illicit antiquities trading in economic crisis, organised crime and political violence
Molly Blackall @mollyblackall and the Guardian Community @Gdntakepart are appealing for people to help us locate Benin bronze statues in the UK, which are products of the British Empire’s 1897 punitive expedition to (invasion, massacre, devastation and plunder of) the Benin Kingdom (where is now Nigeria). Information can be supplied in encrypted forms, either on the same page as the article or on another.
More and less information has emerged in relation to the murder of excavation workers Anas Ibrahim and Adamu Abdulrahim and kidnapping of professor Peter Breunig and student Johannes Behringer. According to the Associated Press (AP) report, ‘Nigerian security forces… freed’ Breunig and Behringer.
The unfortunately phrased report observed that Kaduna State Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai ‘commended the security agencies for their efforts in securing the release of the Germans’, though he did ‘not say whether anyone had been arrested for the kidnapping[s]’… or for the murders? (However, it was written by a journalist in Kaduna. Presumably, he used “kidnapping” to refer to the entirety of the event, including the murders.)
Police have relayed that the two German archaeologists who were kidnapped for ransom, professor Peter Breunig and student Johannes Behringer, have been freed. ‘No ransom was paid when they were freed’, according to the police (paraphrased by Reuters, which I learned via Paul Barford); though, equally, no details were given. Presumably, the police are still in pursuit of the murderers of the attempted rescuers, excavation workers Anas Ibrahim and Adamu Abdulrahim. Events took place around Janjala/Janjela/Jenjela village, Kadarko/Kagargo/Kagarko area (near the road between Kaduna airport and Abuja city), southern Kaduna state, north-western Nigeria.
Unfortunately, there has not been any more news on rescue efforts yet. However, I have found more reports with more details, so I have updated my post. Most importantly, I thought that the killed hunters had been security escorts, but other reports have shown that they were excavation workers. So, it is the case that five still-unknown gunmen (two with machetes, three with ‘heavy guns’) have killed two excavation workers, kidnapped two archaeologists in Nigeria. Most of the new information comes from interviews of Sani Aliyu and Usman Kagarko by Premium Times.
Around 8.55am on Wednesday morning, abductors with ‘guns and machetes’ kidnapped two archaeologists in Janjala/Janjela/Jenjela village, Kadarko/Kagargo/Kagarko area (near the road between Kaduna airport and Abuja city), southern Kaduna state, north-western Nigeria. Tragically, according to the Archaeological Association of Nigeria, local hunters and excavation workers Anas Ibrahim and Adamu Abdulrahim, ‘who intervened to abort the kidnap’, were shot and killed; the identities of the killed were also given by attempted rescuer Usman Kagarko.
Maiduguri is a city of two million plus people – the capital city of Borno state in north-eastern Nigeria. It was the birthplace of Boko Haram (Western Education is Forbidden), an Islamist group who have long been committing terrorist attacks and annexing territory (including in Adamawa state), who have recently established a caliphate.(1)
More than 650,000 people are enduring internal displacement to escape the brutal campaigns of insurgency and counter-insurgency – ‘tens of thousands‘ of those had retreated to Maiduguri. But now, according to the Borno Elders Forum (BEF), it is ‘completely surrounded’ by Boko Haram. They have closed ‘almost all the roads’ out of city. The BEF fears ‘the total annihilation of the inhabitants of Borno’.
Having looked at some of the harms that are caused by illicit business, and some of the evidence for the structure of the illicit oil trade in Nigeria, now I want to look at how the illicit antiquities trade could function in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, oil is siphoned off from every conceivable store and conduit, then most of it is loaded onto barges, carried to sea tankers, and transported to Western markets; most of the income is laundered through Western banks, businesses and investments. Many of the thieves use specialised, heavy equipment and ‘steal tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil’ at a time. Sometimes, it happens within earshot and eyeline of the Nigerian armed forces but, still, ‘no one knows – or will say – what really happened’…
Partly to help me (publicly) archive material from before my @conflictantiq Twitter feed on looting and destruction of cultural and community property, partly to help me clarify (for myself) what I want to document on it, I’ve copied-and-pasted(-and-hyperlinked) the (immediately or otherwise) relevant material from my @samarkeolog Twitter feed (primarily on professional, Balkan and Mediterranean matters).
It was a huge time sink; but I am utterly dedicated to uneconomic(al) activity.
@samarkeolog tweets on the illicit antiquities trade in West Africa – Mali and Nigeria – are here.
Yesterday, a Nigerian newspaper, Vanguard, published Antiquities Trade in Nigeria: Looting in the Midst of Crisis, which was a partial reprint of my review of the Nigerian antiquities trade. (While I’m very happy that they did that, they did it without my knowledge; and they haven’t yet replied to my tweet or my e-mail; so I don’t know why they only published part of it, if they will publish the rest of it, etc.)
conflict antiquities 