"This
is the argument I've heard from U.S. curators and archaeologists, but
what about internationally? Everybody knows that most of the artifacts
are in Japan, Pakistan, London..."
"Well,
it is believed that the Begram ivories are now in New York, but Japan
for example is impossible. They spent years looting Korea, China, Manchuria
and so forth. They know they are filled with looted artifacts, but they
won't do anything about it. Chubai and Mehria Mustamandy spent years working
with international legislation, but it was never that simple."
"What
about UNESCO? I was under the understanding that UNESCO specializes in
the international arbitration of looted goods, but when I spoke with the
Afghan specialists, I was shocked to hear that they were only willing
to accept donor artifacts for housing at the Swiss Museum and they were
completely uninterested in prosecution," I said.
"UNESCO
is hopeless," Kamansky said. "The problem is that most of the
artifacts are in places like Pakistan. These aren't art dealers, they are
middlemen. They pay large sums of money to Afghan individuals who will loot
a site and sell to them."
"Ahmed
Shah Massoud was under direct control of the Bactrian gold coins. Did he
sell them for arms?" I asked.
"Massoud
had the Tela-tappa coins. We believe they are in Russia today, sold for
arms. But perhaps they were stolen by the Taliban when he was murdered.
They certainly have not turned up on the world market."
"So
if you have enough levels of middlemen, you can't trace the perpetrators,
right?"
