I first encountered SAFE and Cindy Ho while I was teaching Art History at SUNY New Paltz. As all of us, I was stunned at the horrific losses at the Baghdad Museum after the invasion of Iraq. I wanted to get involved in some way. I phoned Cindy and we had a lengthy conversation that ended with my commitment to supporting and contributing to SAFE in any way I could. Through those early years, I met several times with SAFE supporters and hosted the first SAFE Board retreat at my home in Saugerties, NY. We laid the foundations for what SAFE would become over those few days in my dining room. When SAFE began commemorating the anniversary of the looting with a Candlelight Vigil, I created an annual program at SUNY New Paltz which included a presentation on the looting of the Baghdad Museum and a screening of the film The Giant Buddhas, a powerful documentary detailing the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban.

SAFE’s first Board meeting

Cindy and I shared a passion for world heritage protection and we bonded over long discussions concerning looting, collecting and preserving cultural heritage. Our commitment was solidified when we drove from New York to Washington, D. C. in 2005 where we spoke before the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to support a US / Italy Bilateral Agreement restricting imports of antiquities. The car ride home was spent brainstorming ways to promote public awareness of cultural heritage preservation and finding a bridge between the collecting and archaeological communities for a common cause. Cindy’s commitment and energy were inspiring and I still reflect on those influential conversations in my current work.

Today I am Co-founder and Co-Director of The Extreme History Project. We are a public history, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the relevance of cultural heritage to community, policy and society. We believe in giving voice to the voiceless of the past and in the importance of the roll of history in forming individual and community identities. We are based in Livingston, Montana and work closely with indigenous communities in facilitating historical research surrounding the Native American reservation period of the west. Our work includes not only primary document archiving, but also the recording of Native American oral histories. The work that we do has real relevance for Indigenous communities here in Montana by helping recreate community identity through restoring a denied history and, as such, has application to many other indigenous communities around the world, battling the legacy of colonialism.

I credit much of the grounding of The Extreme History Project to those early conversations with Cindy about SAFE and preserving cultural heritage. I am honored and proud of my relationship to Cindy and to SAFE for its tireless contribution to the protection of our shared heritage. Our history contributes to our identity and without the knowledge and materials of history, we lose that identity and a part of ourselves. The fight for our world heritage must always continue and I thank Cindy and SAFE for staying on the frontline!

The 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies has prompted many reflections.  They bring to my mind the Bad Faith to which the Iraqi people have been subjected ever since the victorious powers betrayed their Arab allies at Versailles after WWI.  “Bomber” Harris, who presided over the destruction of German cities from the air in WWII, practiced on rebellious Iraqi villages in the 1920s.  There was no organic connection between the royal Hashemite line imposed by the British on the Iraqi people, laying the grounds for nationalist coups to come, and the seemingly ineluctable descent into Saddam Hussein’s despotism.  The extraordinarily destructive invasion (in its acts and consequences) was but one of the more recent such betrayals, although in that instance the American and British people were also victims, though less grievously so.

Saddam’s dictatorship betrayed the Iraqi people in countless ways, including the gross distortions of culture and corruption of institutions that benefited the narrow interests of the dictator and his regime.  Unimaginable damage was wreaked by the war with Iran.  The human losses in their most concrete terms were terrible, but those to culture were similarly bad, from the devastation of Basra to the ecocide that destroyed the Marsh Arabs’ way of life after the 1991 Gulf War, which was precipitated by Saddam’s desire to rid himself of the debts incurred by the previous one.  The exorbitant costs of these wars resulted in the pervasive underfunding of culture and education throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, and the sad fact that the Iraq Museum was kept shut for twenty years before the American invasion, opened only for VIP events.  That it remains closed despite much effort to rehabilitate it is evidence for the bad faith of venal and incompetent successor governments.

Starting in April 2003, I devoted my attention to the plight of Iraqi libraries and archives, resulting in two lengthy reports alongside other work that recounts much of that sorry tale*1

These two images, one general and one specific, of the first of three exhibits at the Cambridge Arts Council’s gallery representing the first of three exhibits of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here-related artwork. They are principally artist books (85 of them in the vitrines), with some of the broadsides on the walls. A second exhibit of 82 books is now up, with a third to follow.

