Time to decolonise: ‘If not now’,then when?

Abstract

The introduction of this special issue not only underscores the significance of engaging local communities in the reconstruction of their heritage in post-conflict contexts; it also emphasises the necessity and importance of including local researchers from the affected area, in this case the Arab region, in producing knowledge about its rich past. This special issue contributes towards a comparative knowledge base on the obstacles to and enablers of heritage reconstruction, management of cultural resources and recovery of societies in the Arab region. This introductory piece starts with examining the impact of colonial and post-colonial regimes on producing knowledge about the past and how the latter regimes introduced societal elitism in studying the past. I argue that by giving a voice and a chance to local scholars and early career researchers coming from the studied regions (even if they are currently based abroad), we would be taking another step towards decolonising the past by empowering societies and producing local decolonial knowledge about the region’s iconic ruins. Allowing alternative forms of non-Eurocentric (culturally diverse) knowledge production about the past, primarily generated by local scholars, to be introduced, presented, published and promoted would render knowledge production authentic and simultaneously delink heritage from decades of knowledge coloniality.

Introduction

Over the past few decades, the number of heritage destruction incidents has significantly increased across the world. The Balkans, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal, Nagorno-Karabakh, Iraq, Syria, Mali, Libya, Palestine, Yemen, Ukraine and, more recently, Türkiye and Morocco have all witnessed destructive actions that have deeply affected cultural heritage (see Azzouz, 2023; Fisk, 2008; Isakhan and Meskell, 2019; Joy, 2018; McCafferty, 2023; Meskell, 2018; Munawar and Symonds, 2023; Munawar, 2017, 2023a; Rayne et al., 2017; Rico, 2016; Winter, 2017; Walasek et al., 2016). Settler colonialism, civil wars, terrorism, armed conflicts, climate change, earthquakes, floods and hurricanes have all been catalysts for partially damaging and/or entirely destroying cultural property in one way or another. All this has played a crucial role in provoking the world community to react and swiftly respond in various ways, no matter if those reactions were merely limited to dichotomic classifications, effective or ineffective, inclusive or exclusive to the local community, top-down or bottom-up planning and implementation, and local or foreign funds.

This special issue contributes towards a comparative knowledge base on the obstacles to and enablers of heritage reconstruction, management of cultural resources and recovery of societies in the post-conflict Arab region. ¹ It builds upon the growing academic research agenda that has produced timely and thought-provoking debates on the future of heritage and culture in post-conflict societies in the region (see Gutbrod and Wood, 2023; Isakhan and Meskel, 2023; Khalaf, 2020; Matthews et al., 2020; Munawar and Symonds, 2022; Munawar, 2017, 2023b; Newson and Young, 2017; Žuljević and Carabelli, 2023). Articles in this special issue respond to the urgent need for a critical conversation about and interrogation of cultural heritage reconstruction and recovery in the Arab region. Heritage reconstruction thinking has been spurred on in the past few years by regional and international efforts to rebuild war-affected heritage sites, monuments and infrastructure in and around historic city centres and archaeological sites, such as Aleppo, Mosul, Sana’a and Palmyra. While these examples have been the subject of renewed research interest, the wider task of community engagement in processes related to rebuilding heritage in ancient cities and countries in the Arab region in the early 2020s faces the obstacle of the lack of success stories.

The introduction of this special issue underscores the significance of not only engaging local communities in the reconstruction of their heritage; it also emphasises the necessity and importance of including local scholars from the affected region in producing knowledge about the Arab region’s rich past. As the Syrian-British architect Azzouz (2022) puts it, ‘Our pain, their heritage project’ has been a key feature and an overarching framework of cultural heritage in the Arab region; I add that it applies to the knowledge produced about the past remains in conflict and post-conflict contexts by foreign scholars. Thus, the latter prejudice must end. No one is undermining the knowledge produced by the ‘other’ or the ‘outsiders’; in fact a great deal of academic literature is authored by scholars who are not from the Arab region. Yet, over the past few years a considerable amount of irrelevant knowledge has emerged, characterized by significant pitfalls and a lack of rigorous approaches to understanding the Arab region, its heritage and memory, its diverse ethno-religious identities and, most importantly, its communities. Hence, meticulous local scholarship should be incorporated into knowledge production about their region, their heritage and their communities. To this end, this introductory piece starts with examining the impact of colonial and post-colonial regimes on the production of knowledge about the past and how the latter introduced societal elitism into the study of the past in the Arab region. I argue that by giving a voice and a chance to local scholars and early career researchers coming from the studied regions (even if they are currently based and/or trained abroad), we would be taking another step towards decolonising the past by empowering societies and producing local decolonial knowledge about the region’s iconic ruins. Allowing alternative forms of non-Eurocentric (culturally diverse) knowledge production about the past, primarily generated by local scholars, to be introduced, presented, published and promoted would portray knowledge production as authentic and simultaneously delink heritage from decades of knowledge coloniality.

