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The U.S. Department of State and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) have signed a $600,000 cooperative agreement to comprehensively document the current condition of cultural heritage sites in Syria and to assess the future restoration, preservation, and protection needs for those sites.
It is hoped that this “will raise global awareness of the threats to Syria’s cultural heritage and identify immediate or future projects and assistance that can be carried out and provided inside Syria.”
The State Department further says that the U.S. is committed to “protecting the world’s cultural heritage from pillage, looting, and illicit trafficking” as part of the U.S.’ larger effort “to preserve Syria’s historic sites and treasures.”
Finally State laments that “the destruction of Syria’s rich heritage risks losing a cultural legacy of universal importance and jeopardizes the role it can play in post-conflict reconciliation and economic revitalization efforts.”
That is all well and good, but where are our efforts to protect the millions of innocent men, women and children from the “pillage, looting” and worse: from the Assad regime’s chemical attacks, torture, and murder?
I am referring to the more than 100,000 people who have been killed and the nine million people who have been displaced, 6.5 million internally and more than 2.8 million refugees scattered throughout the region — soon to become “the worst exodus since the Rwandan genocide 20 years ago.”
U.S. Senator John McCain, a man with whom I disagree on many issues, last week on the floor of the Senate talked about the mass atrocities committed by the Assad regime on the Syrian people.
Referring to a series of “gruesome images” that he brought to the Senate floor in February, McCain said the State Department described them as “solid evidence of the kind of machinery of cruel death that we haven’t seen frankly since the Nazis…” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power stated, according to McCain: ‘The gruesome images of corpses bearing marks of starvation, strangulation and beatings and today’s chilling briefing indicate that the Assad regime has carried out systematic, widespread, and industrial killing.”
McCain pointed out:
In the time that the investigation to prove what we all know to be true has been underway, approximately 40,000 more people have died, another one million people have been forced from their homes, and over half of Syria’s population is now believed to be in dire need of food, water, and medicine. The Assad regime continues to bomb northern Syria using crude cluster munitions known as ‘barrel bombs’ with the sole purpose of terrorizing and killing as many people as possible when indiscriminately dropped from Syrian government aircraft on schools, bakeries, and mosques. It continues to raze entire neighborhoods for no military purpose whatsoever, simply as a form of collective punishment of Syrian civilians. It continues its ‘surrender or starve’ famine campaign, starving people to death by denying entire neighborhoods any access to food or water. And just last month, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which has been tasked with destroying Syria’s chemical stockpiles, announced that there is credible evidence that toxic chemicals are still being used in a ‘systematic manner’ in Syria.
Very critical of the actions taken, or not taken, by the Obama administration on this tragedy, McCain said:
The conflict in Syria is reaching a critical point. Government forces are advancing on Aleppo, effectively cutting off routes into and out of the city from the south and west and exercising a stranglehold on the people of Aleppo. More than six months of punishing daily airstrikes have killed thousands of residents and forced tens of thousands more to flee. But at least 500,000 residents remain, and they are being slowly asphyxiated by Assad’s forces as they brace for Aleppo’s upcoming siege. Meanwhile disillusioned fighters, starved of the resources and equipment they need, have been drifting from the front lines and in some cases joining the better-funded and equipped extremists groups.
McCain concluded:
But it is not too late. The United States is still the most powerful nation in the world today, and we have the power and capabilities to act when brutal tyrants slaughter their people with impunity. No one should believe that we are without options, even now. I pray that we will finally recognize the costs of inaction and take the necessary actions to end Assad’s mass atrocities and help the Syrian people write a better ending to this sad chapter in world affairs.
As I said, I do not often agree with Senator McCain, and I don’t necessarily agree with some of his bellicose solutions to each and every international conflict, but in this case we can do more than just “safeguard” Syria’s heritage sites.
Lead image: www.shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.