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© 2013 Koninklijke Brill NV ISBN 9789004247819

Cultural Heritagein the Crosshairs

Protecting Cultural Property during Conflict

Edited by

Joris D. KilaJames A. Zeidler

LEIDEN • BOSTON2013


CONTENTS

List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixGlossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Karl von Habsburg

PART ONE

APPROACHES TO CULTURAL PROPERTYPROTECTION IN THE MILITARY

Military Involvement in Cultural Property Protection as Part ofPreventive Conservation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Joris D. Kila

Respecting and Protecting Cultural Heritage in Peace SupportOperations—A Pragmatic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Michael Pesendorfer

PART TWO

CULTURAL PROPERTY PROTECTION TRAINING

Cultural Property Protection and the Training Continuum in the U.S.Department of Defense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69James A. Zeidler

Developing a Cultural Property Protection Training Program forROTC: Methodology, Content, and Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93John Valainis

Conflicting Memory: The Use of Conflict Archaeology Sites asTraining for Operational Troops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113Richard Osgood

Developing a NATO Cultural Property Protection Capability . . . . . . . . . . . 133Michael Hallett


vi contents

PART THREE

CPP AND MILITARY PLANNING

Aiming to Miss: Engaging with the Targeting Process as a Means ofCultural Property Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151Michael Hallett

PART FOUR

CASE STUDIES ON CPP AND MILITARY OPERATIONS

A Case Study in Cultural Heritage Protection in a Time of War . . . . . . . . . 169Benjamin A. Roberts and Gary B. Roberts

Preserving Cultural Heritage in Time of Conflict: A Tool forCounterinsurgency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195Cheryl White and Thomas Livoti

Heritage Destruction and Spikes in Violence: The Case of Iraq . . . . . . . . . 219Benjamin Isakhan

A Report on Archaeological Site Stability and Security inAfghanistan: The Lashkari Bazar Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249Matthieu Murdock and Carrie Hritz

PART FIVE

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CPP

Holy Places—Contested Heritage: Dealing with Cultural Heritage inthe Region of Palestine from the Ottoman Period until Today . . . . . . 263Friedrich Schipper

Urban Cultural Heritage and Armed Conflict: The Case of BeirutCentral District . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287Caroline A. Sandes

Antiquity & Conflict: Some Historical Remarks on a Matter ofSelection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315Mirjam Hoijtink


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Plundering Boys: A Cultural Criminology Assessment on the Power ofCultural Heritage as a Cause for Plunder in Armed Conflictsalong History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329Marc Balcells

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351Joris D. Kila and James A. Zeidler

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355


URBAN CULTURAL HERITAGE AND ARMED CONFLICT:THE CASE OF BEIRUT CENTRAL DISTRICT*

Caroline A. Sandes

Protecting cultural heritage during armed conflict tends to focus on key culturalproperties: institutions such as museums and important historic or archaeologicalsites, especially World Heritage sites. While protecting these national institutionsand sites is of utmost importance, cultural heritage also comes in other less obviousforms. In particular is that of any historic urban landscape: the buildings, places,streetscapes and monuments that define and represent a sense of place, history,memory and identity of that urban area and for the communities that inhabit it.

Given the nature of urban warfare, urban cultural heritage is vulnerable to bothcollateral and intentional damage and destruction. This intentional destructionmay, at its extreme, be part of urbicide. Protecting urban cultural heritage fromboth collateral and intentional destruction is extremely difficult, made more soby a lack of understanding of the broader concept of the historic urban landscapeand, beyond major monuments, what may constitute urban cultural heritage. Inaddition, it would seem that the significance of the destruction of the historic urbanlandscape as part of the political violence of urbicide is not fully realised. UsingBeirut during the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990) as the main case study, this chapterexplores the broader concept of the historic urban landscape and its significance;its relationship to and destruction during armed conflict; the relationship of thisdestruction to urbicide and the destruction of community in time as well as space;and the issue of protecting urban cultural heritage during conflict.

Introduction

Through all phases of the joint operation [in urban environments], the JointForce Commander and staff must consider the following questions as a min-imum: …

(j) What cultural/historical sites must be preserved and how will that impactthe operation due to the strategic ramification if damaged or destroyed (e.g.,the Mosque, Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty)? (Joint Staff 2009, III-4, 5)

It is established that the mere destruction of a culture of a group is notgenocide … But there is need for care. The destruction of a culture may serve

* I wish to thank the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust for funding towards thewriting of this chapter.


288 caroline a. sandes

evidentially to confirm an intent, to be gathered from other circumstances, todestroy the group as such. (Judge Shahabuddeen at the trial of GeneralRadislav Krstic for the genocide of Srebrenica, quoted in Bevan 2007, 208)

These two quotes highlight two perpetual problems and one seemingly irre-solvable contradiction in urban cultural property protection and the mili-tary. The first problem is a widespread lack of knowledge of what constitutescultural property in the urban context. As shall be examined, the culturalheritage of a city is much more than just individual and unique proper-ties that exist in isolation from their surrounding landscape. The secondproblem is a lack of understanding of the wider connation of destruction ofcultural heritage and its intrinsic link to urbicide and, as Judge Shahabud-deen suggests, genocide.

The seemingly irresolvable contradiction is that while the importance ofrecognising and protecting urban cultural heritage is severely undervaluedby the military, the significance of destroying it, and its link to urbicideand genocide, is fully understood by those intent on carrying out suchdestruction.

Furthermore, the very nature of urban warfare makes urban culturalheritage—i.e. the cultural properties, the tangible and intangible values andtraditions, the communities and the historic urban landscape—extremelyvulnerable to destruction during armed conflict, whether it be sovereign,civil or civic war.

Given these major issues—lack of recognition, the nature of urban war-fare, and intentional destruction and urbicide—attempting to protect ur-ban cultural heritage during armed conflict is a complicated matter of whichthis paper is a preliminary examination. Referring to Beirut during theLebanese civil war (1975–1990) and other case studies, this paper examinesthe broader concept of the urban cultural heritage and its significance; itsrelationship to and destruction during armed conflict; and the relationshipof this destruction to urbicide and the destruction of community in time aswell as space. The paper also attempts to provide some initial ways urbancultural heritage may be protected.

