Syndicated News
Iraq: Museums Closed and Looting Rampant
Bookmark and Share

Violence and instability continue to threaten Iraq's cultural heritage, report officials of the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH). All museums remain closed, and looting of archaeological sites continues. The Iraqis lack the funds, equipment, and personnel to cope with the restoration and maintenance of museums and monuments and the protection of archaeological sites. "None of the planned international initiatives can now be carried out inside Iraq", says Elizabeth Simpson, a professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York who organised an Iraq session at the Archaeological Institute of America's annual meeting in Boston last month. The Art Newspaper was there.

Museums
At the National Museum in Baghdad, new security systems have been installed and a wall topped with razor wire has been erected around the building. Last summer the museum welded shut the entrances to the storerooms and the administrative wing. A new storage building with an underground secure bunker will be finished later this year. The conservation laboratory has been refurbished and students are training in Jordan.

The latest estimates of objects looted are 15,000 taken from storerooms of which 10,000 have been documented and 3,323 returned. Another 1,450 pieces from other sites have been brought to the museum by Iraqis, police, customs, and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). An in-house report on the thefts based on interviews with more than 90 people has been delivered to the Minister of Culture. Abdul Aziz Hameed, director of the SBAH, says that it is apparent that the perpetrators had inside knowledge of the location of items in the storerooms. It is possible that some people involved still work at the museum, although no action has been taken. A public hearing will be convened when the security situation allows and individuals will be held to account.

Other museums in Iraq remain damaged and closed: the Basra Museum is occupied by squatters, the Nasiriya Museum was burned, the Amara Museum was damaged but has been refurbished, the museums at Kufa and Nejef are occupied by the Islamist party, the new Tikrit Museum was destroyed by cruise missiles at the outset of the war (it was empty at the time), and the Mosul Museum, hit by a shell that damaged the Hatrian gallery roof. According to Dr Hameed the museum was looted with 30 bronze panels from the 9th-century BC Assyrian city of Balawat among the losses.

In Hatra, controlled detonations at an ammunition dump are damaging nearby Hellenistic, Roman, and Islamic-period buildings. In Mosul, the so-called leaning tower--a slanting minaret that remains from the 12th-century Great Mosque--is at risk as the US attacks that city.

Archaeological sites
Most of Iraq's 10,000 or more archaeological sites remain unprotected, and many have been pillaged by bands of looters. The SBAH employs 1,600 guards--locals who watch sites close to their villages--but many more are needed to begin to control the pillage. SBAH has recently established a special police division dedicated to archaeological sites. They will patrol in cars with weapons and communications systems and have direct connection with the local police if they need back-up. This Facilities Protection Service already has 1,750 recruits deployed in provinces south of Baghdad. "Unfortunately, the looters are moving on to other provinces", says Dr Hameed, who says the aim is to expand the force to cover the country. Vehicles, radios, and weapons are needed, and Unesco is currently delivering 45 cars as part of a three-year, $5.5-million, UN Development Group programme for Iraq.

Donny George, director of the Iraq Museum, estimates that no more than 25% of smuggled objects are stopped at the Iraqi border. To date, Iraqi antiquities have been seized by customs in Saudi Arabia (18 items), Kuwait (38), Syria (360), and Jordan (1,250), as well as about 600 items by US Customs. The confiscated materials will be returned once there is a stable environment in Baghdad. Turkey and Iran have not disclosed what they have seized, despite requests from SBAH. Dr George says that Turkish scholars informed him that antiquities confiscated at the border are being kept in Turkish museums.

Security concerns
Dr George says he and the museum staff are in constant danger. "These insurgents are killing very distinguished engineers, doctors--it's a kind of campaign to empty the country of intellectual people. Every day when I leave home I sit in my car and I don't know if I will reach the museum or not".

Nevertheless, Dr George remains optimistic. "Everyone is concentrating on the violence, but no one mentions that children are going to school, thousands of people are working with the government and getting paid, sometimes 60 times the salary they used to have. No one is mentioning that we have theatre and concerts", says Dr George. "Normal life is coming".

theartnewspaper.com


Type your comment and click
or register to post a comment.
* required field
User ID*
enter user ID or e-mail to recover login credentials
Password*