Best context on the Baghdad looting

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Paul Saffo <psaffo () iftf org>
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2003 07:41:20 -0700
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Best context on the Baghdad looting

Dave-
This is far and away the best article on the looting and the US failure to
stop it. I urge you to share it on IP.  My forecaster's instinct tells me
that this failure will cost our country dearly in the decades to come, and I
expect that one day our descendants will be held to account for this crime
against civilization.
-p


---------------------------
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/04/17/antiquities/index.html

The end of civilization
The sacking of Iraq's museums is like a "lobotomy" of an entire culture, say
art experts. And they warned the Pentagon repeatedly of this potential
catastrophe months before the war.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Louise Witt


April 17, 2003  |  On Jan. 24 at the Pentagon, a small group of accomplished
archeologists and art curators met with Joseph Collins, who reports directly
to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and four other Pentagon
officials to talk about how the U.S. military could protect Iraq's cultural
and archeological sites from damage and destruction during the impending war
in that country. McGuire Gibson, a professor at the Oriental Institute at
the University of Chicago, gave the officials a list of 5,000 cultural and
archeological sites. First on the list: the National
Museum of Iraq in Baghdad.

Gibson recalls he talked to the group about the importance of safeguarding
the museum from bomb damage -- and from looting after the military conflict
ended. "I pointed to the museum's location on a map of Baghdad and said:
'It's right here,'" he recalled in an interview. "I asked them to make
assurances that they'd make efforts to prevent looting and they said they
would. I thought we had assurances, but they didn't pan out."

On April 10, a day after Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed and Baghdad was
in the hands of U.S. military forces, the National Museum of Iraq was
ransacked. In a matter of hours, thousands of Iraqis, some thought to be
working for art dealers, clambered into the museum that had been closed to
the public for years. After two days of looting, almost all of the museum's
170,000 artifacts were either stolen or damaged. Ancient vases were smashed.
Statues were beheaded. In the museum's collection were items from Ur and
Uruk, the first city-states, settled around 4000 B.C., including art,
jewelry and clay tablets containing cuneiform, considered to be the first
examples of writing. The museum also housed giant alabaster and limestone
carvings taken from palaces of ancient kings.

"It's catastrophic," says Gibson, who is also head of the American
Association for Research in Baghdad, a consortium of about 30 U.S. museums
and universities. "It's a lot like a lobotomy. The deep memory of an entire
culture, a culture that has continued for thousands of years, has been
removed. There was 5,000 years of written records, even Egyptian records
don't go back that far. It's an incredible crime."

In the aftermath of a looting spree that stripped museums in Baghdad and
Mosul, left the National Library a smoldering ruin and turned thousands of
ancient Qurans at the Ministry for Religious Affairs to ashes,
archaeologists and museum curators from around the world are racing today to
assess the damage and, where possible, to recover what has not been
destroyed. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) has called an emergency meeting Thursday in Paris to
review the disaster. Even the U.S. government has pledged
an aggressive effort to help recover Iraq's stolen historical treasures.

Gibson, who will attend the UNESCO meeting, and other experts in archaeology
and ancient art are hardly mollified by that pledge. In a series of
interviews with Salon, they offered a detailed account of warnings given to
U.S. war planners beginning last fall, and continuing up to the days before
the war -- warnings which were all but ignored.

"It's extraordinary," says Joan Aruz, curator in charge of the Department of
Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "It's of the
utmost significance, not only for the cultural heritage of Iraq, but also
for the rest of the world. The museum contained the greatest work of art
created in the first cities. The loss is just outstanding. I haven't gotten
over the shock." 

Aruz, who's in charge of the Met's upcoming exhibition about ancient Iraq,
says one of her favorite pieces in the museum's collection is a figure of a
man with a beard referred to as "The Priest King." Another is a carved face
of a sensitive-looking young woman. The combined value of the artifacts
could be in the billions of dollars.

Some archeological and art experts think that the sack of Baghdad may be a
result of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's decision not commit more
ground forces. Instead, he opted for a "rolling start" invasion where troops
would be deployed to Iraq as needed. Other generals, including Gen. Eric K.
Shinseki, the Army's chief of staff, criticized Rumsfeld's decision. One
unnamed general even called it a "war on the cheap."

The U.S. and Britain deployed almost 300,000 troops to the Persian Gulf
region. In contrast, during the Operation Desert Storm in 1991, allied
forces numbered closer to 500,000. "Now, we're seeing the consequences of
that decision," says Scott Silliman, who was the senior attorney for the
U.S. Air Force's Tactical Air Command during the first Gulf War. Silliman
worked with archeologists at that time to make sure the Air Force took
precautions not to destroy or harm Iraq's cultural and ancient sites.

