UNESCO’s project to ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’: Iraqi and Syrian opinion on heritage reconstruction after the Islamic State

ABSTRACT

Following the devastation of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul by the Islamic State (IS), UNESCO launched a project to ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’. This article critically reflects on this UNESCO-led project, drawing on 47 interviews with Syrians and Iraqis, as well as documenting the implications of UNESCO’s efforts in earlier (post-)conflict heritage reconstruction projects in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Mali. Specifically, this article focuses on two sites in Mosul, both deliberately destroyed by the IS and both nominated by UNESCO for reconstruction. The data analysed reveal that heritage reconstruction projects, especially in complex (post-)conflict environments such as Iraq, requires ongoing, nuanced and careful engagement with local populations to succeed. Failure to do so leaves both local people and their heritage sites vulnerable to renewed attacks and therefore ultimately undermines UNESCO’s broader mission to foster peace.     

Lay Defender of Catholicism: Dr. Edward Swarbreck Hall in Tasmania 1833–1881

Tensions between Protestants and Catholics persisted throughout nineteenth‐century Australia. Historians have tended to examine the part played by the clergy, pressure groups or newspapers in sectarian disputes in the main colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. This article contributes to an understanding of anti‐Catholicism in the Australian colonies by focusing on the actions and writings of one Catholic layman, Dr Edward Swarbreck Hall, in mid nineteenth‐century Tasmania. To minimise religious hostility, Hall was tolerant towards Protestants, loyal to the British Crown, and worked co‐operatively with other creeds in helping the poor. This approach made Catholicism more acceptable to Protestant society until the late 1860s. Thereafter religious divisions became more pronounced with the appointment of Irish Bishop Daniel Murphy, who adopted the authoritarian policies of the papacy and asserted the rights of Catholics. Feeling threatened by Catholic assertion and antagonised by Catholic doctrinal beliefs, Evangelical Protestants expressed anti‐Catholic sentiments at public meetings and in newspapers. In showing how Hall defended Catholics when aspersions were cast on their clergymen, their character, or their religious practices, this article concludes that Catholics were not passive victims, but Hall's fierce polemical style worked against his desire for religious peace.     

The ethno‐religious ambitions of the Roman Catholic Church and the ascendancy of communism in post‐war Poland (1945–50)

ABSTRACT. This paper differentiates between centrifugal and centripetal aspects of ethno‐nationalism to help account for the ascendancy of communism in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Poland. It argues that the directing of social antipathy to defined out‐groups allowed the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) to manage social anger and that the Roman Catholic Church's ethno‐religious agenda was aligned with the PPR's ethno‐nationalist policy. Furthermore, it is contended that the Church's toleration of hostile actions directed at minority communities supported the PPR's management of social anger. The paper concludes that the Church, despite its manifest intentions and contrary to contemporary perceptions, played a role in the PPR's achievement of hegemony.     

Vulnerability and nationalism: the support for the war against Iraq in five established states

ABSTRACT. This essay attempts to shed light on why aggressive ideas gain support within established western states. To do that it attempts to answer the question why the armed conflict against Iraq received such varied support during the first four months of 2003 within the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France and Spain. A comparative study indicates that the justifications for the armed conflict must be endorsed in the national identities of the particular states. If not, either the justifications or national identities have to be modified. The dominant elite emerge as essential to this process, as does the public experience of vulnerability. It appears that the war against Iraq received such varied support because the initial definitions of national identities endorsed the justifications for the war to different degrees, the dominant elites promoted different opinions and the people experienced different degrees of vulnerability.     

Religion and ethno‐nationalism: Turkey's Kurdish issue

One approach within the Islamic camp treats Islam, which emphasizes overarching notions such as the ‘Islamic brotherhood’ and ‘ummah’, as incompatible with ethno‐nationalist ideas and movements. It is, however, striking that in the last decades, several Islamic and conservative groups in Turkey have paid increasing attention to the Kurdish issue, supporting their ethnic demands and sentiments. Even more striking, the leftist, secular Kurdish ethno‐nationalists have adopted a more welcoming attitude toward Islam. How can we explain such intriguing developments and shifts? Using original data derived from several elite interviews and a public opinion survey, this study shows that the struggle for Kurdish popular support and legitimacy has encouraged political elites from both camps to enrich their ideological toolbox by borrowing ideas and discourses from each other. Further, Turkish and Kurdish nationalists alike utilize Islamic discourses and ideas to legitimize their competing nationalist claims. Exploring such issues, the study also provides theoretical and policy implications.     

Cultural Property Protection in the Context of Military Operations: The Case of Uruk,Iraq

Abstract

This paper deals with the use of military or militarized experts for cultural property protection (CPP) during times of conflict. CPP activities generally take place within a juridical framework that gives obligations for all parties involved, primarily the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and attention is paid to various implications and challenges that occur when implementing military CPP obligations within this framework. To illustrate matters, the paper details a speci?c case study from the author’s own ?eld experience in the safeguarding of the archaeological site of Uruk in Iraq. Aspects, including economic, legal, ?nancial, and educational implications, are presented and these are especially relevant since they apply (to an extent) to other situations, such as the recent cultural disasters in Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The Uruk case study is used to suggest a number of key elements that are vital for the implementation of an effective CPP strategy in the context of military operations. Overall, the importance of international cooperation, training, and education, along with the assistance of civil reach-back capabilities, is emphasized. The paper argues that an effective way to protect Cultural Property during armed conflicts is through military channels and with military logistics and tools. To ful?l CPP in agreement with International Humanitarian Law (IHL) joint preparations in peacetime are necessary. The handover of military initiated CPP projects to civil authorities has to take place as soon as the situation permits. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations.     

