Cultural Destruction as a War Crime

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/opinion/cultural-destruction-as-a-war-crime.html

Version 0 of 1.

The use of cultural destruction as a weapon of war gained new recognition last week when the International Criminal Court handed down a nine-year sentence to a radical Islamist for his role in destroying shrines in Timbuktu, Mali, in 2012. It was the first time the court prosecuted cultural destruction as a war crime.

The case was brought against Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, who, as the head of a morality squad operating under Ansar Dine, a group linked to Al Qaeda, enforced bans on music and dance and oversaw the destruction of the shrines.

The decision gives teeth to a belief that deliberate destruction of cultural sites constitutes a war crime when it is part of a broader strategy of cultural cleansing and conquest. The Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan in 2001 caught the world’s attention. Another recent example was the destruction by the Islamic State of ancient structures in Palmyra, Syria.

The international court’s power to judge such crimes is limited to those committed after a country signs on to the court’s founding Rome Statute. Afghanistan did so in 2003. Neither Iraq nor Syria is a signatory.

To stop the Islamic State from profiting from the sale of looted artifacts, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution in February, 2015, that recognized the link between the illicit trade in cultural goods from Iraq and Syria and terrorism. A month later, President François Hollande of France, who has taken a strong role on this issue, and the head of Unesco, Irina Bokova, unequivocally condemned cultural destruction by the Islamic State as war crimes.

There is precedent for dealing with cultural destruction as a war crime beyond the purview of the I.C.C. The United Nations-backed tribunal that examined crimes committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s adjudicated numerous cases of the destruction of religious and cultural sites as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

As the I.C.C. pointed out last Tuesday, deliberate destruction of historic cultural sites “does not only affect the direct victims of the crimes,” but also “the international community.” It is time for a specific mandate from the Security Council that would allow the I.C.C. to prosecute individuals who committed such crimes in Syria and Iraq.