Urban Cultural Heritage and Its Significance

The physically defining aspect of the urban cultural heritage is the historicurban landscape (Figure 1: Skopje, Macedonia). Unesco, in its latest Rec-

ommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, defines the historic urbanlandscape as:


the case of beirut central district 289

Figure 1. Skopje, Macedonia. Photo by Caroline Sandes, 2010.

the urban area understood as the result of a historic layering of cultural andnatural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of “historic centre”or “ensemble” to include the broader urban context and its geographicalsetting. (UNESCO 2011, article 8)

The Recommendation goes on to clarify that this broader urban contextincludes:

the site’s topography, geomorphology, hydrology and natural features; its builtenvironment, both historic and contemporary; its infrastructures above andbelow ground; its open spaces and gardens, its land use patterns and spatialorganization; perceptions and visual relationships; as well as all other ele-ments of the urban structure. It also includes social and cultural practicesand values, economic processes and the intangible dimensions of heritage asrelated to diversity and identity. (UNESCO 2011, article 9)

The 2011 UNESCO Recommendation builds on previous charters and rec-ommendations concerned with the historic urban landscape. One of these isthe 1987 ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns and UrbanAreas, more commonly known as the Washington Charter. Drawn up as aresponse to the destruction being caused by urban redevelopment, it aimedin particular to ‘promote the harmony of both private and community life in[urban] areas and to encourage the preservation of those cultural properties,



however modest in scale, that constitute the memory of mankind’ (empha-sis added). It identifies the qualities to be conserved including the historiccharacter of the urban area and ‘all those material and spiritual elementsthat express this character’ including urban street patterns, relationshipsbetween buildings, green and open spaces; the formal appearance, inte-rior and exterior, of buildings as defined by scale, size, style, construction,materials, colour and decoration; and the various functions that the townor urban area has acquired over time (ICOMOS 1987, Article 2).

What is highlighted by these documents is a city’s cultural heritage ismore than just individual important buildings and monuments or culturalproperties; it is the entire historic urban landscape and the tangible andintangible values and characteristics that are a part of that landscape thatmake up the urban cultural heritage. This cultural heritage is what informsurban and community cultural identity. Ascherson (2007, 17), in the contextof the destruction of culture by war, has identified two forms of overlappingcultural identity. The first is that of social or anthropological identity, ‘theliving tissue of familiarities accumulated around language, custom and tra-dition through which a community recognises itself and in which it findscontinuity—the culture of daily life’. The second is of collective identitythat is often constructed around objects of ‘high art’—cathedrals, mosques,monuments, libraries, antiquities, art, etc. (Ascherson 2007, 17). While theneed for protection of the second form during armed conflict is, in theory,recognised, the first form, and the historic urban landscape that representsit, tends not to be, even though both may be equally targeted for deliberatedestruction during conflict. In the historic urban landscape this culture ofdaily life is represented by more modest or more locally important historicbuildings and places, including religious buildings, local markets, meetingplaces, civic buildings, long-established places of work and commerce; land-marks; and, perhaps most importantly, homes. These places and the rituals,traditions and memories associated with them are what transform spaceinto ‘place’ linked to history, memory and identity (Ashworth et al 2007, 54).The socio-cultural values of sense of place, of history, memory and identityunderpin the significance of cultural heritage in general, and may be definedas ‘the aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, presentor future generations’, and which ‘is embodied in the place itself, its fab-ric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places and relatedobjects’ (ICOMOS Australia 1999, Article 1.2). Research has demonstratedthe great importance of these values of local cultural heritage to urban com-munities in terms of their ability to manage both the past and the future,and in terms of their well-being (Wedgewood 2009). Furthermore, in post-



conflict recovery, the importance of restoring such cultural heritage and itssignificance for local communities has been demonstrated (Stanley-Price2007; De Jong & Rowlands 2008).

In practice, what this means is that while it is important to recognise andprotect individual ‘high art’ cultural heritage, it is also important to recog-nise and protect the historic urban landscape and its significance as a whole.In reality, every city with few exceptions, is going to have an historic land-scape to a greater or lesser extent. In North Africa, the Middle East and Asia,for example, such a landscape will often contain historic souks, baths, reli-gious buildings and shrines, ancient monuments, and housing, and withthem a ‘culture of daily life’. A well-known example is the old town of Dam-ascus, Syria, (Figure 2) but any of the historic towns and cities of the region,from, for example the old town of Tripoli, Libya, to Kabul, Afghanistan, willhave such cultural heritage. Unlike many historic towns and cities of westernEurope, such historic landscapes are sometimes run down, under-resourcedor appreciated or simply not particularly obvious, hidden under washinglines and high population densities of poorer communities (Figure 3). Theymay be condemned as slums to be cleared, particularly if they have sufferedwar damage, as demonstrated in a UN Habitat Report on Iraq’s cities thatrefers to deteriorated historic areas, including Baghdad’s historic medina, asslums (UN 2007, 6; 95). This crude designation is often highly problematicfor local inhabitants but suits military strategists and property developers asit makes the removal of their communities and their destruction less prob-lematic, as is discussed later.

Central Beirut, the area now defined by the Beirut Central District (BCD)and redeveloped after the civil war, was such an example of an historicurban landscape with evidence of human settlement stretching back to pre-historic times. Archaeological excavations during the period of the FrenchMandate (1920–1948), during the 1970s and the 1990s, have uncovered evi-dence for Bronze Age, Iron Age (‘Phoenician’), Hellenistic, Roman, Byzan-tine and medieval periods (Sandes 2010, 78 ff.). It was known as Berytus dur-ing the Roman period and famous for its Law School set up in the secondcentury ad. There are some surviving buildings from the medieval period,for example the present-day Al-Omari Mosque that was originally the Cru-sader Church of St John (Figure 4) and a small Mamluk ribat that survivedthe post-war demolition and redevelopment of the souks. Architecture alsosurvives from the Ottoman period, in particular the Grand Serail that isthe seat of government and sits overlooking the centre, built in the midnineteenth century and followed by the Military Hospital and the ClockTower. Likewise there are buildings and streets surviving from the French



Figure 2. Souqs and Roman columns in the OldCity, Damascus. Photo by Caroline Sandes, 2007.