The title I chose for this introductory piece includes the term ‘IfNotNow’, ² which is used by a public action movement-based organization initiated by a group of Jewish Americans opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Founded in 2014 in North America, the IfNotNow movement aims to mobilize American Jews to end the boundless US support of Israel’s apartheid regime. In light of the ongoing atrocities committed against Palestinians in Gaza, I believe it is crucial—for publications promoting decoloniality—to highlight endeavours opposing the last settler colonial laboratory worldwide. Emphasizing a movement that advocates for equality, justice, and a prosperous future for colonized and oppressed people is essential component of decoloniality.

Knowledge is power

Heritage has always been political. To understand the manifestation of cultural assets and their significance in societies, it is essential to comprehend how knowledge about the past is produced as well as the role that this knowledge can play in ingraining and perpetuating the symbolic values associated with cultural resources. Across the world, cultural capital in general, and particularly heritage and cultural memory, is considered as a means to achieve political gains. In the context of the Arab region, cultural heritage as a discipline has not received as much attention in scientific, academic or institutional circles as other disciplines in natural, social and behavioural sciences or humanities. Several factors have played a pivotal role in framing cultural heritage as neither a relevant nor a high-importance discipline to societies in the Arab region. Since the early 20th century, cultural heritage and the study of the past in Arab states have been predominantly associated with the elite class or understood as domains reserved for the elites and their descendants. This has led to parents encouraging their children to avoid those disciplines for various reasons (e.g. limited opportunities, unclear future careers). Alternatively, youth have been steered towards more lucrative professions such as law, medicine, pharmaceuticals and engineering. This trend has widened the gap between society and the field of heritage, leading to a type of disregard for any discipline that examines the material culture of the past and produces knowledge of it (for further discussion on elitism and heritage in the Arab region, see Symonds and Munawar, forthcoming). However, this is, of course, not the only reason nor a recent phenomenon, as the practices of social elites claiming ownership of the past and stewardship of its knowledge in the Arab region can be traced back to colonial times.

Following the First World War, the interwoven relationship between cultural heritage and national identity, which grew hand-in-hand with the establishment of nation-states, was manufactured and led many to consider cultural heritage as an elitist discipline or a speciality of the elite class. This exclusive elitism afforded a particular class the right or even the constitutional mandate to curate the nation’s past and decide what to include and/or exclude in the presentation and representation of national identity. In Arab states such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and others that gained independence during the second half of the last century, or what the contemporary world regime has framed as ‘third world countries’ after the end of the Second World War, funds were dedicated to other top priorities essential for building and advancing the state’s infrastructure, institutions and, most importantly, military. All this has ultimately resulted in placing funds for cultural heritage research at the bottom of the national priority list, if it is even on that list. As I have argued (Munawar, 2022), the idea that the state or the ruling regime is the sole curator of the nation’s heritage, memory and cultural identity has facilitated and also reinforced the emergence of elitism in the heritage discourse. By granting the right to select elements of the past (tangible or intangible) to be preserved, presented and represented as a national identity—and to be reconstructed or rehabilitated in post-conflict or post-disaster contexts—heritage elitism has, in one way or another, deepened a gap between the public and cultural heritage.

