Daily Times

Just after celebrating New Year 2020, the world was stunned at the first big news of the new decade — America killing Iran’s top general. The January 3 drone assassination of Qasem Suleimani in Iraq, on Trump’s orders, steeply escalated US-Iran tensions and brought the Middle East to the brink of war. Soon afterwards, another shock came when Trump threatened to bomb Iranian cultural sites should Iran retaliate.

We wonder what this new decade holds in store if the first days brought such turbulence. Gen Suleimani’s killing is grave enough. Trump escalated the graveness by threatening to do something deeply abhorrent to the civilised world, targeting cultural heritage. Yet cultural sites should be protected no matter what kind of conflicts rage. The world has appropriate laws to ensure this.

Harming cultural and historic heritage is a war crime under international law. The United States is bound by the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, among several other agreements. Even prior to that, destroying cultural property was prohibited by the Lieber Code the US created in 1863 during American Civil War. Hence, the mid-19th century America promoted more civilised conduct, even as it was being torn apart by a civil war that cost almost one million lives, than today’s Trump Administration does when engaged in hostilities against a weaker nation possessed of limited kinetic ability.

Cultural property is all too often damaged in war, but targeting it deliberately is unthinkable in the civilised world. Trump used the threat as a psychological weapon against the Iranian regime, which cares so deeply for the country’s historical heritage that they expressed outrage at the insulting depiction of Ancient Persians in the 2007 American film 300. However, if the US implemented the threat, the whole world would feel the pain. History is to mankind what memory is to an individual. Iran hosts widely renowned sites of world’s historical and cultural heritage, Persia being one of the greatest civilisations for 3,000 years. If the US strikes these sites, included among 52 targets in Trump’s threat, a global loss would be incurred.

It is an example of Trump’s apparent disregard for standards of behaviour and his tendency to make the ends justify the means. His recent threat follows the same rationale as his suggestion of killing the family members of terrorists during his presidential campaign. As justification, Trump said international law is letting Iranians kill Americans but “we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites.” This is ridiculous. If Iran kills American troops, America can kill Iranian troops. War is legal. Furthermore, America is capable of attacking military and logistical targets in Iran to accomplish its goals.

We may note that during World War 2, Hitler avoided bombing Oxford, an academic city with no military value, supposedly under agreement with Great Britain. It might add to the indignation of many that even Hitler was more decent than Trump when it comes to mankind’s heritage. How much more out-of-bounds could the POTUS get?

This assessment is not entirely correct though. Hitler had no qualms about destroying historic sites in many of the countries he was at war with, Poland being an example. The Nazis did not treat all their enemies equally. Consider their prisoners of war. Germany treated soldiers captured from Western countries, like America, Britain and France, in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Jews among them were spared the Holocaust. In America’s War on Terror, on the other hand, you have a teenage boy groomed by the Taliban to throw a grenade at US soldiers and when captured, he is charged with murder and locked up for several years in Guantanamo, instead of being sent to reformatory. Here, embattled Americans may appear to be worse than Nazis. This impression, however, is also incorrect.

Harming cultural and historic heritage is a war crime under international law. The United States is bound by the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, among several other agreements

If you were a Polish or Soviet soldier captured by Nazi Germany, then God help you. The Nazis treated POWs from the East with unrestrained brutality and killed millions of them (Mongolian-looking POWs were executed outright). Nazis treated with respect those they considered important or equal in ‘civilisation,’ such as the Western Allies. The people of Eastern Europe and Asia were lower in their esteem and considered fair game for horrible treatment.

If Trump does attack Iran’s cultural sites, it would reveal similar proclivity. Fact is, all modern states follow the principle of acting decently towards the ‘more important’ (Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians, never against American soldiers). If the US ever went to war with Russia or China, rest assured they would avoid locking up captured child soldiers forever, or attempting to obliterate the other side’s history. But when it comes to war with third-world societies, Americans are inclined to disregarding rules of civilised combat. Trump’s threat to target Iranian heritage could, therefore, become reality.

The repercussions of bombing cultural and historic sites would be far reaching. Such an action by United States would lend legitimacy to similar acts by terrorists. Standards of civilisation would be lowered. US image would suffer. Trump promotes America’s hard power, but soft power has been important for the country’s global standing ever since 1776. Deliberately destroying the world’s irreplaceable heritage will tarnish the reputation and influence of the US. Extremists will be able to push the “clash of civilisations” thesis before ordinary people to stoke mass hostility against the West, intensifying radicalism in the Muslim world. Finally, if America bombs Iran’s historic sites, the US-Iran conflict would leave a permanent scar on the world that history will remember as Trump’s most enduring legacy.

Pentagon officials announced on January 6 that they would not obey illegal orders to target cultural and historical sites in Iran. Trump concurred (seemingly reluctantly). Fortunately, domestic checks prevent POTUS from acting arbitrarily. Western governments have a relatively free hand in foreign affairs, but we can be assured that senseless abuses, such as wiping out world’s historical and cultural heritage as acts of war, are never committed blatantly.

As humans continue to wage war against each other, we must ensure that humanity’s historical and cultural treasures are preserved.

The writer is an environmental journalist and director at Pakistan’s People-Led Disaster Management