Cambridge Arts Council

It is through this work that I became acquainted with SAFE and the indefatigable Cindy Ho.  It is generally the case that any successful voluntary enterprise requires one inspired leader to get it going and, often, to sustain it, even though other committed individuals may contribute to its depth and breadth.  Cindy is that person, and one of those others whom she inspired to participate, Irina Tarsis, enlisted my participation in three symposia sponsored or co-sponsored by SAFE, the most salient being my paper, “Contested Patrimony: The Fate of the Iraqi Jewish Archive,” presented at Homeward Bound: Returning Displaced Books and Manuscripts.

It is heartening that SAFE has expanded its activities beyond Iraqi antiquities to those of other nations, and has considered those aspects of cultural heritage and national patrimony of more direct concern to those such as myself.  Its activities and website benefit the whole world.  Another person who, like Cindy Ho, was moved to initiate a project addressing threatened Iraqi culture, is Beau Beausoleil, poet and bookseller of San Francisco, who founded Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here following the catastrophic bombing of the street of the booksellers in Baghdad on 5 March 2007.  He has stated that he kept waiting for someone to do something in response to such a terrible affront to all that is good and decent, but nobody did, so he acted, first locally and then globally. This has resulted in an arguably unprecedented imaginative response: the creation of much poetry and other writing,*2 scores of broadsides, and about 360 artist books that reveal an extraordinary range of visual, literary and technical creativity. They have been on exhibit in many places, and a complete set of will eventually arrive at the Iraq National Library and Archive (a set of the broadsides has already reached the INLA).•3

http://www.al-mutanabbistreetstartshere-boston.com/

I was asked to provide a meaningful context for the eponymous event at one of the occasions associated with the six-month exhibit in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  That follows here.

“Framing the Bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street: How We Might Think about what Led to it”

 Jeff Spurr, 25 February 2013

For

“Locating Al-Mutanabbi Street”
Cambridge Arts Council Gallery

We Americans tend to be navel gazers, deeply involved in our own problems, and oblivious to the consequences of our projection of power abroad.  Few have any conception of — or concern for — the cumulative suffering born by the Iraqi people, and the derangements to Iraqi society caused by our contribution to it.

A long, dark road led to the bomb blast at Al-Mutanabbi Street on March 5th, 2007.  The moral and symbolic implications of that horrendous event have been broadly addressed, thanks in particular to this wonderful initiative, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, rich evidence of which we see around us.

This evening I will briefly try to provide some context.  In my view, five principal conditions frame that terrible act.  They are (1) the nature of Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian regime, (2) the crippling sanctions against Iraq after the Gulf War of 1990-1991, (3) the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, (4) the disastrous policies of the Coalition Provisional Authority under L. Paul Bremer, and (5) the existence of a mobile radical Islamic movement associated with al-Qaeda, whose peculiar nature supports a terrifying cultural nihilism.

(1) Despotic regimes not only make the welfare of the tyrant and few others the measure of what is good and right for a whole nation, but their corrupt and absolutist ways suppress any normal civil society, and preclude the development of mature political views, mechanisms, and behavior, in the process injecting slow-working poisons into the body politic that remain long after these regimes are gone.  The resulting political immaturity, unfamiliarity with democratic ways, and dearth of practical initiative (due, that is, to the top-down character of all decision-making in such police states), have dire implications for what comes after.

(2)  The sanctions regime of the 1990s had no serious effect on Saddam, his family and cronies, whose control over the state remained unabated; however, it immiserated much of the Iraqi middle class, and made the lives of the poor much less bearable, adding new distress to a population that had already endured the terrible ravages of the Iran-Iraq war, ignominious defeat in the Gulf War, and the savage suppression of the subsequent Shi’ite rebellion in Central and Southern Iraq.