No one can argue against the significant role of archaeological excavations and discoveries and the management practices of heritage in potentially enriching the cultural identity and collective memory of nations. However, this should not distract us from the fact that cultural heritage, archaeology and, most importantly, knowledge produced about the past are deeply tied to and embedded in the introduction and expansion of colonialism in the Arab region and beyond. The academic literature is filled with arguments demonstrating the profound relationship between archaeology and colonialism (see, for instance, Munawar, 2022; Hamilakis, 2009; Said, 2003; Meskell, 2002). The ugly truth is that the colonial frame of archaeology has had a far greater impact on colonised societies in the post-colonial period. The connection between the colonised and their colonisers has never been revoked, and this fact comes from acts related to heritage management and knowledge production about the past. On the one hand, colonial states (e.g. France, Britain) still claim and assert their rights and privileges to conduct archaeological work in their former colonies and continue sending teams and producing knowledge in their respective languages while keeping a plethora of looted artefacts from colonised lands in their museums. On the other hand, colonised states have long looked at—and shockingly still look at—the coloniser as a source of development and technical advancement to train local staff and build their capacity by sending them to universities and institutions in the colonial states, hoping those staff will return home and implement what they learnt abroad.

The picture that I draw here of the inseparable contemporary relationship between archaeology and colonialism can be clearly seen in the case of France and Syria before its contemporary war (2011–present) as an example. Before the armed conflict began in Syria in 2011, French archaeological teams operating there from the start of the colonial period in 1920 until 2011 occupied the lion’s share of foreign expeditions (see Gillot, 2010; Munawar, 2022). Also, France used cultural diplomacy by easing university admission and granting scholarships to students from Syria and the staff of Syria’s Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) to facilitate acquiring excavation licences and approvals for French teams in Syria from their Syrian counterparts. However, the armed conflict in Syria marked a turning point in the latter colonial ‘bromance’: all official ties were broken due to the deterioration of diplomatic relations between France and Syria. More recently, a French court issued an international arrest warrant for three Syrian officials, including Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s current president (2000–present), for what the French claimed to be complicity in war crimes against humanity after using chemical weapons against Syrian civilians in 2013 (Aljazeera, 2023; Willsher, 2023). It is worth noting that the use of cultural diplomacy and soft power is not limited to Syria nor to French colonialism; it is also clearly observed in the case of post-Saddam Iraq and Britain (for further clarification on the use of soft power, see Munawar and Symonds, 2023).

Decolonial knowledge: ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’

With the goal of producing authentic knowledge about and with local communities, scholars and researchers from the Arab region have the right to study their cultural assets and participate in producing substantial original knowledge in the field as they are intellectually capable, qualified and fit to do so. My own research aims, accordingly, to understand the past and its uses, management practices and politics in order to produce knowledge about cultural heritage and the collective memory of the Arab region. After completing a PhD at the University of Amsterdam, I moved to the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. A year on the US East Coast was sufficient to learn about, familiarise myself with and, most importantly, face the taboos in US-based academic institutions, such as speaking up about or even touching upon Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine and its impact on cultural heritage, as well as the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war. Fortunately, I received a fellowship to conduct my research in Qatar at a private institution established in 2014: the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI). The mission and goals of DI—to critically, intellectually engage with the past, present and future of the Arab region—encourage research that produces decolonial knowledge on the heritage of the Arab region. It is in fact one of the few Arab region-based institutions that has such a purpose and such high standards, as well as being as capable of impacting social and intellectual change in a region that has been largely portrayed via conflict and merely as a topic of study for Western institutions. Several Arab and Western colleagues strongly advised me not to go to Qatar, as it would have a negative impact on my career trajectory. Those worrying, sceptical voices promoted the same type of propaganda as that produced by Western media outlets during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

