ABSTRACT
The Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and its dissolution two years later in 1991 opened a power vacuum across the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region that was filled by a tangled mess of international, proxy and civil wars still continuing in 2015. This chapter shows how from 1990 to 2015 international public policy aimed at cultural property protection (CPP) proved inadequate because of its primary reliance on protecting cultural property from theft and looting at source, and its corresponding lack of any measures aimed at preventing theft and looting by reducing demand on the destination market. It looks at how the principles of CPP developed through international law and its implementations, and examines how CPP also became subject to policy measures aimed at crime control and maintaining international security, producing an operational convergence that strengthened strategies and actions aimed at in situ protection.