Figure 3. Ottoman period building,Aleppo. Photo by Caroline Sandes, 2007.

Figure 4. The restored Al-Omari Mosque,Beirut. Photo by Caroline Sandes, 2007.



Mandate period, principally the Place de l’ Etoile with its radiating roads,based on the Place de l’ Etoile in Paris, and the Foch and Allenby roads thatrun straight from the centre towards the sea. The star design is interruptedon the east side as to implement it would have involved demolishing a num-ber of historic religious buildings, namely the St George Orthodox Cathedraland the St Elias Catholic Church. After independence from France in 1948,a number of interesting modernist buildings were constructed, for exampleJoseph Philippe Karam’s spaceship-like City Center Building, built in 1965on the west side of Martyrs Square, and the highrise Holiday Inn only com-pleted just before the civil war erupted. In addition there were Roman ruins,numerous places of worship, the historic souks, and many other historicbuildings from the Ottoman and French mandate periods. There was alsoMartyrs Square, previously known as Place des Canons from when between1773–1774 the Russians controlled the city and placed a huge canon in thesquare (Jidejian 1997, 197); it became Martyrs Square in memory of the Araband Lebanese nationalists executed there by the Ottoman government (Kas-sir 2010, 142), and was the centre of activity with its cafes and bus station.Central Beirut, the oldest part of the city, was the seat of government; wheremany came to shop, to do business, to socialise in the numerous cafes or goto one of the many cinemas; and to take transport to elsewhere in Lebanonand beyond. Beirut was known as the ‘Paris of the Mediterranean’ and by var-ious other similar sobriquets, with the liberal, heterogeneous lifestyle thatflourished there, and was a regional centre of commerce and tourism. As isdiscussed below, it was this central part of Beirut that was to be so savagelyattacked and divided from the very outset of the civil war that started inApril 1975.

Urban Warfare and the Destruction of Cultural Heritage

Cities have always been threatened and often destroyed by violent conflictbut historically, urban areas were generally avoided due in part to theirinherent complexities as battlegrounds, and the deliberate destruction ofthem tended to be a rare and purposefully shocking phenomenon (Ash-worth 1991, 112–113). Historically, the main reason for attacking a city was tocapture the enemy’s political, economic or cultural centre so as to destroythe enemy’s morale, their ability to sustain the war and to govern—in otherwords to attack the enemy’s ‘centre of gravity’ (DiMarco 2003, 4). In moderntimes, while there was destruction of urban centres and cultural heritageduring the first world war, it is really during the second world war that cities



along with their cultural heritage and civilians become a focus for attack.The German ‘Baedekar’ raids on some of England’s historic cities and theAllied firebombing of German cities, in particular the cultural centre ofDresden, caused untold destruction. In the Far East, Japan carried out savageattacks on Chinese cities, and ultimately the second world war was broughtto an end by the devastating atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.This ‘purposeful pairing’ of cultural and human destruction during the sec-ond world war has been considered the signifier of ‘total war’ (Knuth 2006,162). It was the extensive destruction of cultural heritage in all countriesinvolved that led to the drawing up of the 1954 Convention for the Protection

of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (the Hague Convention).Despite the complexities of urban warfare and the historic desire to avoid

fighting battles in cities, modern armed conflict is increasingly centred onurban areas. Cities, in terms of defence, provide better opportunities, orasymmetric advantages, for smaller or less superior infantry in the face ofsuperior attacking forces, and is something that has increasingly been takenadvantage of since the 1940s (Ashworth 1991, 116; DiMarco 2003, 4). In addi-tion, there has been a dramatic growth in the number of cities worldwide,and in their size and populations, particularly during the twentieth cen-tury. Armed conflict is also changing and while sovereign and civil warsare still fought, there is an increase in what has been termed ‘civic wars’(Beall et al 2010). Civic conflict refers to those conflicts that take place incities, including gang warfare, violent crime, terrorism, religious and sectar-ian riots, and spontaneous riots or violent protest that erupt over perceivedstate failures (Beall et al 2010, 2). Such conflict can erupt after the apparentend of a sovereign or civil conflict, as demonstrated in Iraq, but increasinglywars have urban manifestations (Beall et al 2010, 3). The current conflict inSyria, for example, has been centred on urban areas, in particular Homs andHama.

Modern military strategy for urban areas has, however, tended to focuson avoidance (Hills 2004, 232). Urban terrain is generally regarded to bethe most difficult and complex terrain to wage armed conflict in (Ash-worth 1991, 116; Hills 2003, 231; Joint Staff 2009, I-2). Each city is unique,and even different areas of cities can require different strategies. An urbanenvironment is defined, in the USA Military’s Joint Urban Operations, as anurban triad comprising a complex man-made physical terrain; a popula-tion of significant size and density; and an infrastructure upon which thearea depends, all intertwined to form a particularly complex and dynamicsystem (Joint Staff 2009, I-2). Ashworth (1991, 116 ff.) identifies five charac-teristics of the urban environment as battlefield: small operational units;



close-range weaponry; presence of civilian lives and property; a defensivebias; and absorption of manpower. Evans (2009. 519 ff.) has identified eightcharacteristics: a dynamic, non-linear military environment; the advantageof effective firepower; the fragmentation of combat; the importance ofdirect-fire weapons; the problem of a civilian presence; the absorption ofmanpower; the psychological-physical strain on participants; and the needfor a combined arms military approach. These characteristics have changedlittle over time, even with the advent of new weaponry (Ashworth 1991, 116;Evans 2009, 519). Given the often asymmetric element of urban warfare, ithas been suggested that it is closer to pre-industrial forms of conflict, andthat the ‘hunter-killer’ philosophy of ‘what I find, I can kill’ of such conflictremains key (Hills 2004, 237). What has changed in modern times is thatcities themselves, and their civilians, are increasingly becoming deliberatetargets particularly in cases of urbicide (Beall and Fox 2009, 190).

