Pentagon Was Told Of Risk to Museums: U.S. Urged to Save Iraq's Historic
Artifacts

By Guy Gugliotta, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 14, 2003; Page A19

In the months leading up to the Iraq war, U.S. scholars repeatedly urged
the Defense Department to protect Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage
from looters, and warned specifically that the National Museum of
Antiquities was the single most important site in the country.

Late in January, a mix of scholars, museum directors, art collectors and
antiquities dealers asked for and were granted a meeting at the Pentagon to
discuss their misgivings. McGuire Gibson, an Iraq specialist at the
University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, said yesterday that he went
back twice more, and he and colleagues peppered Defense Department
officials with e-mail reminders in the weeks before the war began.

"I thought I was given assurances that sites and museums would be
protected," Gibson said. Instead, even with U.S. forces firmly in control
of Baghdad last week, looters breached the museum, trashed its galleries,
burned its records, invaded its vaults and smashed or carried off thousands
of artifacts dating from the founding of ancient Sumer around 3,500 B.C. to
the end of Islam's Abbasid Caliphate in 1258 A.D.

Asked yesterday about the looting of the museum, Defense Secretary Donald
H. Rumsfeld blamed the chaos that ensues "when you go from a dictatorship"
to a new order. "We didn't allow it. It happened," Rumsfeld said Sunday on
NBC's "Meet the Press." "There's a transition period, and no one is in
control. There is still fighting in Baghdad. We don't allow bad things to
happen. Bad things happen in life, and people do loot."

Although the National Museum may have been the biggest prize, Iraq also has
13 regional museums at risk, including another world-renowned facility in
the northern city of Mosul, as well as thousands of archaeological sites,
ranging from the fabled ancient cities of Ur, Nineveh, Nimrud and Babylon
to medieval Muslim villages abandoned in the country's vast western
reaches.

"To the extent possible, and as soon as though it were yesterday, someone
needs to post border guards to intercept antiquities as they try to leave
the country," said archaeologist and art historian John Russell, of the
Massachusetts College of Art. "There is a smuggling network in Iraq, and
there could have been professional thieves among the looters."

Scholars first sounded a public alarm about the possible destruction of
Iraqi antiquities in January, when a statement from the Archaeological
Institute of America called on "all governments" to protect cultural sites
during an expected conflict and in its aftermath.

Gibson and others said they were especially concerned because of the
example provided by the 1991 Gulf War. Allied forces had scrupulously
avoided targeting Iraqi cultural sites during the bombing of Baghdad 12
years ago -- one attack put only a shrapnel dent in the National Museum's
front door even as it leveled a telecommunications facility across the
street.

The end of that war kicked off a looting rampage, and eventually allowed
systemic smuggling to develop. Artifacts from inadequately guarded sites
were dug up and hauled away during the 12 years between the wars. "We
wanted to make sure this didn't happen again," Gibson said, and Pentagon
officials agreed.

"They said they would be very aware and would try to protect the
artifacts," Gibson said, recalling January meetings with Pentagon officials
charged with target selection and the protection of cultural sites. "We
told them the looting was the biggest danger, and I felt that they
understood that the National Museum was the most important archaeological
site in the entire country. It has everything from every other site."

Pentagon officials knowledgeable about those meetings referred questions to
the public affairs office, which said the military has tried to protect the
sites.

Indeed, since the 1920s, Iraq has required that anyone digging within its
borders file a report with the museum. In more recent years, expeditions
had to submit all excavated material to the museum for formal cataloguing
after each year's digging "season."

Looters apparently burned or otherwise destroyed most of those records last
week, but Gibson suggested that scholars worldwide could duplicate the
archive by copying their own files and reports and resubmitting them to
Iraqi authorities.

The museum's artifacts, however, are another matter. Although the damage
done is almost certainly catastrophic, Russell said, "it's going to be a
matter of weeks or months before we're going to be able to identify any
particular thing."

The possibilities are almost infinite. Iraq is the home of ancient
Mesopotamia and has a cultural heritage that extends for thousands of years
and encompasses the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians,
Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids and Muslims, to
name only the best-known civilizations.

"There are thousands of unique items," said Boston University archaeologist
Paul Zimansky. "If somebody walks off with those things, we'll never see
them again. It is a disaster of major proportions."

