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Looting is the act of stealing, or the taking of goods by force, typically in the midst of a military, political, or other social crisis, such as war, (where law and civil enforcement are temporarily ineffective), or . The proceeds of all these activities can be described as booty, loot, plunder, spoils, or pillage.
Looting by a victorious army during war has been a common practice throughout recorded history. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and particularly after World War II, norms against wartime plunder became widely accepted. In modern , looting is prohibited by international law, and constitutes a war crime. Rule 52. Pillage is prohibited., Customary IHL Database, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)/Cambridge University Press.Hague Convention on the Law and Customs of War on Land (Hague II), article 28.
In the upper ranks, the proud exhibition of the loot plundered formed an integral part of the typical Roman triumph, and Genghis Khan was not unusual in proclaiming that the greatest happiness was "to vanquish your enemies ... to rob them of their wealth".Henry Hoyle Howorth (2008). History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century. Part 1: The Mongols Proper and the Kalmyks. Cosimo.
In ancient times, looting was sometimes prohibited due to religious concerns. For example, King Clovis I of the Franks, forbade his soldiers to loot when they campaigned near St Martin's shrine in Tours, for fear of offending the saint.Gregory of Tours. A History of the Franks. Pantianos classics, 1916
In warfare in ancient times, the spoils of war included the defeated populations, which were often Slavery. Women and children might become absorbed into the victorious country's population, as , and slaves.John K. Thorton (1996). "African Background in American Colonization". In Stanley L. Engerman, Robert E. Gallman (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Cambridge University Press, 1996, , p. 87. "African states waged war to acquire slaves ... raids that appear to have been more concerned with obtaining loot (including slaves) than other objectives."John Bagot Glubb, The Empire of the Arabs, Hodder and Stoughton, 1963, p. 283. "... thousand Christian captives formed part of the loot and were subsequently sold as slaves in the markets of Syria". In other pre-modern societies, objects made of precious metals were the preferred target of war looting, largely because of their ease of portability. In many cases, looting offered an opportunity to obtain Looted art that otherwise would not have been obtainable. Beginning in the early modern period and reaching its peak in the New Imperialism era, European colonial powers frequently looted areas they captured during military campaigns against non-European states. In the 1930s, and even more so during the Second World War, Nazi Germany engaged in large-scale and organized Nazi plunder, particularly in Nazi-occupied Poland.J. R. Kudelski (2004), Tajemnice nazistowskiej grabieży polskich zbiorów sztuki, Warsaw . Soviet Union Soviet plunder. On the smaller level, looting was done by other Allied forces too.
Looting, combined with poor Military justice, has occasionally been an army's downfall since troops who have dispersed to ransack an area may become vulnerable to counter-attack, a good example being during the 1967 First Invasion of Onitsha, where the victorious Nigerian Army were encircled and annihilated while looting. In other cases, for example, the Wahhabi sack of Karbala in 1801 or 1802, loot has contributed to further victories for an army.Wayne H. Bowen (2008), The History of Saudi Arabia, Greenwood, p. 73. Not all looters in wartime are conquerors; the looting of Vistula Land by the retreating Imperial Russian Army in 1915 Andrzej Garlicki (1986), Z dziejów Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej, Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, , p. 147 was among the factors sapping the loyalty of Poles to Russia. Local civilians can also take advantage of a breakdown of order to loot public and private property, as took place at the Iraq Museum in the course of the Iraq War in 2003.Myers, Steven Lee (February 23, 2009), "Iraq Museum Reopens Six Years After Looting", The New York Times. Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace describes widespread looting by Moscow's citizens before Napoleon's troops entered the city in 1812, along with looting by French troops elsewhere.
In 1990 and 1991, during the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's soldiers caused significant damage to both Kuwaiti and Saudi infrastructure. They also stole from private companies and homes. In April 2003, looters broke into the National Museum of Iraq, and thousands of artefacts remain missing.
Syrian conservation sites and museums were looted during the Syrian Civil War, with items being sold on the international black market. Reports from 2012 suggested that the antiquities were being traded for weapons by the various combatants.
The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 explicitly prohibits the looting of civilian property during wartime.E. Lauterpacht, C. J. Greenwood, Marc Weller (1991), The Kuwait Crisis: Basic Documents, Cambridge University Press, p. 154.
Theoretically, to prevent such looting, unclaimed property is moved to the custody of the Custodian of Enemy Property, to be handled until returned to its owners.
In the case of a sudden change in a country or region's government, it can be difficult to determine what constitutes looting as opposed to a new government taking custody of the property in question. This can be especially difficult if the new government is only partially recognized at the time the property is moved, as was the case during the 2021 Taliban offensive, during which a number of artifacts and a large amount of property of former government officials who had fled the country fell into the hands of the Taliban before they were recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan by other countries. Further looting and burning of civilian homes and villages has been defended by the Taliban as within their right as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
Looting can also be common in cases where Civil disorder is contained largely within the borders of a country or during peacetime. Riots in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests in numerous American cities led to increased amounts of looting, as looters took advantage of the delicate political situation and civil unrest surrounding the riots themselves. Up to 175 Target stores closed Nationwide during the disturbances.
During the ongoing Kashmir conflict, looting of Kashmiris trapped between the and militarized zones is common and widespread.
In 2022, international observers accused Russia of engaging in large scale looting during the Russo-Ukrainian War, reporting the widespread looting of everything from food to industrial equipment. Despite the publication of numerous photos and videos by Ukrainian journalists and civilians, numerous Russian commanders have denied these claims. International observers have theorized that this looting is either the result of direct orders, despite to Russia's claims to the contrary, or due to Russian soldiers not being issued with adequate food and other resources by their commanders. On 18 November 2022, the University of Miami estimated that Russian forces in Ukraine had destroyed, pillaged, and looted at least 40 museums in Ukraine.
Many factories in the rebels' zone of Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War were reported as being plundered and their assets transferred abroad. Agricultural products and electronic power plants were also seized, to be sold elsewhere.
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