The importance of fire-power and to deal with a battlefield that may bevertical as well as horizontal; of the need for close-range combat; to haveto be constantly alert for an attack to come from just round the corner oroverhead from a roof or upper floor, and to have to negotiate alternativeroutes to the potentially mined or sniper-covered streets and alleys by tun-nelling or mouse-holing (a technique that requires blowing holes throughwalls of interconnected buildings to provide an alternative route), meansthat urban warfare can be highly detrimental to the urban fabric. Duringthe battle for Berlin in 1945, the advice from the Russian Marshal VasilyChuikov was ‘You will find yourself in a labyrinth of rooms and corridorsall full of danger … Chuck a grenade at every corner. Go forward. Fire burstsof machine-gun fire at any piece of ceiling which still remains …’ (quoted inEvans 2009, 521). Likewise, during the war in the Philippines, the Americantroops fighting in Manila learnt that ‘in any attack on a defended building,the key was to go in firing with every weapon available’ (quoted in Evans2009, 521). Not surprisingly, the collateral damage to the urban built envi-ronment from such warfare can be extensive. The term ‘collateral damage’is generally considered to refer to ‘incidental casualties and … property dam-age’ (Rogers quoted in Coward 2009, 19). Damage, in other words, that is anunavoidable consequence and was not done intentionally. It also needs to beproportionate to the situation and importance of the military objective. Col-lateral damage can be defined then as ‘either an unintended consequenceof military action or the product of actions that satisfy the rule of propor-tionality’ (Coward 2009, 19). Defining proportionality, and, given the natureof urban warfare, identifying collateral from intentional damage is, though,another matter when it comes to the destruction wrought on cities dur-



ing armed conflict. Much of the damage done to Berlin was not only fromAllied bombing but from street-to-street fighting as the Red Army advancedthrough the city in 1945, leaving tens of thousands of buildings destroyedand some 55 million cubic metres of rubble (Ladd 1998, 176; Diefendorf 1993,15). Intense street by street fighting for twenty-five days in the historic cityof Hue during the Vietnam war caused an estimated 10,000 buildings to bedestroyed or damaged—about 40 % of the city—despite apparent attemptsto limit such damage by using high precision weapons (Willbanks 2003 146,149).

As mentioned, central Beirut was one of the first casualties of the Leba-nese civil war. With extraordinary rapidity it was divided up into sectarianEast and West Beirut and dozens of enclaves of one group or another. A frontline developed that ran straight through Martyrs Square and central Beirut,coming to be called the Green Line, and battles waged to and fro acrossit as one side or the other attempted to gain ground. The urban militarytactics, which took shape very early on, were those typical of urban armedconflict: fighting at close quarters with small infantry units of 4–6 fighters,led by whoever was the most imposing or could command respect, and whowould often lead the storming of a target building (Badran 2009, 50 ff.). Thebasic tactic involved a small infantry unit taking cover behind a corner ofa building, or buildings on opposite sides of a street; their adversary doinglikewise further down the street, or taking cover in a building. These streetcorners were sometime extended with sandbags, and sometimes a barricademay be constructed across the street. The machine gunners, or a soldierwith a rocket launcher, would then take it in turns to run out from behindthe building’s corner, deliver a round of fire and then take cover again.Likewise with an armed vehicle: it would emerge from behind a building,usually on a cross street, fire at the target and proceed to the opposite corner.Another practice that emerged very early on was the use of tunnelling,including inside Palestinian camps and buildings, particularly during siegesand to avoid snipers (Badran 2009, 52). Much damage was done to Beirut’sbuilt environment due to street fighting using small arms, mortars and fire.The division between collateral and intentional damage, however, is notclear, particularly as much of the initial destruction appears to have beenintentional, even urbicidal. What is clear is that much of historic centralBeirut was severely damaged in the first two years of the civil war.



Urbicide and the Deliberate Destruction of Cultural Heritage

Despite the extensive destruction that can be caused by collateral dam-age, the greater problem is, despite the Hague and Geneva Conventions, thedeliberate destruction of the urban areas, in particular of cultural heritage,as part of the tactics of armed conflict. The basic reasoning behind the delib-erate destruction of cultural heritage is usually because the cultural heritagein question is recognised as being culturally, socially and/or politically sig-nificant, as discussed above. The aim of its destruction/removal is to negatethis significance. By doing so it is hoped to demoralise the enemy or localpopulation under attack, and to deprive them of their evidence of existenceboth physically and historically. Bevan (2007), in his book The Destruction of

Memory: architecture at war, argues that the deliberate destruction of build-ings that represent a community and their identity, whether they be majorhistoric buildings, religious buildings, libraries and museums, or vernacu-lar housing, is the pursuit of ethnic cleansing or genocide by other means(Bevan 2007, 8, 14).

This deliberate destruction at its worst is part of urbicide. The term ‘urbi-cide’ came to prominence with the urban destruction that was such a featureof the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and was defined by Bogdan Bogdanovic,architect and former mayor of Belgrade, as the intentional attack on thehuman and inert fabric of the city with the intent of destroying the civicvalues embodied within it (Bevan 2007, 121; Coward 2004, 157). The ideaof deliberately destroying a city or part of it as a military strategy is farfrom being a new concept, the destruction of Carthage in 146bce being awell-known early example. As mentioned, the indiscriminate destruction ofurban areas, even entire cities, was a particular feature of the aerial bomb-ing of the second world war. Since the end of the Cold War, however, itwould seem that the city itself has increasingly become the primary target,and such all-out purposeful destruction has been wrought on cities such asGrozny, Hama (1982), Mostar and Nablus, to name but a handful.

The concept of urbicide and the nature of the political violence behindit has been examined by Coward (2009), in his book Urbicide: the politics

of urban destruction. The concept of urbicide is based on the claim thatthe destruction of the urban built environment has a meaning of its own,rather than it being incidental to or a secondary feature of genocidal vio-lence (Coward 2009, 36). Coward provides a basic definition of urbicidethat is ‘the destruction of buildings not for what they individually represent(military target, cultural heritage, conceptual metaphor) but as that whichis the condition of possibility of heterogeneous existence’ (Coward 2009,



39). For Coward, following on from the work of Louis Wirth, the definingcharacteristic or existential quality of the city is its heterogeneity and there-fore urbicide is the political violence that aims to destroy this heterogeneity(Coward 2009, 39). He further argues that it is distinct from but intertwinedwith genocide in that while they have separate targets, they share a logic ofdestruction: the destruction of heterogeneity followed by the installing ofhomogeneity (Coward 2009, 53).

