Can Syria's devastated cultural heritage be rebuilt?

Images of ruined 2,000-year-old temples and towers in Syria's ancient city of Palmyra shocked the world when they surfaced in 2015.

Palmyra artefacts were blown up by the extremist "Islamic State" group that then occupied part of Syria. The city was one of numerous UNESCO World Heritage sites that were badly damaged during a relentless war, including the Ancient City of Aleppo and its citadel — one of the oldest castles in the world.  

Now that the regime of Bashar Al-Assad has fallen, bringing an end to over 50 years of dictatorship under the Assad dynasty, there is hope that the nation's cultural heritage can be accounted for, protected — and even restored.

Germany-based World Heritage Watch, for example, has called on the transitional government headed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, to ensure that the "cultural heritage of all religious and ethnic groups and all periods of Syria's long history is protected and preserved."

But how will this be possible in a time of great political upheaval and uncertainty?

Accounting for lost and damaged antiquities

Archaeologists within Syria, along with experts abroad, have struggled to understand the extent of cultural heritage damage after so many years of armed conflict.

However, initiatives such as the Berlin-based Syrian Heritage Archive Project have collected — and digitized — hundreds of thousands of photographs, films and reports documenting Syria's cultural and natural treasures before and after the war.

Founded in part by Syrian refugees who fled their homeland, the archive project's ultimate goal is to create a record of what was obliterated so it can be rebuilt when peace comes to Syria.

But amid the chaos, much mystery surrounds the state of Syria's rich cultural assets.

The widespread looting of antiquities from Syrian museums, for example, has not been "comprehensively documented," according to Sherine al-Shallah, a Lebanese-Syrian doctoral researcher with the University of New South Wales in Australia.

She adds that "intangible cultural heritage" in Syria has suffered extensive harm but is more difficult to quantify. Artisan skills such as stone masonry are being lost due to widespread displacement in the war-torn nation, al-Shallah added. 

According to Nour Munawar, a cultural heritage researcher and Syria expert at the University of Amsterdam and UNESCO, technology such as satellite imagery and remote sensing has allowed heritage experts to assess some of the "type and extent of the damage."

This extends to "pillaging, illicit excavations, and trafficking" of cultural objects, he told DW.

But the extent of the conflict has limited any full accounting of Syrian cultural heritage losses, says Lucas Lixinski, a professor in global and public law at the University of New South Wales.

"The information is always patchy, and often depends on people risking their lives to gain access to the sites," he said.

Moreover, illegal excavations of antiquities where sites were opened "without any documentation" saw objects sold in underground markets to partly finance the war, he explained. 

"The country seems to be on the path to greater stability," Lixinski added, yet any effort to trace and recover pillaged artifacts "might still take some years."

Working with Syrian civil society

If HTS and the new post-Assad government of Syria do secure the nation's cultural heritage sites, it will be vital that Syrian civil society itself decides on the restoration process in line with its unique identity, Sherine al-Shallah believes. 

"Cultural heritage is the contribution of particular peoples to the world, and these peoples are the best to look after it and it is their right to access, enjoy it and pass it to future generations," she said.

This identity has been formed out of myriad civilizations, from the 2,000-year-old Greco-Roman architecture of Palmyra to the world's earliest identified Christian place of worship at Dura-Europos to unique 13th-century citadels and mosques and the 18th-century caravanserais of old Aleppo and Damascus.

"It is for the Syrian people to decide who they want to be," said Lixinski. "Deciding who Syria wants to be will give Syrian authorities a greater sense of what heritage to keep as is, what heritage to restore, and what heritage to let go."

Nonetheless, Syrian civil society organizations in the heritage sector are "nearly nonexistent," Munawar noted. For now, foreign NGOs and cultural heritage experts from the likes of UNESCO will need to lend resources and financial assistance to ensure that further documentation, preservation and reconstruction can begin in the post-Assad era.

This cultural heritage should not be restricted to "aesthetic material heritage," said al-Shallah, but should extend to cultural heritage sites like Auschwitz Birkenau, which is a "record of genocide," she noted.

"Sites in Syria such as Saydnaya Prison should be considered for protection," she said of the notorious jail known for its torture cells that has been dubbed the "human slaughterhouse."

Its preservation would serve "as a record of the experiences of political prisoners from Syria, Lebanon and other parts under a brutal regime that restricted fundamental rights to freedom of expression and association, and freedom from torture and inhumane treatment," she added.

Edited by: Brenda Haas