Arab News: LONDON: Following a landmark agreement signed in Riyadh with one of the world’s leading heritage rescue organizations, Saudi Arabia is enhancing its growing reputation as a major player in the field of cultural diplomacy. 

The Kingdom is to host the first regional headquarters of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage (ALIPH), the Geneva-based organization it has backed financially since its foundation. 

Speaking after the signing ceremony in early February, Rakan Altouq, Saudi Arabia’s assistant minister of culture, said the agreement “reflects the ministry’s commitment to global cultural collaboration and to the protection and preservation of heritage sites for future generations.” 

Cultural heritage, he added, “plays an invaluable role in enriching societies and telling the unique story of people and places.” 

The agreement, said Bariza Khiari, chair of the ALIPH Foundation Board, after the signing, “marks a milestone in ALIPH’s history.” 

“Since its launch in December 2016 at the Abu Dhabi Conference on Safeguarding Endangered Heritage, ALIPH was conceived as an innovative and agile multilateral instrument, bringing together public and private partners, and designed to deliver strategic, neutral, rapid and effective action on the ground through concrete heritage protection or rehabilitation projects.” 

Saudi Arabia, which has eight UNESCO World Heritage sites of its own, has contributed some $50 million in support of the organization’s mission — the protection and rehabilitation of cultural heritage impacted by war, climate change and natural disasters. 

Now, Khiari added, “with the steadfast support of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia since our founding, today the Ministry of Culture strengthens this mission.” 

Valery Freland, executive director of ALIPH and a former cultural attache at the French Embassy in Saudi Arabia, told Arab News the main objective of the initiative “is to help us to be closer to the places where we work.” 

On many occasions, as a kind of heritage first-responder, ALIPH is the first organization on the ground. It was, he added, “easier to go to Iraq, Syria, Beirut, Yemen and so on when you are based in Riyadh, so it will be a platform from which we will be able to jump and go faster to places in the region where there are emergencies and urgent needs.” 

The second objective of the agreement is to train Saudi personnel at the Ministry of Culture in the work ALIPH does, including the management of emergency measures in conflict areas, setting up projects on the ground and working with local communities. 

ALIPH currently has a small staff of about 20 people in Geneva, of whom half are experts, including architects, historians and engineers. It is their job to pre-select suitable projects, which are then recommended to the board for final approval. 

Funding is then given to experts and communities on the ground who are working to save or restore heritage that is important to them. 

The alliance, an initiative proposed originally by former French President Francois Hollande, was founded at an international conference on heritage in danger in December 2016. 

The immediate impetus was the widespread destruction of cultural sites in the Middle East, including monuments, museums and mosques, by extremist groups including Daesh. 

“President Hollande asked Jean Luc Martinez, the former president of the Louvre, to write a report on what the international community could do to better answer the massive destruction of cultural heritage, especially by Daesh," said M. Freland. 

“At the Conference for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Conflict Areas, it was decided to launch a new initiative, complementary to UNESCO but more agile, to be able to finance emergency measures but also to contribute to peacebuilding through renovation projects, as we have done in Mosul.” 

ALIPH’s support for Iraq, much of it in response to the destruction of multiple heritage sites by Daesh, has seen $28.4 million invested in 27 projects, including the massive effort to restore Mosul Museum. 

ALIPH invested $15.8 million in collaboration with the Louvre, the Smithsonian Institution and the World Monuments Fund, working with local partners including the museum and its staff and Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. 

The northern Iraqi city suffered badly at the hands of Daesh, which occupied it from 2014 to 2016. ALIPH has been steadily picking up the pieces under the umbrella of an initiative called Mosul Mosaic, which aims to preserve the religious diversity of Mosul’s cultural heritage. 

This has seen the restoration of the 18th century Chaldean Church of Al-Tahira, which was vandalized by Daesh; the repair of Al-Raabiya Mosque, built in 1766 and heavily damaged during the battle to liberate Mosul; and the rebuilding of Al-Masfi Mosque. 

Emergency relief funding was also provided to preserve documentation, memories and oral histories relating to Mosul’s once thriving Jewish community, the roots of which stretch back to the 8th century. 

Video interviews were conducted to gather first-hand accounts of history and customs, archival materials such as photographs and documents were collected and digitized and the 1834 Ottoman registry of the Jewish population of Mosul was translated and edited. 

“This is the kind of work that contributes to peacebuilding and the dialogue between communities,” said Freland. 

Perhaps most symbolic of the ambition of Mosul Mosaic has been the restoration of the Syriac Orthodox Mar Toma Church, which was heavily vandalized by Daesh during its destructive occupation of the city and further damaged during liberation. 

The original church, thought to have been built in the 7th century, was damaged in the 18th-century Persian siege of Mosul. 

The current building dates to that time, when the church was rebuilt by the Muslim governor of Mosul in a gesture of gratitude toward the Christian defenders of the city. 

As in all its work, ALIPH has partnered with local communities, stakeholders and official organizations, such as the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, and, where appropriate, has brought in outside expert support. 

Since the organization’s secretariat was set up in Geneva in September 2018, ALIPH has supported an astonishing 600 projects in 60 countries, of which 150 are still being managed. 

Since 2019, ALIPH has spent $2.4 million on 11 projects in Syria, working with 11 local operators to protect and restore archaeological sites, monuments, historic neighborhoods, museums and religious buildings. 

The program includes the rehabilitation of the museum and the stabilization of damaged monuments at the ancient site of Palmyra, where the destruction wrought there by Daesh in 2015 was one of the key events that led to the alliance’s foundation. 

In July last year ALIPH announced it was committing more than $16 million for heritage support in Africa, Syria, Ukraine and Gaza. 

In emergencies, ALIPH also has the ability to bypass the usual selection procedure and step in at short notice. It is the smaller sums invested in timely, emergency interventions, such as several funded in Gaza, that often have a disproportionately significant impact. 

“We have a quite large number of small projects,” Elke Selter, ALIPH’s director of programs, told Arab News in an interview last year. 

“A lot of these are acute emergencies, when you actually can’t spend large amounts of money and just need to pay for an evacuation, for boxes to move objects, for tarpaulins to cover a hole in a roof, or for wooden panels to put in front of broken windows.” 

One such project was symbolized by an extraordinary photograph taken in Gaza last April. It showed two men stepping carefully through the rubble-strewn streets of Khan Younis, carrying a priceless Roman-era pottery jar. 

The men were members of the Heritage Guardians Team from the Khan Younis-based Mayasem Association for Culture and Arts, which was evacuating thousands of artefacts from Al-Qarara Museum, severely damaged by Israeli bombardments. 

Emergency funding provided by ALIPH paid for the artefacts to be stored in a safe, secret place, in the hope that one day they can be returned to a restored museum. 

“It’s very difficult to identify the project I prefer most, but I’m very proud of what we have done in Mosul,” said Freland, who has visited the city regularly since becoming ALIPH’s executive director in 2018. 

“Working with local or international NGOs we have been able to restore beautiful churches and mosques, and for a very reasonable cost. 

“I am also very proud of what we are doing now in Syria, where we are very committed and working hard on the restoration of the Museum of Palmyra. These are flagship projects that are very key for ALIPH, as we were created because of what happened in Palmyra and Mosul.” 

But none of ALIPH’s work in either country, he added, would have been possible without the local collaborators 

“Our work is about more than only buildings. We always have in mind the people behind the stones. I have seen people cry with emotion when, for instance, they see a damaged mosque that has been rebuilt. 

“And that, for me, is so moving, and so rewarding.”