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Pentagon knew risk to priceless antiquities

April 15 2003

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, US scholars repeatedly urged
the Defence 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 on Sunday that he went back twice more, and he and
colleagues peppered Defence Department officials with email reminders in the
weeks before the war began.
"I thought I was given assurances that sites and museums would be
protected," Dr Gibson said. Instead, even with US forces firmly in control
of Baghdad last week, looters breached the museum, trashed its galleries,
burnt its records, invaded its vaults and smashed or carried off thousands
of artefacts dating from the founding of ancient Sumer around 3500 BC to the
end of Islam's Abbasid Caliphate in 1258AD.
Asked on Sunday about the looting of the museum, US Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld blamed the chaos that ensues "when you go from a dictatorship" to a
new order.

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.
In January, a statement from the Archaeological Institute of America called
on "all governments" to protect cultural sites during an expected conflict
and in its aftermath. Dr Gibson and others said they were especially
concerned because of the example of the 1991 Gulf War.

Allied forces scrupulously avoided targeting Iraqi cultural sites during the
bombing of Baghdad 12 years ago.
But the end of that war kicked off a looting rampage, and eventually allowed
systematic smuggling to develop. Artefacts 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," Dr Gibson said.
"They said they would be very aware and would try to protect the artefacts,"
Dr Gibson said, recalling January meetings with Pentagon officials charged
with target selection and the protection of cultural sites.
Pentagon officials knowledgeable about those meetings referred questions to
the public affairs office, which said the military had tried to protect the
sites.
Since the 1920s, Iraq has required that anyone digging within its borders
file a report with the museum. More recently, expeditions had to submit
excavated material to the museum for cataloguing after each year's digging
season.
Looters apparently burnt or otherwise destroyed most of those records last
week, but Dr Gibson suggested scholars worldwide could duplicate the archive
by copying their files and reports and resubmitting them to Iraqi
authorities.
The museum's artefacts are another matter. Although the damage done is
almost certainly catastrophic, Dr 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 cultural heritage of Iraq, the home of ancient Mesopotamia,
encompasses the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids and Muslims, to name only the
best-known civilisations.

- Washington Post

This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/04/14/1050172535590.html

Thanks goes to Kenneth for the translation below.

From: Kenneth Rasmusson
<rasken@k...>
To: fibforum@f...
Subject: "US FORCES ENCOURAGE LOOTING"

Jag har ��versatt en av l��rdagens DN-artiklar till engelska. Sprid den
s�� fort som m��jligt till era utl�?ndska kontakter!
H�?lsningar

Kenneth

Article from Sweden's largest circulation daily, Dagens Nyheter, Saturday
April 11, 2003

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/

"US FORCES ENCOURAGE LOOTING"
By Ole Rothenborg

Malmoe. Khaled Bayomi looks a bit surprised when he looks at the American
officer on TV regret that they don't have any resources to stop the looting
in Baghdad.

- I happened to be there just as the US forces told people to commence
looting.

[Image byline: Khaled Bayomi is back home from Iraq, and he's glad to once
again be united with his sons Karim, 5, and Tayeb, 7.]

Khaled Bayomi departed from Malmoe to Baghdad, as a human shield, and
arrived on the same day the fighting begun. About this he can tell us
plenty and for a long time, but the most interesting part of his story is
his witness-account about the great surge of looting now taking place.

- I had visited a few friends that live in a worn-down area just beyond the
Haifa Avenue, on the west bank of the Tigris River. It was April 8 and the
fighting was so heavy I couldn't make it over to the other side of the
river. On the afternoon it became perfectly quit, and four American tanks
pulled up in position on the outskirts of the slum area. From these tanks
we heard anxious calls in Arabic, which told the population to come closer.

- During the morning everybody that tried to cross the streets had been
fired upon. But during this strange silence people eventually became
curious. After three-quarters of an hour the first Baghdad citizens dared
to come forward. At that moment the US solders shot two Sudanese guards,
who were posted in front of a local administrative building, on the other
side of the Haifa Avenue.

- I was just 300 meters away when the guards where murdered. Then
they shot the building entrance to pieces, and their Arabic
translators in the tanks told people to run for grabs inside the
building. Rumours spread rapidly and the house was cleaned out.
Moments later tanks broke down the doors to the Justice Department,
residing in the neighbouring building, and looting was carried on to there.

- I was standing in a big crowd of civilians that saw all this
together with me. They did not take any part in the looting, but were too
afraid to take any action against it. Many of them had tears of shame in
their eyes. The next morning looting spread to the Museum of Modern Art,
which lies another 500 meters to the north. There was also two crowds in
place, one that was looting and another one that disgracefully saw it
happen.

Do you mean to say that it was the US troops that initiated the looting?

- Absolutely. The lack of scenes of joy had the US forces in need of images
on Iraqi's who in different ways demonstrated their disgust with Saddam's
regime.

But people in Baghdad tore down a big statue of Saddam?

- They did? It was a US tank that did this, close to the hotel where all
the journalists live. Until noon on the 9th of April, I didn't see a single
torn picture of Saddam anywhere. If people had wanted to turn over statues
they could have gone for some of the many smaller ones, without the help of
an American tank. Had this been a political uproar then people would have
turned over statues first and looted afterwards.

Back home in Sweden Khaled Bayomi is PhD student at the University of Lund,
where he since ten years teaches and researches about conflicts in the
Middle East. He is very well informed about the conflicts, as well as he is
on the propaganda war.

Isn't it good that Saddam is gone?

- He is not gone. He has dissolved his army in tiny, tiny groups.
This is why there never was any big battle. Saddam dissolved Iraq as a
state already in 1992 and have shad a parallel tribal structure going,
which since then has been altogether decisive for the country. When USA
begun the war Saddam completely abandoned the state, and now depends on
this tribal structure. This is why he left the big cities without any
battle.

- Now USA are forced to do everything themselves, because there is no
political force from within that would challenge the structure in place.
The two challengers who came in from the outside were immediately lynched.

Khaled Bayomi refers to what happened to general Nazar al-Khazraji, who
escaped from Denmark, and Shia-muslim leader Abdul Majid al-Khoei, who both
where chopped to pieces by a raging crowd in Najaf, because they where
perceived to be American marionettes. According to Danish newspaper BT,
al-Khazraji was picked up by
the CIA in Denmark and then brought to Iraq.

- Now we have an occupying power in place in Iraq, that has not said how
long they will stay, not brought forward any time-plan for civilian rule
and no date for general elections. Now awaits only a big chaos.

"Let us lift our vision high
enough to dominate the problem."
- - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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