(Slow music)
- [Man] We're on the 2nd floor
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Looking at Tomb portraits.
That come from the ancient city of Palmyra.
In what is now Syria and this city which
is on the edge of the desert is an oasis.
And was this point in the Caravan route.
Between the Roman Empire and Asia.
They controlled this critical link in wahat
we call the Silk Routes that linked The Mediterranean
region with Central Asia as far as China.
Palmyra in 2015 and 2017 was overrun by ISIS.
- [Women] Isis had to mobilize what ever resources they had.
And these were resources they could use to draw
media attention and that was a unique opportunity
at Palmyra because for them the whole event is
the video.
ISIS marched to the site over 5 days and
the U.S Military and its allies were holding
major operations in Syria against ISIS at the time.
Many American archeologist and international archeologist
appeal to the protection to the site of Palmyra
because they saw that ISIS was marching there.
But there was no response what so ever.
So there was no intention of protecting the site.
It is shameful that in the 21st Century with all
the appreciation of cultural heritage and art
it still happened to a world heritage site.
And then we start asking ourselves what is
the meaning of a world heritage site if that site cannot
be protected?
- [Man] So in sense there was a double failure
on one hand we allowed ISIS to take the city hostage
to use it for its own propaganda purposes.
But in an more permanent sense the monuments of
Palmyra suffered irreparable harm and this was
an event that possibly could have been stopped
if the U.S Army, if the Isac Regime had tried
to turn ISIS's path away from this
treasured archeological site.
- [Women] These wars em limited ease.
They'd show you how even in the 21st Century we have
little apriciation of culture.
Culture comes at the bottom
of priorities of all governments.
- [Man] But it is this heritage that makes up
peoples identity of their sense of self.
And so I can't imagine something
more important in the long run.
- [Women] People under estimate how much damage to cultural
heritage effects people and their identity self awareness.
If you think about the trauma that people go through.
It's not only their very personal story of
killing and torture and forced migration but
it's also the destruction of the beloved places.
The loss of the homeland with all this cultural
heritage, that what makes a homeland a homeland.
- [Man] We're look at 6 relive carvings that originally
functioned as closing stones for tombs that were placed
within towers just on the outside of the city of Palmyra.
These 6 are of the many thousands that existed and that
have been collected since the 18th century.
ISIS didn't just destroy objects, they also looted
and raised money through their elicit sale.
- [Women] There were looters who went in to take
advantage of the instability and lack of security.
So what ISIS did is regulate the looting and considered
antiquities as resources like oil.
So they said okay what ever that
is not a figurative artifact you can sell it and we will
tax you and of course the looters are finding these
and figurines, so they would hide those from ISIS
and then sell them off market.
It was a very ad hoc situation.
- [Man] And the Tower Tombs met a tragic fate on under ISIS
in 2015, they targeted the most intact and the largest
of the tombs.
Destroying 7 of them.
- [Women] They did blow them up
and they did them one by one.
Some of them the publicized it and others we found
out through satellite imagery.
- [Man] The event that upset the archeological community
most deeply was the murder of the the long time Director
of Antiquities of the site.
A man that have given his life to understanding and
protecting the antiquities of Palmyra
- [Women] Khaled-Asaad, he's
a Syrian Archaeologist from Palmyra.
He studied Palmyra very deeply no one knows Palmyra the
way he knows it, he knows every stone.
He refused to leave even though the
threats of ISIS coming.
He was executed in a horrific way.
- [Man] This crisis is not ended but as we begin to
look towards the future the archeological community
the community concerned with historical preservation and
of course most centrally the Syrian people themselves.
Need to start grappling with how do
we retrieve ancient history while respecting the loss of
life that has happened recently.
- [Women] We need to look back and
document even the destruction event itself.
So it's not an easy process international organizations
UNSCO should not take decision on behalf of the
people of Palmyra who are still refuges.
We wanna learn from the
Syrian Civil War and the destruction.
How are we going to tell the story, the ancient story
and the destruction story.
Any visitors to the site in the future they need to see it
same way as lots of the atrocities of Nazi Germany
is still there to see and learn from.
So we need to carefully think about how we're going
to tell the story of this modern event.
Not only go back and erase any traces of destruction and
build the site back as like nothing happened.
This is important for people to know and learn from.
(upbeat music)