(3)  The criminally reckless American invasion was essentially undertaken without a plan beyond tactical questions concerning the inevitable military victory, which is to say the easy part.  General Shinseki was fired for speaking the truth regarding management of the aftermath, and magical thinking reigned in the White House.  The invasion began with the revolting spectacle of “Shock and Awe,” destruction from the skies targeting infrastructure and ministries whose principal consequence would be to dramatically diminish the capacity of successor governments to run the country.  Even worse, no provision was made to impose a new authority after the totalitarian regime was overthrown:  the lid was taken off the pressure cooker and not replaced.  Chaos was the inevitable result.  As history has shown, opportunists will always take advantage of the absence of authority, but the terrifying result under these especially bad circumstances was massive looting of nearly every institution in the country outside of Iraqi Kurdistan — whether cultural, educational, or governmental — from which Iraq will never fully recover.

Two images of the INLA (Iraq National Library and Archive).  The ‘before’ image is actually after the arson but before restoration of an interior space (you can discern the stairs), while the ‘after’ is of the same space (though a larger view), after Dr. Eskander’s restoration.

(4)  Then came the misrule of Paul Bremer, America’s satrap at the CPA, and arch-privatizer.  A combination of arrogance, ignorance and ideology scarcely matched by his boss led to the cashiering of the whole Iraqi army, an act of folly that removed a potential stabilizing force (Republican Guard excepted), and threw a couple hundred thousand men out of work.  Since the army of occupation had failed to secure ammo dumps across Iraq, arms were readily available.  Bremer also closed all state-owned enterprises, consigning countless others to unemployment and disaffection.  The mass firing of members of the Baath Party had similar results.  Idle hands make for the Devil’s work, after all, and the inability to mobilize for employment and sustain anything resembling normal functioning, plus an endless series of other unfortunate decisions, led inevitably to resistance — further exacerbated by blunt force behavior by the occupying forces.

Indeed, resistance led to extreme reaction.  Whereas it was said of the Vietnam War, “we had to destroy the village in order to save it,” things graduated in Iraq to “we destroyed the city to save it,” notably in the cases of Fallujah and Ramadi.  What leverage might have been gained from overthrowing the widely-hated Saddam was quickly squandered.

It is virtually axiomatic that a system of repression such as existed under Saddam leaves people little choice but to identify with more elementary structures of society:  the family, the tribe, and, particularly among the less secularized Iraqi lower classes, religion.  This is where social fault lines develop when all else disintegrates.

Violent Sunni resistance led ineluctably to two things:  the emergence of the much more radical al-Qaeda in Iraq, not invested in the preservation of any people or place, and largely consisting of foreign Arab elements coming from Jordan and through Syria, mirrored by the embrace of violence by Shi’ite groups, most conspicuously the Sadr Brigades, lumpen elements supporting that firebrand Shi’ite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.  This combustible situation led to an all-out civil war conducted by these radicalized elements, precipitated in its aggravated form when al-Qaeda blew up the Shi’ite Al-Askari Mosque and Shrine at Samarra in February 2006.  Al-Qaeda elements have been employing a slogan, “taqsir wa tafjir,” which, translated into English, signifies something like “denounce and detonate” or, according to a friend, effectively “blow them all up.”

It was in the context of this explosion of hate and strife, when upwards of four million largely middle class Iraqis (proportionately equivalent to about 42 million Americans), were forced to flee their homes, unlikely to return, that Al-Mutanabbi Street was devastated.  When tens of thousands are being murdered, when many parties are behaving in wanton ways, and when forces that consider humanism and enlightenment to be the enemy are unleashed on the land, it comes as no great surprise that this terrible crime occurred, much as we may lament it.

[modified and expanded for SAFE:]

As a coda, I would like to add that one man has shown what is possible in Iraq despite the conditions I have just described.  That person is Dr. Saad Eskander, who took charge of a devastated Iraq National Library and Archive (INLA) in the fall of 2003 at a very dark hour for that institution and Iraq.  There his performance has been exemplary under the most trying of circumstances.