This destruction of the heterogeneity that many cities and urban centresrepresent is a primary aim of ethno-nationalist conflicts, as demonstrated bythe Balkans. Cities such as Sarajevo and Mostar were melting pots, as theirsocial make-up, history, architecture and cultural heritage demonstrated,and so the purposeful targeting of the cultural properties that representedthis—for example the National Library and National Museum in Sarajevoand the Stari Most of Mostar—was a deliberate strategy of the bombard-ment of these cities (Bevan 2007, 36 ff.; Coward 2009, 4 ff.). The initial conflictin Beirut, between 1975 and 1976 seemed also to be a deliberate attempt todestroy the heterogeneity of the city, as will be discussed later.

Stephan Graham defines urbicide as ‘the deliberate denial or killing ofthe city—the systematic destruction of the modern urban home’ (quotedin Parker 2011, 39). It has been argued that urbicide should be consideredas a part of genocide, not as a separate form of political violence (Shaw2004, 141). Both urbicide and genocide are used to serve ethno-nationalisticaims to destroy plural multi-ethnic urban communities (Shaw 2004, 145),but often genocide and urbicide appear to target not a mixed communitybut a particular community, as demonstrated from Warsaw to Nablus, andis very much about both destroying the urban place of such communi-ties.

The destruction of Warsaw by the Nazis during the second world war is anexample, if not ultimately fulfilled, of the practice of combined urbicide anddestruction of urban cultural heritage with its intrinsic destruction of com-munity and the subsequent replacement of that community with another.It was meticulously planned by a team headed by German planner FriedrichPabst. Careful note was made of all of Warsaw’s culturally-important prop-erties. These were then deliberately targeted and systematically destroyed(Tung 2001, 74; 81). Of Warsaw’s 957 historic buildings only 34 survived,reputedly because the Nazis had not had time to set off the dynamite; ofWarsaw’s 3,708 million cubic feet of buildings, 2,600 million were completelydestroyed—about 85 % of the city, and some 800,000 Varsovians were killed(Ciborowski 1964, 64, 56). The medieval Old Town and the fifteenth cen-tury New Town were reduced to rubble; palaces, churches and the national



library and national archives were destroyed (Bevan 2007, 97). The Nazishad planned to build a smaller, German, town with only a few select build-ings surviving, on the rubble of Warsaw, with a slave camp on the oppositesite of the Vistula for 80,000 Poles (Bevan 2007, 97). Clandestine survey-ing and the smuggling out of Warsaw to the Piotrków monastery by Polisharchitects, academics and others, of plans and other documentation of War-saw’s cultural properties are what provided the basis for Warsaw’s post-warrebuilding (Tung 2001, 81).

The destruction of Warsaw was to remove ‘the capital city, the brain, theintelligence’ of the Polish nation (Bevan 2007, 97). The destruction of the cul-tural heritage was a key part of this—the removal of the historical identity,achievements and sense of place of Warsaw, and of Poland. A similarly thor-ough but more recent attack on a people and their cultural heritage, thoughwithout the genocidal element, is the Israeli Defence Force’s (IDF), Defen-sive Shield attack on the Old City of Nablus, West Bank, in 2002 and againat the end of 2003 – early 2004. Using bulldozers, Apache attack helicoptersand F-16 jets, the IDF invaded the city, along with Jenin and Ramallah, osten-sibly looking for terrorists (UN 2004). What was attacked and destroyed wasanything that constituted the essentials of an urbanized society: water sup-plies, electronic communications, roads, power supplies, medical supportand of course the cultural heritage—any cultural or bureaucratic symbolof the proto-Palestinian state was deliberately targeted (Graham 2004, 200).The destruction to the cultural heritage of a city that dates back to 71bceresulted in the damage or destruction of hundreds of buildings includingseventeen of particular heritage value (World Heritage Committee 2005, 3).These included al-Khadarah Mosque, originally a Byzantine church built1600 years ago; the Abdel-Hadi Palace; an Ottoman caravanserai at the heartof the historic stone-built souk, dozens of still inhabited old stone courtyardhouses, and 200-year old traditional soap factories (World Heritage Com-mittee 2005, 4; Bevan 2007, 150). The attacks were followed by a curfewthat confined residents to their homes for more than a hundred days andnights, leaving buildings unrepaired and the streets strewn with rubble andrubbish (Bevan 2007, 150). The destruction caused to Nablus in 2002 and2003–2004 has been described as one of the largest single acts of destruc-tion of Palestinian heritage since the creation of Israel, and it seems almostcertain that the IDF specifically targeted Palestinian heritage in addition tothe services and facilities that allowed the city to function (Bevan 2007, 148;152).

Urbicide combined with such deliberate destruction of cultural proper-ties is about destroying the place of a community not only in space but also



Figure 5. Martyrs Square, Beirut. Photo byJames Case, Wikipedia Commons, 1982.

in time. It destroys the buildings and heritage that facilitates a community’sdaily life, its identity and sense of history and memory. As Bevan argues, suchdestruction removes evidence of that community’s existence in the past andwhat legitimizes it in the present and into the future (Bevan 2007, 8).