Coalition forces are trying to restore civil order in Baghdad, a city of 4.5
million, and the looting has almost ended. However, the pandemonium and
destruction that occurred have cost the Bush administration credibility and
trust in Iraq and across the Arab world. Silliman, who's now a law professor
at Duke University and executive director of the Center for Law, Ethics and
National Security, says the coalition forces may have violated the Fourth
Geneva Convention, which calls for an occupying force to protect cultural
property. Even if the coalition forces didn't intentionally breach the
Geneva Conventions, he says, "the effect [of the looting] will be more in
world opinion, than in legal sanctions."

After the first reports of looting at Iraq's museums -- and the first
questions were raised about the failure of U.S. forces to intervene --
Rumsfeld's initial comments signaled that the U.S. didn't think that
protection of antiquities and art was a priority. At a news conference last
Friday, he blamed press coverage for inflating the problem. "The images you
are seeing on television you are seeing over and over and over," he said,
"and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with
a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, 'My goodness, were
there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the
whole country?'" 

That outraged archaeologists, historians and others around the world. Jane
Waldbaum is president of the Archaeological Institute of America, a group
based in Milwaukee with a membership of 9,000 amateur and professional
archeologists in the U.S. and Canada; after meeting with officials in the
State Department in March to discuss protecting Iraq's antiquities, she was
outraged first by the unchecked looting and then by Rumsfeld's response.
"Donald Rumsfeld in his speech basically shrugged and said, 'Boys will be
boys. What's a little looting?'" she said. "Freedom is messy, but freedom
doesn't mean you have the freedom to commit crimes. This loss is almost
immeasurable." 

In the past few days, the U.S. Central Command in Qatar has tried softening
Rumsfeld's off-the-cuff remarks. "I don't think anyone anticipated the
riches of Iraq would be looted by the Iraqi people," Brig. Gen. Vincent
Brooks said Tuesday. In fact, however, the Pentagon, the State Department
and the White House had been warned repeatedly, for months.

On Oct. 15, Ashton Hawkins, president of the American Council for Cultural
Policy, a not-for-profit group formed to promote issues relating to art
collecting, sent a letter to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asking what steps the government
and the military were taking to secure Iraq's antiquities. Copies of the
letter were also sent to various officials in the National Security Council,
the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies.

Hawkins, a former general counsel at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art,
received no response.

Then in November, Hawkins and Maxwell L. Anderson, president of the American
Association of Museum Art Directors and director of the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York, wrote an Op-Ed for the Washington Post. In the
piece published Nov. 29, they reiterated the points made in the earlier
letter and said that the U.S. government and the military should
prepare plans to protect Iraq's cultural and archeological sites.

"In the event of hostilities," they wrote, "we urge that steps be taken to
protect Iraq's heritage, in which we have a shared interest. Our military
and civilian leaderships should be aware of the location of Iraq's most
significant cultural and religious sites and monuments. To this end, we urge
the administration to consider the creation now (and not later) of a
planning mechanism specifically charged with ensuring that Iraq's material
culture is protected.

"At the conclusion of hostilities, should they occur, the United States and
its coalition partners will become heirs to responsibilities that include,
in addition to the welfare of Iraq's people, the task of protecting Iraq's
holy cities and ancient sites. Measures should be taken to ensure absolute
respect for the integrity of Iraq's sites and monuments, and to prevent
looting of any kind. In addition the coalition should encourage a new Iraqi
civil administration to move quickly to establish security for its own
monuments, sites and museums and support the reconstitution of
Iraq's antiquities service.

"We should not allow our primary objectives in this region to overshadow our
cultural responsibilities. Ultimately we may well be judged by how we behave
toward Iraq's patrimony in the course of any military action and occupation
we may undertake." 

Again, no response from the White House, the Pentagon or the State
Department. Finally, Collins, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for
special operations/low intensity conflict, contacted Hawkins in the first
week of January and said he'd like to meet with him and whoever else he
thought would be helpful in coming up with a plan to protect Iraq's
archeological heritage. Originally scheduled for mid-January, the meeting
was postponed until Jan. 24. Those present at the meeting included Hawkins,
Anderson, Gibson, Arthur Houghton, vice president of the American Council
for Cultural Policy and a former curator at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles,
and, on the government's side, Collins and four other Pentagon officials.

