From Marco Porcio Catone to Khaled al-Asaad. via Voltaire. Strategies and necessary response to antagonists' actions

Marco Porcio Catone, Khaled al-Asaad, Voltaire: three characters who lived in different historical eras, having dissimilar value and stature, will be the leading thread of this work. Some aspects of their lives, of their deaths and/or the quotes credited to them, remind in fact the issues, reactions and challenges we are all called to face in trying to preserve, defend and keep safe the Cultural Heritage during armed conflicts. If it's famous Porcio Catone's quote (assigned to him by Plutarch): Carthago delenda est (1) - which some of the antagonist subjects would today apply to anything they judge as an "object of idolatry", including "historical documents" and, as a consequence, to the cultures which credit importance and purport to History and its artifacts - Khaled al-Asaad's public murder stands for one of the cruel acts of such an ideology, that was committed, what's more, in the amazing setting of Palmira - gradually destroyed. This could lead us, or maybe the intent is to drive us, to deny, as a counter-reaction, any chance of making effective, despite the difficult situation, the principles of liberality, democracy and debate ... as stated in the quote ascribed to Voltaire: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, thus leading us to a dangerous, extremist response to the antagonist fundamentalism. Carthage wasn't destroyed by Porcio Catone, but by Scipio's soldiers when the war was already over. It is said that, after he saved a few artworks, Scipio let the city to be plundered. Carthage was razed and set ablaze, the walls were torn down, the harbor demolished and finally salt was spread all over the soil to prevent anything from growing in the future. Such themes - firstly depredation, then plunder (and selling) - are contemporary more than ever. Usually media tend to charge Al Quaeda, Isis, Daesh with the last three aspects (depredation, plunder and selling), but they forget, in considering Iraq, that these dramatically started soon after the first Gulf War, and that in the southern part of the country - mainly Shiite - the excavations became far from clandestine since whole villages participated in such activities in order to survive the war and its economic consequences (2). A few years later the flourishing black market of art pieces made a "breakthrough" by joining the traffics in weapons and drugs (3). Its danger - beyond all the scientific risks - lies in the fact that the link with serious criminality is mainly ruled by economic logic. The destruction of artworks seen as idols is, instead, tied to the ideology allowing their exploitation, for money, in the black market. Highlighting such difference it's not secondary while trying to design and conceive safety measures (forms and structures) which, in order to be forceful, have to involve, in my opinion, the whole civil society. Such a structure also has to be based on dialectical, critical thinking - nor unique nor fundamentalist - being it able not only to contrast with the extremist one - unique and fundamentalist - but has to be supported by the whole civil society: this representing the harder challenge. In this regard, it's important to take into account the three destabilizing aspects reminded by Jason Burke (4), expert in Jihadist terrorism, which are parts of Abu Bakr al-Naji's Islamist strategy: "Aim at economy", "polarize", "unleash the chaos". Abu Bakr al-Naji in the clandestine handbook Management of Savagery (5) asks militants to extend their attacks in order to drain enemy's resources or to point «directly at economy», because this will lead to «economic weakness» and will determine the lack of those «frivolous pleasures these societies are greedy for», this instigating, as a consequence, «a competi