The National Museum of Afghanistan on Tuesday unveiled hundreds of looted artifacts, some dating back as far as the 11th century, seized from smugglers trying to sell them on Europe’s black market.
The museum has received about 2,000 pieces seized at British ports over the past six years, museum director Omara Khan Masoudi said. All were returned early this year and placed on exhibit on Tuesday for the first time.
A trade route between Europe and Asia for centuries, Afghanistan has long been a treasure chest of both Buddhist and Arabic artifacts. But as lawlessness grows in the ancient mountain passes and along Silk Road routes, conservationists say looters are increasingly raiding sites that are unprotected and unnoticed.
Looting is “one of the biggest problems and one of the biggest challenges to the conservation of cultural heritage in this country,” said Brendan Cassar, a cultural specialist with the UN who works on protecting historical sites.
Though UNESCO — the UN body for cultural preservation — has paid to hire guards for some sites, the vast majority have no security, Cassar said.
As in Iraq, Afghanistan’s cultural heritage became the victim of war.
The looting of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad after the 2003 US-led invasion was widely condemned as a preventable tragedy.
The Afghan museum was decimated by looting during the civil war and Taliban rise in the 1990s, but has since been restored with the help of international donors. Outside of the capital, however, there’s little to be done, Cassar said.
“Looting at the provincial level is very, very difficult to stop,” he said, both because of a lack of a protection and vast number of potential sites — many of them discovered by looters but not yet identified by a government otherwise preoccupied.
He said he hoped for more help from security forces, both Afghan and international.
“Each country, they have their own history, they have their own civilization, and it is very important for every country” to have these bits of history, Masoudi said.
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