Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian, talked about the way the nature of war has changed – from soldiers to drones. At the same time the aims of the warmongers have also changed – from stopping armies to wiping out the opponent’s culture to bombing them back to the stone age!
He gives extensive examples of where Ukraine’s culture has been deliberately targeted by Russia, as have key cultural and historical sites in Iran, by the US, or the Great Mosque of Gaza by Israel.
And yet, he reflects, we are constantly told that modern missiles have very clear targeting. The reality, as he reminds us, is “that bombers are casual because they are near invulnerable, while their victims appear small and anonymous. Bombers do not conquer territory or secure surrender. They are manifestations of leadership machismo.”
Things used to be different. Apparently in the allied invasion of Italy in 1943-45, “individual British and American officers were known to take steps to protect its monuments from destruction”. And after the war was ended, “sincere efforts were made to evolve rules of war, including respect for cultural and historic monuments”. In particular this resulted in the Hague Convention (1954) and the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property (1972).
But recent and current wars have focussed more on obliteration: “Victory today appears to lie in destroying an enemy’s identity and morale as much as in killing its people”, rather as Islamic State did in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014.
So what can we do? Simon Jenkins reflects on the role of Unesco in keeping a record of the fate of cultural heritage worldwide, but “a record is just a record”. Rather he commends the World Monuments Fund’s Crisis Response Program, which he says “sends aid, advice and materials to war zones, almost before the bombs have stopped falling…… its Ukraine Response Fund has many projects…helping to protect and stabilise bombed buildings, one day perhaps to restore them.
It is a sad reflection on us human beings, that our priority seems to have moved beyond our own security to not only beating the armies of others but in Donald Trump’s words ensuring that “a whole civilisation will die tonight”.
Read the story in the Guardian here. Find details of the World Monuments Fund’s Crisis Response Program, here.
Picture above: damaged medieval walls of the Great Mosque of Gaza