The meeting was informal. Collins did not return calls seeking comment, but
others who attended remember him saying that the Pentagon wanted to expand
its list of archeological sites. The Defense Department had a list of 150
sites compiled during the 1991 Gulf War. Gibson said he could provide the
Pentagon with thousands and thousands of other sites worth protecting. The
question was raised about what would be done to make sure that coalition
forces protect and safeguard property. Collins reassured the group that he
would issue an order making sure that the troops knew how to behave.

Everyone left the meeting satisfied that the Pentagon recognized the
importance of safeguarding and protecting Iraq's sites. In subsequent
communications with the Pentagon, Gibson stressed that after Saddam's regime
collapsed, the coalition would have to quickly deploy Special Forces troops
to secure cultural and archeological sites to prevent them from being
ransacked and damaged by looters. "I really hoped that the U.S. military
would take the National Museum of Iraq and protect it," he says. "I was
naive. I guess we were talking too far down the line of command."

In mid-March, just days before Anglo-American forces entered Baghdad, an
expanded group met with Ryan Crocker, deputy assistant secretary of the
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Waldbaum attended the meeting, as did Bonnie
Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund, a private, nonprofit
architectural and art preservation organization in New York. The fund
designated two sites in Iraq for protection: the Nineveh and Nimrud Palaces
near Mosul, portions of which are more than 2,700 years old, and the Arbil
Citadel, built 8,000 years ago.

Crocker did not return calls seeking comment, but according to others at the
meeting, he pledged that the State Department would set up a working group
to focus on protecting Iraq's cultural and archaeological sites. He asked
the people at the meeting to provide names of Iraqis who could participate
in the working group once the coalition forces had secured Iraq. But it was
too late. The war's progress overtook the State Department's efforts, and
when Saddam's government in Baghdad collapsed on April 9, mayhem ensued.

Archeologists and art curators think that some of the looting was organized
by a conspiracy of antiquity dealers and smugglers. Proof of that is that
the heavy metal doors on the storage room at the National Museum of Iraq
weren't broken down, indicating that it was opened with a key. Also, the
card catalog listing the thousands and thousands of items in the museum was
destroyed. There is a duplicate somewhere, but the destruction of the one of
the catalogs shows that there was an effort to cover up what was going on.
In fact, there have been reports that artifacts that were in the museum have
already shown up in antiquity markets in Teheran and Paris.

"In warfare, there are priorities," Gibson says. "There are not enough
troops necessary to do everything that needed to be done. But we have a
responsibility under various rules in warfare to preserve the cultural
patrimony of a country."

As worldwide outrage grew over the plundering of Iraq's great cultural and
archeological sites, the U.S. responded. On Monday, Powell made a statement
that anyone caught dealing or possessing stolen antiquities may be
prosecuted under Iraqi law and the United States National Stolen Property
Act. He also said that Central Command issued orders to all troops in Iraq
to protect museums and antiquities throughout the country.

Powell said U.S. radio broadcasts are encouraging Iraqis to return any items
taken. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs will help
Iraqis and international experts in their efforts to restore artifacts and
the catalogs of antiquities that were damaged by looters. A senior advisor
in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs, Ambassador John
Limbert, will take the lead in this effort. Powell also said the U.S. is
working through Interpol to help locate stolen items and return them to Iraq
before they make it into international crime channels. And he said the U.S.
has been in touch with the UNESCO to form a plan to safeguard Iraq's
antiquities. 

Some of the antiquities stolen will probably be stashed away in private
collections for years and years. And many of the pieces that were damaged
are beyond repair. Archeological groups and art curators want to prevent the
stolen artifacts from leaving the country. Once they're in other countries,
it will be that much harder to retrieve them. To encourage Iraqis to return
stolen art and artifacts, they are pushing for the U.S. government to set up
an amnesty program and a reward system.

That's the model favored by Stuart E. Eizenstat, former deputy treasury
secretary and a member of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust
Assets in the United States. "The money would be well spent in winning the
goodwill of the Iraqi people," he said in an interview. It's important that
as much of the art and antiquities be recovered before they are transported
out of Iraq. "Once it's out of the country, it would pass through multiple
hands. What I found out [when working to recover art stolen by the Nazis]
was that the art world is a secretive world. As a dealer, you rely on
information from your immediate sellers and you don't ask questions."

Waldbaum, with the Archeological Institute of America, says she's talking to
different groups and individuals about setting up a Web site that could be a
repository for images and descriptions of all the artifacts that were in the
museum. That way if they make it to the market, dealers and museum curators
will be better able to determine if they were stolen from the Iraqi National
Museum. But this will take much time.

Meanwhile, some of the looted artifacts inevitably will find their way
through discreet channels to buyers. Among those, experts fear, many will
never be recovered.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Louise Witt is a writer who lives in Hoboken, N.J.


------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/