The museum houses the 5,000-year-old alabaster Uruk Vase, which shows a
procession entering a temple -- the earliest known depiction of a ritual.
Also from Uruk is the "White Lady," the stone face of a woman that looks as
if it was carved during the Greek Classic period but is 5,500 years old,
one of the earliest known examples of representational sculpture.

The bust of an Akkadian king, dated 2300 B.C., is the earliest copper
casting ever found. The Neolithic collection, of items about 9,000 years
old, includes small sculptures of birds' heads from Nemrik, north of Mosul.

Russell said the museum staff attempted to pack up all the portable items
on display and stash them in vast below-ground storage rooms and vaults,
but looters found them. The museum also contained a spectacular cache of
gold artifacts from the burial tombs of Assyrian queens in Nimrud.

"They were sent away to the Central Bank, and I told the Pentagon about
those, too," Gibson said. "But I hear they looted the Central Bank as
well."

Zimansky said Iraq's isolation during Hussein's rule meant that a great
deal of material had remained unstudied and uncatalogued for years. An
as-yet unresearched Sippar library of cuneiform clay tablets lay in the
museum's basement and -- if it survived -- may contain the missing pieces
of the Gilgamesh Epic, a heroic tale conceived by the Sumerians and written
and rewritten in Mesopotamia for more than 1,000 years.

"I wasn't there [when the looting took place], and I don't know what the
situation was, but I do know what's at stake," Russell said. "The need for
policing should have been obvious. If it was impossible to do, then I'm
sympathetic; if it wasn't, then I'm really irritated."

=================================


Islamic Library Burned to the Ground
Robert Fisk, The Independent



BAGHDAD, 15 April 2003 — So yesterday was the burning of books. First came
the looters, then came the arsonists. It was the final chapter in the sack
of Baghdad. The National Library and Archives — a priceless treasure of
Ottoman historical documents including the old royal archives of Iraq —
were turned to ashes in 3,000 degrees of heat. Then the Islamic Library of
Qur’ans at the Ministry of Religious Endowment was set ablaze. I saw the
looters.

One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a
boy who could have been no more than 10 years old. Amid the ashes of
hundreds of years of Iraqi history, I found just one file blowing in the
wind outside: Pages and pages of handwritten letters between the court of
Sherif Hussein of Makkah — who started the Arab revolt against the Turks
for Lawrence of Arabia — and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad.

And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters
of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for
Ottoman troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all
of them in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands
the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq’s written history. But for Iraq, this is
Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of
Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then
the Qur’anic library of the ministry, the cultural identity of Iraq is
being erased.

Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being
destroyed? When I caught sight of the Qur’anic library burning — there were
flames 100 feet high bursting from the windows — I raced to the offices of
the occupying power, the US Marines’ civil affairs bureau, to report what I
had seen. An officer shouted to a colleague that “this guy says some
Biblical (sic) library is on fire.” I gave the map location, the precise
name — in Arabic and English — of the fire, I said that the smoke could be
seen from three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive
there. Half an hour later, there wasn’t an American at the scene — and the
flames were now shooting 200 feet into the air.

There was a time when the Arabs said that their books were written in
Cairo, printed in Beirut and read in Baghdad. Now they burn libraries in
Baghdad. In the National Archives were not just the Ottoman records of the
caliphate, but even the dark years of the country’s modern history,
hand-written accounts of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, an entire library of
Western newspapers — bound volumes of the Financial Times were lying on the
pavement — and microfiche copies of Arabic newspapers going back to the
early 1900s.

==========================
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE PRESS NOTICE,
14 April 2003

Powell Warns Against Dealing in Looted Iraqi Antiquities

(Says State Department office will take the lead in restoring damaged
articles) (560)

Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Americans, Iraqis and others
not to retain or attempt to buy and sell objects and documents taken
from Iraq's national museums.

Those items are "the property of the Iraqi nation under Iraqi and
international law," he said.

In a statement released April 14, Powell said the United States would
work with INTERPOL and other international organizations in an effort
to thwart people from dealing in "stolen property."

"Such looting causes irretrievable loss to the understanding of
history and the efforts of Iraqi and international scholars to study
and gain new insight into our past," he said.