Dr. Eskander not only succeeded in restoring a structure that had been declared a dead loss, but took a corrupt, moribund staff of 95 and turned it into a thriving, productive one of over 300, shepherding it through the dark years of civil war and difficult times since, initiating an enlightened administration in which the staffs of departments elect their representatives to the institution’s council; encouraging a women’s group that began a canteen and child care onsite.  He reached out to the world, for which reason he received critical donations of equipment and materials of every sort from many countries and institutions, plus advanced training for his staff on several fronts.  Despite having to repeatedly cope with retrograde elements in the Ministry of Culture and elsewhere in government, he has sustained the integrity of his institution and arranged for the building of a new National Archives building and a Generations Library for children and youth.  A new building for digital projects is underway.  Dr. Eskander has also spearheaded the effort to repatriate various classes of seized Iraqi documents on US soil or in American hands.  Much of this is described in detail in my 2007 and 2010 reports.  Despite  the grievous losses due to arson and deliberate flooding in April 2003, Saad Eskander continues his labors in the service of Iraqi culture and heritage.  His work provides not only a model for best practices in the administration of a cultural institution in Iraq, but for the world. We owe him our admiration and support.

*1 July 2005 report:

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/mela/indispensable.html

July 2007 report:

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/mela/update_2007.htm

A substantial update that focuses on controversies concerning various classes of seized Iraqi documents still under American control may be found in

“Report on Iraqi Libraries and Archives, 2010,” MELA Notes, no. 83 (2010), pp. 14-38

http://mela.us/MELANotes/MELA-Notes.html

at which point one must click on:

MELA Notes number 83 (2010)

*2  Beausoleil, Beau and Deema Shehabi, eds., Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5th, 2007, Bombing of Baghdad’s “Street of the Booksellers”, PM Press, Oakland, CA, 2012

*3  see:

http://bisi1932.blogspot.ca/2013/04/memory-identity-and-grassroots.html

NB: the big hole in the ground mentioned in this article is not the new Archives building, which has already been built, although not as yet fully furnished; it is the foundation for the Digital Library building, Dr. Eskander having long ago initiated a comprehensive plan for digitization in the service of transparency and access for Iraqis to their history and heritage.

Like those Americans of my parents’ generation who can remember where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been shot, or of my generation who can remember their reaction to the breaking news of the September 11^th attacks, the looting of the National Museum of Iraq remains, ten years later, a watershed moment for the global archaeological community and those of us who work to document and mitigate the illicit antiquities trade. The scale of the plunder, and its seemingly preventable nature, shocked everyone who witnessed it or viewed the frantic efforts of those tasked with dealing with the aftermath. For me, it was troubling enough to hear, and then have confirmed, that the United States was once again going to war in the Middle East, and for reasons that many suspected were false even at the time they were being announced. Given that I was about to graduate with my Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Arizona at the time, I routinely spent each day immersed in archaeological theory, method, and site data from around the world, including the numerous civilizations that flourished in today’s Iraq; the Mesopotamia of the ancient world. Thus, knowing that not only was a war of uncertain parameters and unknown duration already underway (with the inevitable loss of military and civilian life), but that priceless cultural institutions would also be under threat, made watching events unfold all the more troubling.

Interviews with Donny George and other museum officials during and after the fact really drove home how tragic this loss was. Coupled with the sacking and burning of much of the National Library, this tragedy was propelled to unbelievable proportions. Although I don’t think it will ever be known to what extent US troops were ordered to guard the museum, or whether or not their neglecting of this order made the looting easier, it has long been understood (since colonial days, really) that the risk of looting increases in times of armed conflict. For my cohort and I, all archaeologists in training just beginning to accrue field and museum curation experience, we could at least intuitively grasp how damaging the event was. Later professional and life experiences would just confirm this.

One positive outcome of this tragedy was, of course, the founding of SAFE; the only nonprofit with an expressed goal to raise public awareness of new developments and new research pertaining to the illicit antiquities trade. SAFE was founded in 2003; however it did not exist as a nonprofit until 2005. Although the looting of the Iraq Museum served as the impetus to found SAFE as a direct response of this event in 2003, I didn’t hear about its existence until my dawning realization of the scope of looting itself My archaeological “formative period” came about in the Southwestern United States (at the University of Arizona) where, for three years, I was fortunate enough to participate in excavations in settings as diverse as the Sonoran desert near Tucson to the Pacific Islands. Both of these locations do also suffer from looting and site vandalism (which I’d later observe), but the wide open spaces make encountering looting a rare occurrence unless you look for it. I had enough on my plate just learning the archaeological ropes!

