Culture Under Threat: Fighting Terrorist Financing in the Middle East

By Deborah Lehr as featured on Middle East Institute

Serene stone reliefs from ancient Egyptian temples, model boats used to ferry departed souls through the underworld, and a 2,600-year-old sarcophagus were among the smuggled antiquities recently displayed in Washington, D.C. by the Department of Homeland Security. The repatriation ceremony that saw a portion of the U.S. government's more than 7,000 seized relics returned to the Egyptian government was a small but noble victory.

But it was only a snapshot of a long war of cultural annihilation that the Middle East and the United States are losing to international criminal networks and extremist groups like ISIS. While the world shares in our responsibilities, Americans' global leadership, and many of our citizens' culpability in the illicit trade, place a heightened responsibility on us to go beyond repatriation.