Beirut: A Case Study of Urbicide

In November 1976, some eighteen months after the outbreak of the Lebanesecivil war, the Syrian army entered Beirut to enforce some order and a cease-fire. Robert Fisk, then writing for The Times, accompanying the Syrian army,provides a description of Martyrs Square (Figure 5):

We could see the entrance to the great square at the end of the street. Beforethe war, the place had served as a fruit market and bus station and one sideof its peculiarly attractive nineteenth century Levantine facade had servedas the entrance to the souk. Its centre was once lined with palm trees andits perimeter with cafes but for more than a year it formed part of the Beirutfront line and for the past 14 months few Lebanese had cared to look into it …But the square that now came into sight was almost unrecognisable. Everybuilding in sight was in ruins, torn and scorched by hundreds of gun androcket battles …



At half past 10, the [Syrian] officer stood up, looked at a large map of Beirut,and walked into the open street to the right. The soldiers followed him and sodid we. But what we saw was not a street in any real sense of the term. It wasan avenue of crumbling, tottering walls and collapsed masonry in which eightand nine-storey buildings had half slid into the spaces between the ruins.Ceilings and floors dangled from what had once been a department store,and a mosque a hundred yards away had been so chipped by shrapnel thatit looked paper-thin. … We walked up a narrow street … and at the top cameto the small square [Place de l’ Etoile] where the Lebanese Parliament oncemet. The Parliament building had burnt out, its roof had collapsed and a largeheap of concrete lay around its doors. Its walls were pock-marked with bulletholes. (Fisk 1976, 10)

This part of central Beirut described by Fisk comprises Martyrs Square andwhat is now one of the conservation areas to the west. The ‘Levantine facade’and the souk he refers to, which ran along the western side of the square, areno more; demolished as irreparable, and in their place is an archaeologicalsite euphemistically called the Garden of Forgiveness, the southwest cornerof which, and next door to St George’s Cathedral, is dominated by the hugeMohamad Al Amine mosque commissioned by Rafiq Hariri prior to hisassassination in 2005.

A stark feature of the first phase of the Lebanese civil war, what wasknown as the Two Year War that lasted from April 1975 until November 1976,was the very rapid destruction of central Beirut (Figure 6). This destructionis an example of urbicide—both in the deliberate destruction of hetero-geneity and in the direct targeting and use of the built environment as partof the conflict.

By 1975 Lebanon’s population was about three million, 40 % or 1.2 millionof whom lived in Beirut (Diab 1999, 70). The city had flourished as a gate-way between the Middle East and Europe. Many international businessesand banks had headquarters there and after the formation of Israel in 1948,oil-rich Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia began transportingoil out via Beirut rather than Haifa. Although traditionally considered, interms of Islam, as being Sunni, Beirut’s image, up to 1975, included it beingconsidered as multi-confessional and, indeed, multi-ethnic, particularly inthe centre (Nagel 2002, 719). Martyrs Square with its cinemas, cafes andtransport hub was considered the epitome of this apparently harmoniousmixing of people. One of the over-riding characteristics of Lebanon is, how-ever, religion. There are seventeen different recognised religious groups ofwhich the main ones are Sunni and Shi"a Muslims, Maronite Christians,Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics, but also include Druze, Armenianand Jewish. This mixture was increasingly complicated by an influx of Pales-



Figure 6. Rue Weygand, central Beirut. Photoby James Case, Wikipedia Commons, 1982.

tinian refugees driven out of Israel beginning in 1948, that led to a seriesof refugee camps being constructed in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon.These came to provide support and a recruiting ground for the PalestinianLiberation Organisation (PLO). Ultimately it was the perceived threat toLebanese sovereignty felt especially by the Maronite Christians, in particu-lar the right-wing Phalangists, from the Palestinians who, in general, had thesupport of Lebanese Muslims and more left-wing organisations, that pro-vided the spark that ignited what had become something of a tinderbox ofsectarian and social divisions. The causes for these divisions are varied andhistorical, ranging from the lack of a nationally accepted history (Salibi 1988)to huge economic disparities (Nagel 2002, 720; Diab 1999). By 1975, Beirutsupported both huge and ostentatious wealth and a thriving economy, butalso Palestinian refugee camps and what was known as ‘a belt of misery’ inthe suburbs of poorer Lebanese, often Shi"a Muslims displaced from southLebanon (Kassir 2010, 491). The history and the horrors of the Lebanese civilwar between 1975 and 1989 are well detailed by Robert Fisk in Pity the Nation

(2001). By the time the Ta"if Accord was signed in 1989 to stop the fighting,of a population of c. 3.5 million about 144,000 people had died; over 184,000



had been wounded, including 13,000 permanently handicapped; c. 90,000families displaced; 17,000 people had disappeared; c. 800,000 Lebanese hademigrated—mostly the wealthy and educated—and UN estimates of costswere $ 18 billion worth of damage with at least $ 5 billion required just torepair infrastructure (Blanford 2009, 41).

As mentioned previously, armed conflict in urban areas may cause hugeamounts of collateral damage that, given the nature of urban warfare ishard to avoid, and the basic tactics used in Beirut, as discussed above,certainly lent themselves to causing such collateral damage. The damagedone to central Beirut, however, was not just collateral, it was intentional,and occurred very early on. Martyrs Square was stormed only four days afterclashes had erupted in April 1975 and saw the rapid destruction by fire of theOpera House, the Police Central Offices and the Rivoli Cinema, followed bythe historic souqs of Sursock, Al-Nuriyah and Abu-Nasr, which had tradedtextiles, meat and vegetables, and spice respectively (Shwayri 2011, 82). Thisassault on the built environment of central Beirut continued. In September1975 there are newspaper reports of buildings—cinemas, shops, hotels andbusinesses—being set fire to; these included ‘a number of ancient buildings’being blown up or destroyed by fire (Martin 1975 (20/9), 5). This destructionwas described as a ‘rampage against the property of rivals’ that destroyedmore than 200 businesses, houses and buildings (Martin 1975 (25/9), 8).In October the Al-Omari Mosque, originally the twelfth-century Crusaderchurch of St John, caught fire after a gun battle (The Times 1975 (9/10), 1), anda subsequent report claimed that about 3,000 shops, buildings and homeshad been destroyed in central Beirut during the latest bout of violence (The

Times 1975 (13/10), 6). During the infamous ‘Battle of the Hotels’ betweenthe warring militias towards the end of 1975 and into 1976, the unfinishedhighrise, the Murr Tower, was captured and used to shell the Grand Serial,leaving it burnt out and destroying the last remaining vestige of governmentpower in the city (Shwayri 2011, 84).