By 2006, I had completed my Bachelor’s, as well as a Master’s degree at the Australian National University, and my focus had shifted to Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and bioarchaeology (the investigation of daily life, behavior, and human-environmental interaction from data contained in the skeleton, in the context of burial practices). The more I studied and worked in the field, the more I appreciated how much is lost when burials are dug up in the hunt for rare artifacts to sell. Burials uniquely represent one-off events; snapshots of the life and death of an individual and community. Perhaps more than any other category of archaeological site, burials are truly irreplaceable. Attending the 2006 Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association conference in Manila, Philippines, first exposed me to how severe looting had become in Southeast Asia.

Having already seen examples of the open sale of artifacts accidentally surfaced while farmers ploughed fields in Vietnam, causing me to wonder how many more sites similar to the c. 3,800 BP cemetery site I was currently helping to excavate were out there, I had an inkling of things to come. Presentations given by the Director and staff of Heritage Watch (a Cambodia based NGO specifically focused on the antiquities trade) truly opened my eyes. Seeing slide after slide of sites reduced to moonscapes and incredibly rare burial objects openly sold due to international greed and weak laws, despite the best efforts of local and Western archaeologists, broke my heart and made me unwaveringly determined to help in efforts to expose and combat this threat, in Cambodia and beyond. By 2010, after returning to Vietnam and Cambodia to excavate and learn more, working at numerous sites around Arizona (and seeing vandalism and pot-hunting first hand), and finally returning to Australia in 2008 to commence doctoral studies, I felt I had learned and seen enough to be able to meaningfully contribute. In 2010, I began to guest blog for SAFE, as well as begin my own blog to discuss cases, galleries, legal issues and the ‘demand’ side of the market in southern hemisphere countries such as Australia. My own current research, conducted with colleagues at the Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney, seeks to clarify the dimensions of this market, especially concerning South and Southeast Asian antiquities, to a degree not attempted before.

Although objects from the Iraq Museum remain unaccounted for and the museum remains only occasionally open to the public, events such as the scramble by civilians, museum and military personnel to remove and safely store thousands of priceless manuscripts from libraries and mosques in Timbuktu, Mali, during the ongoing conflict there do suggest that the global community is much less willing to be silent in the face of conflict-driven heritage destruction. In time, the collective efforts of INTERPOL, private investigators, journalists and governments in cooperation could recover even more objects stolen on that fateful April 10^th, but to me the larger point is that the looting of the National Museum of Iraq is symptomatic of the economic disparities between supply and demand countries, and the greed of those who fuel the no-questions-asked antiquities trade, that will continue to reduce countless sites to rubble before they can be excavated, let alone published and curated to share with the world.

Having just come from the latest (78^th annual) meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, in which thousands of delegates (myself included) presented the results of our latest research, I can safely attest that global research output is very vigorous. However, except for the occasional passing reference or resigned statement, there is still nowhere near enough acknowledgement of what the antiquities trade is doing to the world’s remaining archaeological record, despite the pervasiveness of looting and illicit dealing worldwide and the archaeological questions rendered moot because of it. Of course, the effects of looting also include hampering the efforts of many nations to establish museums with fully up-to-date acquisition and curation policies, and then to effectively safeguard those priceless pieces of cultural and national patrimony that they contain. The severe damage inflicted to the collections of the Iraq National Museum is just one poignant example.

As cutting edge research to document and mitigate the antiquities trade, excavate or salvage new sites, and create more context-driven and secure museums continues, let us all take a moment to remember not just what was lost when the Iraq Museum was looted, but what good has come from recovery efforts. Without the noble front-line fight of Donny George and his staff, much more would have been destroyed. Without the help of Iraqi religious leaders and governmental authorities, much more would be unaccounted for. The real challenge facing all of us is to stop the illicit antiquities trade before it starts, tighten the net around those who seek to profit from it, and provide enough training to troops on both sides of future, inevitable, conflicts that sites of cultural heritage are greater than any one conflict. Only by doing this can we ensure that the tide will continue to turn in favor of the preservation of the material remains of humanity’s shared past.

