also entail measures for emergency intervention and first aid to damaged cultural heritage to stop further damage, mitigate new risks, and stabilise the condition until restoration and reconstruction can begin. The ultimate goal of emergency measures should be the recovery of cultural heritage and facilitating the rehabilitation process. Ironically, in many cases, the post-conflict reconstruction phase imposes more risk and threats to cultural heritage and historic cities through uncontrolled demolition and hastily implemented reconstruction and development projects. In his working paper on Reconstruction and Fragmentation in Beirut, Edward Randall describes how this most famous example of post-war reconstruction in the Middle East resulted in a fabricated city centre losing its connection to its history and local inhabitants. The example illustrates how essential it is that after immediate emergency measures have been taken, long-term recovery strategies are carefully developed in consultation with all stakeholders and local communities, and considering the local socioeconomic context. Cultural heritage is faced with many global challenges which are making its protection more complex. These include the emergence of non-state actors, links between climate-change disasters and armed conflict, the human rights dimension of cultural heritage, our new understanding of cultural diversity, and the role of heritage in the reconciliation process. In view of such complexity, the protection of cultural heritage requires developing and adopting a multi-pronged strategy which brings together cultural heritage organisations and army, security, law enforcement, humanitarian, and development agencies, as well as media, research, academic, industry, new technology, and governmental and non-governmental sectors. Collaboration between all these players should be considered as a way forward to respond to the current crisis facing the cultural heritage. Bijan Rouhani is senior research associate at the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford (eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/). He is also the vice-president of the International Scientific Committee on Risk Preparedness of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and the representative of ICOMOS on the International Board of Blue Shield. Since 2015, the EAMENA project has created over 252,000 records of the most endangered sites in the Middle East and North Africa in its database. http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/
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