Illegal excavation and export of archeological treasures does not just happen in Balkh – It takes place everywhere in Afghanistan. “The country is one big museum,” says Afghanistan’s minister of information and culture, Sayed Raheen. Afghanistan has always been at the center of trade between Europe and Asia and today, there’s hardly a place where no valuable antiquities can be found. This has had its negative consequences however: it attracted unwanted attention from international art-thieves who, often in cooperation with local Afghan warlords or officials, started to rob the country of its history.

In some places, the result has been disastrous. Ai Khanoum, the site of an ancient Greek city in northeastern Afghanistan, has been completely robbed empty: “It has been finished by looters,” says Ana Rodriguez of the Society for the Preservation of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage, an NGO. It is now feared places like Balkh might go the same way – and in the absence of government funds there’s little that can be done to prevent this.

Although practically all provinces in the country suffer looting, the provinces that are most affected by it at the moment are Logar, Kapisa, Takhar and Balkh. The latter two are in the north; the former two close to Kabul. But even here the government is unable to prevent any looting, carried out by “warlords and national and international mafias,” according to Raheen.

And the criminals make good money. According to some reports, smuggling archeological artifacts could be about as profitable as smuggling drugs in Afghanistan. A former head of UNESCO (the UN’s culture agency) in Afghanistan put the worth of the “antiquities industry” at $32bn. But according to a foreign expert working in Afghanistan, this is a ridiculously high amount and the present UNESCO consultant for culture in Kabul, Masanori Nagaoka, is more sober and does not want to give any figures “because we don’t [even] exactly know how much has been stolen.”

The culture minister receives many reports every week detailing specific cases of looting. But not only is he unable to do anything about them – the people who brought them the reports are often beaten or arrested by the local strongman they denounced when they get back home from the capital. The minister therefore doubts whether UNESCO’s awareness campaign – telling people they shouldn’t steal artifacts and that they should inform the authorities when this happens – can be successful. Not because the people are dishonest, but because practice shows the government is unable to protect them from the denounced warlords.

It’s not just warlords that are involved, though. According to international experts and Afghan officials, these days the illegal trade in Afghan artifacts goes more or less as follows: local people dig at sites for a fixed salary on the orders of a local strongman – perhaps a warlord, or perhaps some other official. The foreign expert believes that many local officials have “gone over” to the smugglers. “More money is to be made by assisting the stealing than by protecting the sites,” he says.

And what is found is then bought up and collected by smugglers – reportedly often Pakistani – with international connections who bring it into the art market. Most of it is first smuggled into Pakistan via the lawless tribal areas before it goes abroad. And much, according to the foreign expert, might end up in the hands of the rich readers of glossy art magazines that not seldom denounce such illegal dealings.

What seems to be necessary, then, is strong power – not an awareness campaign. The culture ministry has tried to establish a 500-men police force to guard some of the most important archeological sites but again, a lack of money is causing problems. Raheen acknowledges that even salaries are inadequate. And the foreign expert believes that the unit “does not work.” It certainly does not scare the smugglers. Last year, four of its members were found murdered at the site they were protecting.

The only safe place for archeological treasuries in Afghanistan today is Kabul, where the government really is in charge. The archeological museum in town has been reopened just over a month ago. However, the museum had to incur losses earlier, during the civil war in the 1990s, when the building was often frontline territory. “We’ve lost a lot,” says Mr Masoudi, the director of the museum, who has been working there for 27 years. “Sometimes [the looters] took simple things and left what was valuable,” he says. Usually, however, “they knew what was precious” – and took it. In the end, 70 percent of the museum’s collection went missing. It looks like this is exactly what might happen to archeological treasures countrywide, as it is difficult to attract international attention to the issue.