On the other side of this equation, it is vital for those who investigate the illicit antiquities trade from legal or criminological perspectives to seek out and maintain dialogues with archaeologists (both foreign and local) in all areas of the world where looting still occurs. As my own research continues to demonstrate to me, effective legal reform and prosecutions must rely on documentation of artifact authenticity, illegality of export, and likely archaeological context together. The clear explanation of what knowledge is lost, and how it fits into the bigger picture, when an object is ripped from the ground (or separated from its records when stolen from a museum) is something only archaeologists who have excavated intact sites and seen looting face to face can provide. Organizations like SAFE that continue to work to bridge these gaps are still sorely needed.

Dr. Damien Huffer
Institute of Criminology
Faculty of Law
University of Sydney
Darlinghurst, NSW, 2006, Australia

Beginning today, on the 10th anniversary of the looting of the Iraq Museum, SAFE will observe The Donny George Candlelight Vigil for Global Heritage with a three-month global awareness campaign “10 YEARS AFTER” which focuses on our core mission: to raise public awareness about the irreversible damage that results from looting, smuggling and trading illicit antiquities.

Until July 1, we will highlight the following on our web site and social media outlets:

• the efforts of institutions and individuals dedicated to global heritage preservation;
• the global concern of looting and the illicit antiquities trade;
• how public awareness can contribute to the solution;

and apropos to the theme of 10th anniversary…

• the many ways you participated in our Global Candlelight Vigil around the world, which began in 2007 with Dr. Donny George Youkhanna’s call to action.

Click to light a candle

Ten years after the event that precipitated the founding of our organization, we wish to pay tribute to all those who supported us and worked with us; and most of all, those who continue to do so. Taking this opportunity to honor your work is how SAFE wishes to celebrate our own 10th anniversary, and look to the future. And the future of our past.

This is why we designed this special 10th anniversary Global Candlelight Vigil to invite your thoughts and reflections. Initial responses to our invitation have already come in, they are posted here and here, and on Facebook beginning today. Please read Howard Spiegler’s reminder not to forget the efforts to recover artworks looted by the Nazis; René Teijgeler’s concern about the situation in Syria as it parallels Iraq’s; Dean Snyder’s personal tribute to Dr. Youkhanna; Abdulamir Hamdani’s summary of a report on the current situation in Iraq, to be delivered at a seminar in conjunction with the exhibition CATASTROPHE!  TEN YEARS LATER: THE LOOTING AND DESTRUCTION OF IRAQ’S PAST; Steven George’s expression of appreciation; Senta German’s observation on the impact of the looting of the Iraq museum on raising public awareness. Thank you for your participation, we look for your upcoming contributions.

Marking the 10th anniversary of the looting of the Iraq Museum, SAFE launches The Donny George Candlelight Vigil for Global Heritage and invites all citizens to light a candle and share their remembrances and thoughts in any language on the current situation, contemplate the future, and take the opportunity to announce their related projects and programs in preserving the future of our past.

Click to light a candle

These comments and reflections will be posted on SAFE’s web site beginning April 10 and also the Vigil page on Facebook, and other social media outlets. Furthering our commitment to raising public awareness about the global concern of looting and the illicit antiquities trade, SAFE aims to gather these reflections in a commemorative booklet as a public statement of concern, and as a tribute to all those who safeguard the future of our past.

SAFE initiated the Global Candlelight Vigil for the Iraq Museum with Dr. Donny George Youkhanna in 2007 to commemorate the looting of the Museum which became the impetus for the founding of the organization. Institutions and individuals from around the world hosted and attended lectures and candle-lighting ceremonies. A video of these events was compiled to mark the 5th anniversary. In 2011, the Vigil was renamed to honor the memory of Dr. Youkhanna.

The burning of the Egyptian Scientific Institute in the midst of the chaos in Cairo is a cultural disaster on a par with the worst acts of destruction of heritage in recent years, arguably worse than the losses to the Iraq Museum (since stolen artifacts can still be recovered, whereas the burned original manuscripts are gone forever). Whether the fire was started by a Molotov cocktail or, as some have asserted, was set by the soldiers inside the building, is not yet clear, and may never become clear. What is clear, however, is that the burning of this library reflects yet another abject failure of heritage policy to protect heritage when it is most at risk.

