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| Controversial photo (Le Monde) |
Aerial photos show that the ancient site of Dilbarjin Tepe (37° 1′ 21″ N, 66° 31′ 35″ E, 40 km northwest of Balkh)* in northern Afghanistan has been subject to massive damage in recent years (Jacques Follorou, 'En Afghanistan, le pillage massif d’un site archéologique attribué à l’EI'. Le Monde 07 April 2023). The urban site extends over an area of 16 hectares covered with temples, surrounded by a fortified enclosure, the centre of which included an upper part surmounted by a citadel. Excavated by a Soviet-Afghan archaeological mission between 1969 and 1977, the ancient site of is best known for its magnificent wall paintings as well as coin finds from the Kushano-Sasanian, Kidarite, and Hephthalite periods (roughly, 230-560-ish AD). The damage took place between 2019 and 2021 and is attributed by the Le Monde to criminal networks linked to a Khoresan-based jihadist group affiliated to the Islamic State.
The work of a French start-up, Iconem, specializing in the digital analysis of heritage around the world, commissioned by the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA), shows irreparable damage that occurred in Dilbarjin between 2019 and 2021, quasi-industrial pillage that has reduced the entire site to nothing. According to these two organizations, this destruction could only have been carried out by highly organized networks acting on behalf of or under the control of IS, which thus, in three years, had built up a veritable war chest. Within the DAFA, Le Monde is told that "the level of equipment and the methodology of the looters show that they are professionals who rely on experts, they knew what they were doing, they are not not the local people who can mount such a program.”While local looting had been going on for some time, Le Monde reports that destruction on such a scale has not been met in the region before. While the damage here is most severe, Dilbarjin is only one of the sites that has been damaged recently, there are nearly a hundred looted sites in Balkh province alone and a few in Kunduz province.
There is good satellite coverage of Dilbarjin from between 2016 and 2022. The process of destruction can be seen in detail from them. According to Iconem and DAFA, the first bulldozer arrived in April 2019. Since then, four or five machines would work on the site at the same time. Then, work began with the establishment, in October 2019, of an access ramp to the north of the site.
A year later, in November 2020, other openings appear to the west, then to the south, which allow earth, sand and objects to be removed. Systematic levelling can be seen to have taken place in the search for antiquitiesThe work seems to have involved levelling part of the tell, even though it was 10m tall in several places.
Le Monde postulates that "the looters hoped to find treasures: inscriptions, manuscripts, jewellery, gold objects or Buddhist antiquities from the 3rd and 4th centuries BC". I cannot see that in the available text there is any firm evidence of the actual removal of objects. Also, if you look at before and after images, the earth has not actually been removed from the site, just pushed outwards and the top of the spoil heap is the same level as the area from which the soil was removed.
I personally am very cautious of this story. The first thing is that the le Monde text is réservé aux abonnés and I am not about to part with 5,49 € par mois pour "l’intégralité de nos contenus" when the bit I can see looks highly dubious. Secondly, in that bit there are no hyperlinks revealing where I can find that Iconem/DAFA report, thirdly there are no hyperlinks there about how I can read about the local militant Islamic group they assert are behind it, and fourthly the use of the T-word. I am against the current tendency to use the word "terrorist" loosely to mean merely "somebody I do not like who uses violence", it means sloppy thinking and stereotypes. So on that showing, I'm not paying 5 euros a month for that quality journalism on the off-chance that Le Monde might, one day, produce something better of interest to my own research. Stuff them.
What the introductory section fails to say is that those bulldozers may have been on the site in connection with what (other) satellite photos show in the area around the site. If you go to Google Earth, you can see that what look like abandoned fields to the SE of the site were brought back into cultivation in Sept 2016 and to the east of the enclosure large areas of land (containing archaeological remains as well as earlier looting holes) were levelled and apparently embanked between 9/2016 and 9/2019. But this is not looting, it is an attempt to use the rich soil of the occupation layers as farmland (like the use of Sebakh - decayed mudbrick - in Egypt). The process can be seen very clearly on the NW side of the citadel in the GE photos of Sept 2019 (compared with those of sept 2016). It's not that difficult to work out that the looters' holes have been backfilled and the area levelled for agriculture. Duh. le Monde, fix this fake news before asking people to pay to read it. You wonder if there are journalists out there these days who were brought up in a concrete desert and have never actually seen a field...
