Countering

Laurie W. Rush
chose to focus on the area of the church where they successfully recovered sacred objects
including nearly intact statues of three saints, hidden in the rubble. They returned these
objects to the village priest, who was able to gather the traumatized members of the
community together for the Holy Eucharist.
As the priest later described the ceremony, it became clear that this gesture was the
first sign of hope that the survivors might also recover, not just as individuals but also as
a community. As a young officer, BG Furstenhofer took this lesson home to Vienna and
formed the Austrian Society for the Protection of Cultural Property. The membership
of this organization is largely composed of military officers, and their influence over
military education and planning for operations is clear. In addition, the Austrian
military offers a specific Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) for individuals to serve as
Cultural Property Officers, and one of these officers also serves as a faculty member at
the Austrian Defence Academy.
The success and reputation of the Austrian Military Cultural Property protection
program is well known within the cultural property protection community. UNESCO
and other international organizations call upon the Austrians to offer cultural property
protection training to representatives of other Ministries of Defence from all over the
world. The courses include detailed discussions on the Austrian and international
legal requirements governing behaviour of Austrian military personnel with respect to
cultural property, with a particular focus on how to identify cultural property in cross
cultural contexts, practical methods for protecting cultural property during military
occupation – especially when the mission includes protection of historic structures,
sacred places, and archaeological sites. In addition, the course provides practical methods
to protect, secure, and, if necessary, evacuate cultural property collections as well as the
strategic and tactical implications of cultural property protection for mission success.
The Austrians have also developed an actual military exercise that challenges the
participants to minimize damage to the Theresian Military Academy located in the castle
of Wiener Neustadt when it must be recovered from insurgent by friendly forces. The
Austrian teaching methods include lectures, field trips, field exercises, and workshops.
The Netherlands and Germany
Like the Austrians, the Netherlands offers an MOS for cultural property protection
by mobilizing reserve officers with special expertise. Netherlands cultural property
officers responded to monasteries in Macedonia where frescoes had been vandalized
and deployed with peace keeping forces to the conflict in Mali. In 2003, LTC Joris Kila,
a reservist with the Netherlands, in cooperation with US personnel, delivered funds to
Sheik Altubi and his family from the German Institute of Archaeology. The aim was to
provide financial support for continued site protection for the ancient city of Warka or
Uruk. This accomplishment prevented the looting of the site and contributed to stabilize
the local area. LTC Kila also played an important role in introducing US personnel to
Dr Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities,
in order to organize on site archaeological training opportunities for US and coalition
personnel at Saqqara, El Alamein as well as the Citadel of Cairo as part of the Bright
Star War Games in Egypt, in 2009. This training event was the first onsite training for
Western military personnel in the Middle East since Sir Leonard Woolley instructed
British troops in Cyrenaica prior to the World War II Italian Campaign.
The Netherlands and Germany co-host the Centre of Excellence for Civil Military
Cooperation (or CCEO CIMIC), now located just outside of the Hague. Traditionally,
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