It is not as if this eventuality was unpredictable. After the Cairo Museum was robbed in the midst of similar chaos last January, the Egyptian government, and the military leaders who run the country, should have been able to work with international heritage protection agencies and organizations such as UNESCO, the Blue Shield, and others — including the many, many Egyptian citizens who care deeply about their heritage (and showed it by joining hands to cordon off the Cairo Museum in January) — to put in place contingency plans to keep cultural institutions secure during periods of unrest. Last but not least, the US government, which subsidizes Egypt’s military to the tune of billions, ought to have demanded the Egyptians secure their cultural institutions and sites as a condition of aid. But of course, since we have no carabinieri-like forces ourselves to do this sort of thing, and little interest ourselves in securing cultural sites apart from major tourist attractions such as the Baghdad Museum or Babylon, chances are that no one from the Pentagon was even thinking about the problem, even after the looting of the Cairo Museum.

That was in January. Did the fate of the Cairo Museum provide a wakeup call that site security needed to be an urgent policy priority? It was not until mid-October, after months of bureaucratic chaos, that the government announced it had set up a committee to develop security plans, so the answer is most likely no. Nor did any citizens’ groups evolve out of the noble ad hoc handholding at the museum.

The result? If this CNN report is accurate, the military did not set up a perimeter around the building. Instead, a small number of soldiers stood on the building’s roof and goaded the protestors:

The library was a scene of intense confrontation Saturday.

A dozen men dressed in military uniform were positioned on the library roof and threw cement blocks and rocks on the protesters and sprayed them with water hoses to push them away from the building.

But protesters hurled back rocks as well as Molotov cocktails. Then a massive explosion erupted, apparently originating from inside the building, and black smoke billowed.

Firefighters were busy putting out another fire in a nearby building.

Protesters were bleeding from rocks thrown at them.

What is to be done going forward, beyond the important immediate task of salvaging the remnants of the library?

First, the courage, energy, and passion that Egyptian citizens have shown in responding to the disasters at the museum and now at the library needs to be channeled into civic organizations that can be mobilized proactively next time around.

Second, UNESCO needs to either shift resources from conservation and development or supplement them with additional funding focused on securing cultural sites during periods of political unrest.

Third, the United States needs to exercise some leadership and influence, where it has leverage or ties with militaries in countries undergoing transitions or crises, to induce them to do the right thing.

Fourth, NGOs and foundations that support cultural heritage conservation need to begin thinking about how they can work directly with nascent heritage site protection NGOs in-country.

We are grateful for the following update from Abdulamir Hamdani, archaeologist and PhD student at Stony Brook University, formerly Superintendent of Archaeology and Director of the Museum in Nassiriya. On the eighth anniversary of the 2003 looting of the Iraq Museum, we are gratified to know that in spite of difficulties, courageous – and collaborative – efforts are being made to protect Iraq’s past:

The Iraqi National Museum is partially open to the public. It opens for the media, VIPs, researchers, college students.

The Museum’s lab still deals with preservation of damaged and broken artifacts, particularly, those which come from current excavations and stolen objects which have been restored from smugglers and looters.

Department of documentation: In additional to its ordinary activities, the department works on scanning and digitizing all the archive and records of the ancient city of Ur as a part of broad project of digitizing the whole city’s legacy which exists in other museums.

Regional and provincial museums are partially opened to school students, especially in spring season.

Survey works of the archaeological sites in several provinces in the central and southern parts are conducted, as well as projects of archaeological investigations and excavations.

A salvage excavations campaign will start in May that aims to dig the archaeological sites in the southern marshes that potentially will partially or completely be covered by water of re-flooding the marshes.

Foreign projects

By next summer, we will have the following projects in the Southern region:

1. SUNY at Stony Brook will conduct in June an intensive survey at Mathkhuria, a small Sumerian settlement next to Ur, before digging the site on December.

2. A joint expedition from the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and University of Rome to dig at Abu Tubaira, a medium Sumerian / Old Babylonian town which located 3 miles south of Nasiriyah.

3. The Global Heritage Fund (GHF) has funded a project of documenting the ancient city of Ur, and arranging a plan of conservation and managing the city, which will be undertaken by SBAH.