Sara Fregonese (2009) has examined this early phase between April 1975and November 1976 in Beirut, arguing that the destruction, the urbicide andthe dividing of the city were very deliberate geopolitical acts. She arguesthat urban conflicts can be better understood if the multi-sited geopoliticalvisions and practices connected to local and territorial changes are traced.By doing so, how the material practices such as partition, destruction, pos-session and attack against the built environment may have helped informmilitia understanding of territory, identity and nation (Fregonese 2009, 311).She goes on to argue how the built environment becomes an importantpart of contested socio-political processes and ‘the material fabric of the



city is used to overthrow Beirut’s pre-war political geographies’ (Fregonese2009, 316). Certainly central Beirut’s heterogeneity was destroyed, muchas that of Mostar’s was destroyed. The purposeful destruction of Beirut’surban landscape, its heterogeneous community and its pre-war politicalgeographies was not only the result of armed conflict between warring mili-tias but continued throughout the war and into the post-conflict phase. Atleast two further sources of destruction are worth noting. The first is the‘Siege of Beirut’ conducted by the IDF in 1982, aimed at attacking the PLOwho had their headquarters in Beirut but was in many ways an indiscrim-inate attack on the city and civilians alike. The IDF launched an attackon Beirut that from July 1982 included the intense bombardment of thecity, often with little warning and at night as well as during the day, cul-minating in ‘Black Thursday’, the 12th August 1982, when they shelled thePalestinian refugee camps and the area surrounding the PLO headquarters,leaving 128 dead and 400 wounded, all mostly civilians (Gawrych 2003, 223,226).

The second was ostensibly part of the redevelopment of central Beirut, inmany ways completing the destruction of central Beirut’s heterogeneity thathad been started in 1975. In the late 1970s Lebanese born but Saudi-basedbillionaire (and future prime minister of Lebanon) Rafiq Hariri, returned tovisit Beirut. He begun almost straightaway making plans for Beirut’s rebuild-ing (Becherer 2005, 6). In 1983, Hariri’s engineering company, OGER Liban,commissioned another master plan for the redevelopment of central Beirutfrom the international consultancy, Dar al-Handasah. This was the first ofa number of plans from this consultancy and they ultimately producedthe master plan that Solidere (Société Libanaise pour le Développement et

la Reconstruction du Centre-Ville de Beyrouth) based the redevelopment ofwhat’s become the Beirut Central District (BCD) on. Towards the end of 1983,‘cleaning up’ started in central Beirut, which involved the demolition, with-out any apparent government authority or constraint, of a number of impor-tant buildings and the Souks Al-Nouriyeh and Sursuq, along with a large partof Saifi—a residential area to the east of Martyrs Square—blatantly ignoringthe recommendations of a 1977 government plan that had aimed to preserveBeirut’s historic Mediterranean and Eastern character (Makdisi 1997, 667).But the war broke out again at the end of 1977 and was further intensifiedby foreign invasions. There was another lull in 1982, after UN peacekeepersarrived. Fighting resumed again until 1986, when more demolitions werecarried out to a plan that recommended some 80 % of central Beirut becleared (Makdisi 1997, 668). Ultimately, despite major criticism and publicprotest, some 80 % of central Beirut was demolished by the early 1990s, some



of it only made necessary by the hurried and poorly executed blowing up ofnearby war-torn buildings causing damage to neighbouring structures, andthereby rendering complete redevelopment a necessity (Beyhum 1992; Fisk2001, 665; Schmid 2006, 370). It seems a rare surviving piece of the medievaltown wall was also demolished at this time (Fisk 2001, 665). Today, cen-tral Beirut has been almost completely rebuilt. It has been suggested thatthe level of destruction of Beirut’s physical heritage was such that it was‘memorycide’ (Naccache 1998). Much of the cultural heritage that was notphysically destroyed has become disneyfied, in a deliberate policy to pro-vide the Beirut Central District with a pretty and uncontroversial marketingtool to promote the area as an upmarket tourist, shopping and business des-tination to the exclusion of its original communities (Cooke 2002; Ragab2011).

Discussion: Protection

Cultural property is, in theory, protected from unnecessary and intentionaldestruction during war by both the 1954 Convention for the Protection ofCultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, commonly known as theHague Convention (UNESCO 1954), and by the Geneva Conventions of 1949and the subsequent Protocol of 1977. In relation to protecting cultural prop-erty against collateral damage, the 1954 Hague Convention states that thesignatories of the convention shall refrain from any use of cultural property,its immediate surroundings or whatever has been put in place to protect itthat is likely to expose it to destruction or damage, and ‘by refraining fromany act of hostility directed against it’. The Hague Convention does includea waiver in the case ‘where military necessity imperatively requires’ it. Theevents of the 1990s Balkans wars highlighted the need for some adjustmentsto the 1954 Hague Convention, resulting in the 1999 Second Protocol to theHague Convention, which came into effect in 2004. Importantly it clarifiedthe military necessity waiver, stating that a waiver on the basis of imperativemilitary necessity may only be invoked to direct an act of hostility againstcultural property when and for as long as ‘that cultural property has, by itsfunction, been made into a military objective; there is no feasible alternativeavailable to obtain a similar military advantage to that offered by directingan act of hostility against that objective’, and ‘when and for as long as nochoice is possible between such use of the cultural property and anotherfeasible method for obtaining a similar military advantage’ (UNESCO 1999).It also requires four other primary elements: that nations establish a crimi-



nal offense for serious violations of the Convention, including responsibilityfor those in higher command; the avoidance or minimization of collateraldamage to cultural property; the justification for a legitimate military actionthat might cause damage to cultural property must be proportionate to thedamage that may result, and it clarifies the ‘non-interference’ principle—that is, that occupying powers should not interfere with or destroy thecultural or historical evidence of occupied territory and should not conductarchaeological excavations unless necessary for the preservation of the site(Gerstenblith 2009, 23).

While the Geneva Convention of 1949 does not specifically mention cul-tural property, it does prohibit the destruction of state or personal propertyunless ‘rendered absolutely necessary’ by military operations (Geneva Con-vention IV 1949, Article 53). A subsequent Protocol of 1977, however, statesthat ‘it is prohibited to commit any acts of hostility directed against historicmonuments, works of art or places of worship which constitute the culturalor spiritual heritage of peoples, and to use them in support of the militaryeffort’ (Geneva Convention 1977, Article 16).