The secretary also announced that Ambassador John Limbert and the
State Department's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs
will take the lead in helping Iraqis and international experts to
restore damaged artifacts and catalogs containing lists of antiquities
held in the museums that were looted.

Following is the text of Secretary Powell's Statement regarding Iraq's
antiquities and cultural property:

(begin text)

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
April 14, 2003

Statement by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell

Cooperation for the Safeguarding of Iraqi Antiquities and Cultural
Property

The people of the United States value the archeological and cultural
heritage of Iraq that documents over 10,000 years of the development
of civilization. In recent days, the National Museums in Baghdad and
Mosul have been looted, as well as other cultural institutions and
archeological sites. Such looting causes irretrievable loss to the
understanding of history and the efforts of Iraqi and international
scholars to study and gain new insight into our past.

Objects and documents taken from museums and sites are the property of
the Iraqi nation under Iraqi and international law. They are therefore
stolen property, whether found in Iraq or other nations. Anyone
knowingly possessing or dealing in such objects is committing a crime.
Such individuals may be prosecuted under Iraqi law and under the
United States National Stolen Property Act. The Iraqi people, as well
as members of the Coalition forces and others, are warned not to
handle these artifacts. In particular, Americans are asked not to
purchase or otherwise trade in such objects as they belong to the
nation of Iraq and are stolen property.

In addition to the well-reported efforts made to protect cultural,
religious and historic sites in Iraq, CENTCOM has issued instructions
to all troops inside Iraq to protect museums and antiquities
throughout Iraq. U.S. radio broadcasts throughout Iraq are encouraging
Iraqis to return any items taken and are providing instructions on how
to do so. 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.

We are working through INTERPOL to pursue broader international law
enforcement efforts to help locate these items and return them to Iraq
before they make it into international crime channels.

We have also been in touch with the UN Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) regarding a constructive role they can
play in safeguarding Iraqi antiquities.

(end text)

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

===============================

BOSTON GLOBE, 15 APRIL

Treasure hunt: For antiquities experts, the chase is on to recover the
relics looted from Iraq's National Museum

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff, 4/15/2003


Not long ago, they were digging in the rich soils of the Persian Gulf,
archeologists eager to make new discoveries. Now they are heartbroken and
angry -- but not altogether surprised. Iraq's National Museum of
Antiquities has been plundered. And the scholars who have studied its
one-of-a-kind collection of ancient art are wasting no time.

They have to save as much as they can.

They can't put the sculptures, statues, and coins back on the shelves from
which they were wrested. But they can put together a database of what was
lost in the looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. By gathering as much
detailed information as possible, they hope to render unsellable the
thousands of artifacts stolen from Iraq's largest museum, one of the
region's most important.

The more that is known about the lost pieces, the less likely they will be
able to pass into private hands on the black market, scholars and curators
say.

''The idea is to keep as much as we can within the borders of Iraq, and
then to watch the market, bearing in mind that anything from Iraq that
appears in the near future is going to be stolen,'' said John Malcolm
Russell, an archeologist at the Massachusetts College of Art who has worked
extensively on Iraqi art. ''It's going to take a lot of cooperation, but it
would be to the credit of everyone involved.''

Since last week's looting, Russell and a University of Chicago professor,
McGuire Gibson, have begun working to reclaim all of the objects that may
be missing. Through a friend, Russell was able to get a direct line to
President Bush's science adviser, John H. Marburger, who asked for a list
of what to look for.

Yesterday Russell sent that list, outlining the materials and shapes of
potentially looted objects. A spokesman for Marburger's office said the
office will ''serve as a conduit to get [the list] to proper authorities.''
And Secretary of State Colin Powell said the US government would work with
the United Nations, European Union, and Interpol to punish looters and keep
objects from leaving Iraq.

Still, many historians and archeologists remain frustrated with the US
government's response. Back in January, the Archaeological Institute of
America sent a letter to the Defense Department warning that the National
Museum of Antiquities would need protection in case of war. It cited the
looting of a group of regional museums in Iraq after the Gulf War in 1991.

But the calls, the experts say, were largely ignored. Without anyone
guarding the Baghdad museum, looters broke into display cases and storage
areas where curators had hoped to safeguard objects. Television images
showed the museum littered with smashed glass and crumbled pottery.