What the introductory section fails to say is that those bulldozers may have been on the site in connection with what (other) satellite photos show in the area around the site. If you go to Google Earth, you can see that what look like abandoned fields to the SE of the site were brought back into cultivation in Sept 2016 and to the east of the enclosure large areas of land (containing archaeological remains as well as earlier looting holes) were levelled and apparently embanked between 9/2016 and 9/2019. But this is not looting, it is an attempt to use the rich soil of the occupation layers as farmland (like the use of Sebakh - decayed mudbrick - in Egypt). The process can be seen very clearly on the NW side of the citadel in the GE photos of Sept 2019 (compared with those of sept 2016). It's not that difficult to work out that the looters' holes have been backfilled and the area levelled for agriculture. Duh. le Monde, fix this fake news before asking people to pay to read it. You wonder if there are journalists out there these days who were brought up in a concrete desert and have never actually seen a field...
Secondly, given that, all these assumptions about "highly organized networks acting on behalf of or under the control of IS" because... uh... "the level of equipment [...] show that they are professionals[...] [and] are not not the local people” really is a totally baseless inference. I see no reason why this should not be the work of an energetic local official who wants to improve the economy of the area and feed people by getting what seems from the earlier GE cover to be abandoned land back into cultivation and extending the area of cultivation. Having a bulldozer and a bulldozer driver does not seem to me to necessarily be a badge of belonging to an Islamic militant organization.
If they are looting paintings from wall surfaces in this alleged "looting", where are the upstanding walls with trenches along them to facilitate access in the bulldozed areas? Why are the looters pits filled in, rather than extended?
The photo at the top of this page is the one shown by Le Monde as evidence of this ISIS-sponsored looting (must be of 2019-23). At the bottom of this post, I show what the site looked like already in November 2011 so right in the middle of the US-led coalition occupation (at that time 140,000 troops) and four years before the tentative beginnings of the operation in Afghanistan of ISIS-K (which is what I presume le Monde means). As can be seen, a decade ago, this site was already riddled with deep looters' holes (avoiding areas already dug by archaeologists) and by the time this photo was taken, most, if not all of the holes had silted up.
Please note, that, despite my overall interpretation of the Le Monde shock-horror-photo, in the topmost photo here, however, there are isolated areas between the levelled fields where there are fresh looters' holes. Whether of not "ISIS" is involved and not just a spare time activity for local workmen engaged in reclaiming the tell as fields remains to be seen (see my pot on the Clooney Foundation's claims about Tel Bia near Al-Raqqa in Syria: PACHI Friday, 10 June 2022, "Stolen antiquities trade fuels conflict in Middle East" the "Evidence" from Tell Bia'), which I think is totally analogous.
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| Google Earth |
The photo at the top of this page is the one shown by Le Monde as evidence of this ISIS-sponsored looting (must be of 2019-23). At the bottom of this post, I show what the site looked like already in November 2011 so right in the middle of the US-led coalition occupation (at that time 140,000 troops) and four years before the tentative beginnings of the operation in Afghanistan of ISIS-K (which is what I presume le Monde means). As can be seen, a decade ago, this site was already riddled with deep looters' holes (avoiding areas already dug by archaeologists) and by the time this photo was taken, most, if not all of the holes had silted up.
Please note, that, despite my overall interpretation of the Le Monde shock-horror-photo, in the topmost photo here, however, there are isolated areas between the levelled fields where there are fresh looters' holes. Whether of not "ISIS" is involved and not just a spare time activity for local workmen engaged in reclaiming the tell as fields remains to be seen (see my pot on the Clooney Foundation's claims about Tel Bia near Al-Raqqa in Syria: PACHI Friday, 10 June 2022, "Stolen antiquities trade fuels conflict in Middle East" the "Evidence" from Tell Bia'), which I think is totally analogous.
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| Google Earth |
* Warwick Ball: Archaeological Gazetteer of Afghanistan : Catalogue des sites archéologiques d'Afghanistan, Paris 1982, p. 91-92
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