At DI, senior management generously provided the resources for a conference on the ‘Post-Conflict Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage in MENA’, with a particular focus on the Arab states. This bilingual, international conference was held in Doha on 7–8 March 2023. It was the first of its kind in the region’s heritage field to announce an open call for papers and bring together local Arab and foreign scholars, early career researchers, practitioners and professionals working on cultural heritage. The conference provided a platform for critical discussion and in-depth analysis of heritage reconstruction, management of cultural resources and recovery of societies in post-conflict Arab states, and offered an opportunity for scholars and professionals from various disciplinary backgrounds to disseminate knowledge produced in and on the Arab region. By exploring the challenges and opportunities for cultural heritage reconstruction, the conference took a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to studying reconstruction and recovery in war-torn societies, and the large number of paper submissions indicated significant scholarly interest. The conference, combining a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives on post-conflict reconstruction and a plurality of methodological approaches, was split into two days: Day One was dedicated to four thematic sessions, while Day Two had four case-study sessions exploring Iraq, Palestine, Libya and Syria. Major media outlets in the Arab region, including Aljazeera, Al-Araby TV, The New Arab news journal and Qatar National TV, covered the event, noting the efforts to highlight under-researched and underrepresented topics in the region. The conference was accompanied by a photo exhibition of heritage destruction in Syria and Iraq that aimed to raise public awareness of the impact of conflict on cultural heritage.

Generally speaking, academic institutions, scholars, journals, publishers, states and even non-state actors have long advocated for community inclusion in heritage management and the production of knowledge about heritage values, perceptions and practices. The goal of the conference was not just to organise an academic event and provide a platform to present descriptive cases on cultural heritage destruction and reconstruction in the Arab region; dissemination of knowledge was a major objective of the conference. To the latter end, this special issue highlights four case studies authored by eight scholars, six of whom are from the Arab region.

Eljamal (2023), a local Palestinian researcher, offers new insights into the management of cultural resources under the Israeli settler colonial regime in the ancient historical city of Lydd. In her article, Eljamal underscores the alignment of two distinct urban identities in the creation and preservation of histories characterised by colonial erasure and how cultural heritage is perceived as a mechanism that brings together national priorities, municipal entrepreneurialism and this colonial erasure in the context of the ‘mixed city’ of Lydd.

In the second paper of this issue, Larkin and Rudolf present their fieldwork with the local community of Mosul, ‘Moslawi’, between February 2022 and June 2023. The article delves into local viewpoints and the continuous and evolving negotiation process involved in restoring damaged and destroyed heritage in the Iraqi city of Mosul. Larkin and Rudolf argue that the restoration of heritage is inherently ambivalent and contingent in post-conflict settings, as it includes the selective utilisation of emotional historic symbols to shape and present new realities.

The third paper of the issue is focused on the reconstruction of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Salahieh, Asaaed and Zibar examine the multi-ethnic historic district of Al-Jdeideh in the ancient city of Aleppo, offering a critical analysis of the ongoing post-conflict and top-down reconstruction work within Aleppo’s historic city centre. Despite being displaced during Syria’s conflict, the three Syrian authors present their ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Aleppo in two distinct stages: from April 2021 to September 2022 and from March 2022 to February 2023. As researchers from the local community, they successfully incorporate their memories of Aleppo’s historic areas to develop a narrative and biographical approach in their case study. The authors argue that the ongoing reconstruction work in Aleppo ‘lack [s] a comprehensive and context-specific approach, and [needs] to explore more inclusive pathways of human-centred and sustainable recovery’.

In the fourth and final paper in this special issue, authored by two Arab scholars, Selim and Farhan investigate how youth can play a pivotal role in effectively utilising cultural heritage in Iraq to promote sustainable peace, dismantle ideological barriers and underscore ‘commonalities, cultural links and educational understanding’. Selim and Farhan support their argument with the analysis of their nine-month fieldwork conducted in 2021 with young locals, academics, NGOs and members of civil society from various universities in Iraq. This last article signifies the role that the younger generations can play in safeguarding cultural heritage in Iraq and the impact of local cultural institutions in the promotion of human equality and social justice in the context of a fragile state.

Articles in this special issue explore the potential of engaging with local communities related to heritage reconstruction and rehabilitation in post-conflict contexts in the Arab region. Starting the conversation about participatory, people-centred and inclusive approaches to cultural heritage management ultimately feeds into broadening the horizon of heritage uses in post-conflict settings in a way that benefits societies, cultural heritage, democratisation and building and sustaining peace. Finally, the inclusion of the voices of scholars and researchers from the affected regions in academic discussions has the potential not only to open the door to diverse interdisciplinary theoretical and empirical avenues in heritage studies, but also to establish another step towards decolonial knowledge production in the Arab region and beyond.