''I can't believe the American army,'' said Jerome Eisenberg, director of
Royal-Athena Galleries in New York and founding editor of Minerva magazine,
which covers the antiquities market. ''They take enough time watching the
statues being torn down but don't give a damn for the ancient statues. All
they would have needed is a handful of soldiers, one tank, probably.''

Gibson, the University of Chicago archeologist, is spearheading the effort
to organize a database of the objects probably found in the museum. About
10,000 items were on display; hundreds of thousands could have been in
storage, as virtually every artifact discovered in Iraq in the 20th century
passed through the museum.

According to Gibson, an underground market is hungry for the spoils taken
from the Baghdad museum. ''It's a multibillion dollar industry,'' he said.
''It's not just Iraq. It's Afghanistan, Greece, Turkey, Rome.''

With phone lines in Iraq out, Gibson and Russell have been unable to talk
directly with their colleagues at the museum. They are left wondering about
the fate of the thousands of irreplaceable items. According to Russell,
these include a 2300 BC bust of an Akkadian king that is the earliest
copper casting ever discovered, a 5,500-year-old stone-faced ''White
Lady,'' and the Uruk Vase, a 5,000-year-old alabaster piece that features a
ritualistic scene.

''There's nothing else like this collection in the world,'' said Russell.
''We're talking about wiping out the total archives of 10,000 years. That's
not just important to Iraqis, it's important to us.''

Russell, who went on excavations in Iraq in 1981 and 1989, learned about
the extent of the underground market after the Gulf War. That was when the
Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem asked him to examine an object it had been
offered by a dealer. Russell recognized the piece, and others, from his
visits to the Assyrian palace in the ancient city of Nineveh in Iraq. He
also realized that larger pieces had been broken up into smaller items.
Russell estimates that 80 to 95 percent of what is sold on the antiquities
market is stolen.

''That's a conservative estimate,'' he said.

After the experience, Russell made sure to publish his photos of the palace
in Nineveh, taken before the Gulf War looting of it and other historic
sites.

''As long as they could sell openly, the source would continue to be
plundered,'' he said. ''Whereas if you make it known that photographs of
every sculpture of the palace has been published, no one has any incentive
to loot it further. Since publishing all the sculptures from Nineveh in
book form, I haven't seen one come on the market.''

Over the weekend, Gibson worked to mobilize an international network of
historians and archeologists. He had seen the news reports. Desperate for a
more detailed view, he has also been trying to recruit a reporter or
soldier to enter the museum so he can call him from a satellite phone. He
knows what he's up against: a strong underground market for antiquities
that can make it almost impossible to track down certain pieces. But he has
a strategy. If the records of the museum are destroyed, he'll rebuild a
list through records kept by historians and archeologists.

Each object in the National Museum has been given a seven- or eight-digit
accession number. There is also probably a number connected with the
archeological dig in which it was found. The question is whether the
numbers -- usually written on the bottom of the object in black ink -- have
been wiped off or obscured.

Creating a paper trail is key. The records can help museums, dealers, and
even border guards identify stolen art.

''And if you can get the photographed records, we're in a much stronger
position to help,'' said Malcolm Rogers, director of the Museum of Fine
Arts. ''Technology makes it much easier and faster to move that information
around the world.''

There are laws to deal with museum looters, including the 1954 Convention
for the Protection of Cultural Property, and strict guidelines developed by
the American Association of Museums after many institutions were found to
have accepted art looted by the Nazis. But lawlessness defines the
antiquities market, Russell says. It is why he stopped looking to recover
stolen items on eBay long before the fall of Iraq, for example, because he
had grown frustrated with the questionable offerings -- cuneiform tablets
for $200, cylinder seals for the price of a movie ticket.

Russell has several strategies for reclaiming the museum's holdings, from
offering amnesty and a reward to anyone who brings back a looted item to
making sure that guards at the Iraqi border look for artifacts. Because
once the items leave the country, there's no telling when -- or whether --
they'll be back in circulation.

''Some of this stuff is so famous it can't be sold openly,'' Gibson said.
''It'll be bought by some multimillion dollar collector who will keep it in
a vault and look at it every once in a while to make him feel good.''


Geoff Edgers can be reached at [log in to unmask]

This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 4/15/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.


=================================

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