Threading a needle: Kazakhstan between civic and ethno‐nationalist state‐building

This paper examines the state‐building project in Kazakhstan since independence in 1991. It argues that both civic and ethno‐nationalistic tendencies in state‐building can be identified but that it is not any particular trajectory of nationalism in Kazakhstan that is of significance so much as the tensions between two very different trajectories. We argue that, at least to date, the government has succeeded in managing these tensions quite effectively both at the policy level and in its relations with different ethnic groups and neighbouring states. Whether Kazakhstan can continue to manage these tensions in the post‐Nazarbayev era is one of the most significant questions facing the country.     

Consociationalism under examination: Is consociationalism the optimal multiculturalist approach for Turkey?

Some scholars maintain that the Republic of Turkey should construct a consociational model to manage its ethno‐cultural diversity. This article suggests consociationalism is not the optimal multiculturalist approach for Turkey, where there is some degree of interethnic moderation between ethnic Kurds and Turks at the grassroots level. In the presence of this mass‐based moderation, a consociational formula is unlikely to provide Turkish political leaders with political incentives that urge them to cooperate and enter into consociational power‐sharing arrangements with their Kurdish counterparts. This renders consociational power‐sharing arrangements difficult to promote or enforce in Turkey. In the absence of such incentives, any multicultural reform of the consociational formula would not be sustainable in Turkey. There would simply not be enough popular support for such reforms. There are some electoral strategies that offer both majority and minority leaders political incentives to move toward the moderate middle, form interethnic coalitions, foster interculturalism, and increase the number of intercultural citizens. These strategies are offered by centripetalism, another multiculturalist approach to managing ethno‐cultural diversity.     

Sri Lankan Muslims: between ethno‐nationalism and the global ummah

ABSTRACT. Sri Lanka's Sunni Muslims or “Moors”, who make up eight percent of the population, are the country's third largest ethnic group, after the Buddhist Sinhalese (seventy‐four per cent) and the Hindu Tamils (eighteen per cent). Although the armed LTTE (Tamil Tiger) rebel movement was defeated militarily by government forces in May 2009, the island's Muslims still face the long‐standing external threats of ethno‐linguistic Tamil nationalism and pro‐Sinhala Buddhist government land and resettlement policies. In addition, during the past decade a sharp internal conflict has arisen within the Sri Lankan Muslim community between locally popular Sufi sheiks and the followers of hostile Islamic reformist movements energised by ideas and resources from the global ummah, or world community of Muslims. This simultaneous combination of “external” ethno‐nationalist rivalries and “internal” Islamic doctrinal conflict has placed Sri Lanka's Muslims in a double bind: how to defend against Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic hegemonies while not appearing to embrace an Islamist or jihadist agenda. This article first traces the historical development of Sri Lankan Muslim identity in the context of twentieth‐century Sri Lankan nationalism and the south Indian Dravidian movement, then examines the recent anti‐Sufi violence that threatens to divide the Sri Lankan Muslim community today.     

Going for Wombat — Transformations in Wirangu and the Scotdesco Community on the Far West Coast of South Australia

ABSTRACT Becoming an object of touristic interest is only one of a series of ways that Aboriginality is being transformed in contemporary Australia, as the space opens up for individuals and groups to reposition themselves as Aborigines within the nation, with a distinctive culture in various forms. The nation's appetite for Aboriginal ‘culture’, within desirable limits (Povinelli 2002) and energised by a sentimental politics (Cowlishaw 2010), continues to grow. There is, however, a destructive flip side to the politics of difference being played out within Aboriginal societies. This is evidenced by the many battles for access to or control of ‘cultural’ resources for their commercial benefits or collective survival value. In many places communities or groups are faced with the terrible choice of distinction or extinction (Comaroff & Comaroff 2009). That is, they must find, and make alienable, something distinctive about themselves or face collective extinction. How one Aboriginal community is responding to these threats and challenges is the subject of this paper. This paper also adds to the growing literature on ethno‐commercialisation by focusing on the central role of language in these processes.     

Exploring the roots and dynamics of Kurdish ethno‐nationalism in Turkey

Using comprehensive and original data derived from a recent major public opinion survey, this study examines an under‐investigated aspect of the Kurdish issue in Turkey: the dynamics and factors behind Kurdish ethno‐nationalism at a mass level. The empirical findings disprove the conventional socio‐economic peace and Islamic‐peace hypotheses around this issue, and our statistical analyses provide strong support for the relative deprivation hypothesis, i.e. that those who think the Turkish state discriminates against Kurds are more likely to have ethno‐nationalist orientations. Multivariate analyses further show that religious sectarian differences among Kurds (i.e. the Hanefi‐Shafi division) matter: the more religious Shafi Kurds have a stronger ethnic consciousness and a higher degree of ethno‐nationalism. The study also provides a discussion of the broader theoretical and practical implications of the empirical findings, which may provide insights into conflict resolution prospects in countries with a Kurdish population.     

The Basque power‐sharing experience: from a destructive to a constructive conflict?

ABSTRACT. Neither the devolution of powers to the Basque Autonomous Community in Spain nor more than a decade of power‐sharing within this region has led to a peaceful settlement of the Basque conflict. Combining Kriesberg's approach to conflict resolution and consociational theory, past power‐sharing experiences are analysed. The lack of overarching loyalties, traditions of compromise, comprehensive participation and the continuation of violence have frustrated power‐sharing. After the 2006 ceasefire, the conditions for giving the conflict a constructive turn have not fundamentally changed. The potential for alternative forms of power‐sharing as a way out of the Basque conflict, combined or not with innovative territorial arrangements cannot be employed because of multi‐scale polarisation. De‐escalation as a prerequisite for new types of power‐sharing arrangements requires relearning democratic pluralism and a recognition of ethnic hybridity in this politically and geographically fragmented society.