Therefore, in theory, and issues created by some major countries not sign-ing or ratifying the Hague Convention or its Protocols aside, any damagedone to cultural heritage should only be due to collateral damage exceptin extreme circumstances of military necessity. There are though practicalproblems. The first is the difficulty in enforcing international humanitarianlaw. While some of those responsible for the deliberate destruction of cul-tural heritage during the 1990s Balkan wars were prosecuted, for examplePavle Strugar was convicted in 2005 for the intentional attack on the OldTown of Dubrovnik, as well as for other war crimes, by the InternationalCriminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, it is unclear if such prosecu-tions will act as a deterrent (Gerstenblith 2009, 25, 26).

Another major ongoing problem is that of the lack of knowledge andrecognition of cultural heritage, and appreciation for the importance of itsprotection, by the military resulting in considerable unintentional damage(Gerstenblith 2009, 27; Stone 2009). Recognition of urban cultural heritageis even more problematical and, what is more, given the intensity andimmediacy of urban armed conflict, protection during conflict is even morecomplicated.

It is acknowledged that urban areas are highly complex battlefields; argu-ably old historic urban areas even more so, with a greater density and a morevaried and unpredictable (to the outsider), sometimes labyrinthine layout.In addition to identifying important cultural properties, identifying historicareas within target cities and planning to avoid them would seem a helpful



starting point. Furthermore, the superficial designation of poor areas asslums without any further investigation combined with the insidious as-sumption by some that poor urban areas are automatically ‘breedinggrounds for extreme political and terrorist movements’ (Joint Staff 2009, II-8), should be avoided as it puts some historic areas and their communitiesat unnecessary risk of destruction.

During the fighting, given the nature and intensity of urban warfare, itmay only be possible to protect major monuments and individual proper-ties. A small unit out of touch with their commanding officer and fightingat close range, even if they do happen to know what, for example, an his-toric or architecturally important building or street may look like, is simplynot going to be able to stop to consider whether or not they should fire at it.Nonetheless at the very least keeping heavy weaponry and bombardment,and fire, away from such areas should be aimed at.

The greatest problem is, however, protecting against urbicide and inten-tional destruction. Regardless of the Geneva and Hague Conventions andProtocols, the wholesale and intentional attack on urban areas, its culturalheritage and its civilians, whether it be by insurgents and militias or nationalarmies such as the IDF, the US military (for example in Fallujah or Sadr City,Iraq (Graham 2005; Whitcomb Reiley 2011)) or the Syrian Army (for exam-ple in Homs during the current conflict), has become a regular feature ofurban warfare. This, however, does not make it in anyway legally or morallyacceptable. The links between urbicide, genocide and the significance of thedestruction of cultural heritage to the intention to destroy communities,need to be more fully investigated and understood, and protected againstaccordingly.

Lastly, the practices of conflict/post-conflict urban redevelopment needto be more closely examined and controlled. The historic urban landscapeneeds to be protected from unauthorised demolitions and clearance thatmay occur both while the conflict is still being fought and in the immediateaftermath. The Second Protocol of the Hague Convention forbids occupy-ing powers to interfere with cultural heritage yet much damage is done, bothintentional and unintentional during periods of occupation during conflict/post-conflict construction for the occupying power and in redevelopment,for example in Iraq since 2004 by the US and Coalition forces (Gersten-bith 2009, 27). Many countries that have suffered conflict in the last twentyyears have also had low levels of development leading to international assis-tance focussing on a ‘development-as-usual-approach’ that is insufficientto tackle the complex needs of such situations (del Castillo 2011, 2). Thisis compounded by such development being based on neoliberal policies



that tend to be globalised rather than site-specific, and favour gentrification(Massey 2007, 90, 216; Slater 2009, 298). In many cases such redevelopmenthas simply finished off the job of the war-time destruction of the historicurban landscape and of urbicide’s destruction of heterogeneity and of com-munal presence in time and space. A result of armed conflict should notbe the clearance of areas to provide investment opportunities for develop-ers and while it is understood that vital infrastructure and housing needs tobe replaced quickly, much greater constraints and control needs to be puton conflict/post-conflict urban redevelopment in historic cities. Communi-ties and heterogeneity need restoring and protecting and the restoration oftheir cultural heritage is a fundamental part of their recovery (Stanley-Price2007). The rapid clearance of central Beirut did nothing but cause aggra-vation (Sandes 2010, 82 ff.), and with a rise in civic conflicts, this potentialsource of further conflict should be avoided.

Conclusion

There is something of a Hellerian Catch-22 with protecting urban culturalheritage during conflict. It suffers during armed conflict from unintentionaldestruction due to a lack of knowledge and understanding on the part ofthe military but conversely it suffers from intentional destruction due toan understanding of its importance and what that destruction may do tothe communities under attack. Arguably regaining respect for the GenevaConventions, for human rights generally and for civilians/ non-combatantsduring urban conflict in particular, would go a long way to helping to protecthistoric urban areas during conflict. In particular the connections betweendeliberate destruction of cultural heritage and the total destruction of urbi-cide and genocide need to be better understood and appreciated.

A truism is that avoiding conflict in the first place is the most obvious wayto avoid destruction of the cultural heritage. This is unlikely, not least dueto the ongoing neoliberal tendency to use gentrification/displacement andforce, including military force, to deal with social problems, denying manytheir rights, including their ‘right to the city’ (Harvey 2008), and leadingto increasing frustration and alienation of sections of societies, as demon-strated by the Occupy Movement and the London riots of summer 2011. Civilconflicts are also raging to greater or lesser intensity in a number of coun-tries, such as Syria, Libya and Yemen, and there is the threat of war betweenIsrael and Iran. All these countries have outstanding urban cultural heritageand much of it is under serious threat from such conflicts. The plea of ‘Do not



Figure 7. Sarajevo. Photo by Caroline Sandes, 2010.

forget. Remember and Warn!’ on the plaque to commemorate the destruc-tion of the National Library in Sarajevo should be more carefully observed.(Figure 7)

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