All those concerned about preserving our ancient past felt a chill down the spine upon hearing the news of Donny George’s sudden passing. Whether or not they knew him in person, a sense of loss was palpable within the community. On March 11, 2011, we lost a colleague and a friend. We also lost an eloquent advocate and a powerful—if gentle—warrior in the fight against the destruction of cultural heritage.

I met Donny for the first time at the 2005 AIA Annual Meeting in Boston. (Six years later this past January, Donny emailed from this year’s Meeting in San Antonio to tell me he was disappointed that there was no SAFE booth there.) In between attending sessions, Donny found respite at the SAFE booth. There, we chatted about how best to accomplish our mission. At our first major event at the booth, Donny offered his encouragement: “The work that SAFE is doing is critical, not only for Iraq’s cultural heritage, but also for the heritage of all mankind. All those who enjoy the benefits of democracy have a duty to stand up and support those actions that will stop the destruction of history.” These words will stay with me forever.

Months later, SAFE was invited to spend a day in New York City with Donny and two of his colleagues from the Iraq Museum. We visited the New York Public Library and looked at some of their Ancient Near Eastern holdings, and shared an intimate dinner at one of our members’ apartment. At the end of the evening, Donny spoke about the dangers he faced, just to go to work. Every day, he said, his car had to take a different route to the Museum. As he expressed a sad uncertainty about the future, he invited us to visit Iraq one day. Donny had become a part of SAFE.

It was with great relief and joy that we welcomed Donny and his wife Najat to the US.,in a gathering of friends in 2007. That same day, Donny and Najat heard that his children, who were still in Damascus, would be joining them soon. The family had been separated in exile.

Donny’s interest in SAFE was not only in theory; he embraced our ideas with his time and action, and became a true partner. It was in this collaborative spirit that the Global Candlelight Vigil for the Iraq Museum was born. Since 2007, individuals and organizations around the world listened when Donny called on us to light a candle to memorialize the looting of the Iraq Museum: “Let’s gather together and see what we can do, so people will not forget what happened.” Donny also personally led vigils in New York and Chicago, and invited the staff of the Iraq Museum to join the campaign in 2007 and 2008.

Donny also participated in SAFE’s programs with a podcast interview, and two very special SAFE Tours in the halls of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. Donny moved audiences at the Bancroft School and the Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2008, we were fortunate to have honored Donny with a SAFE Beacon Award.

He was genuinely interested in our work. One of the most special moments, was when Donny took a train from Stony Brook to attend a SAFE meeting in New York City, and sat with us—academics, professionals and students alike—chatting, and plotting our next strategies and programs. No matter how mundane the topic being discussed was, Donny was engaged and offered to help. He was one of the earliest members on our Facebook group, and served as an Advisor.

Donny was concerned about Iraq’s cultural heritage, he also advocated publicly for the cultural heritage of other nations. On behalf of Cyprus, he wrote a letter in support of the inclusion of coins in the US/Cyprus bilateral agreement in 2007. Two years later, he added his name to a Statement of Concern and Appeal for International Cooperation to Save Ancient Kashgar.

One of Donny’s greatest concerns was to prevent what happened to the Iraq Museum from happening to any other museums, anywhere else. Just this February, Donny spoke to me about the Cairo Museum: “Yes it was so painful, renewing every moment of those days in Iraq Museum. I sent an e-mail to Dr Zahi Hawass, showing my solidarity, and offering any help they need through his blog.”

We will miss working with Donny, but we are thankful that the work that we did together and his message will always stay with us. We heard you.

Cindy Ho
President
SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone

The following is posted by permission of the author, Michael Rakowitz, an artist whose work The invisible enemy should not exist was inspired by the events surrounding the looting of the Iraq Museum.

Dear Friends:

Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, the former Director of the National Museum of Iraq, and former President of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, passed away last Friday at the age of 60. I mourn the loss of an inspiring and courageous figure, a brilliant scholar, renowned archaeologist, a generous teacher, a loving family man, and friend. As most of you know, Dr. George’s story serves as a focus of “The invisible enemy should not exist,” an ongoing project that I have pursued in close consultation with him and his colleagues in the field of Mesopotamian archaeology.

It was an article in The New York Times in April, 2006 titled “The Ghost in the Baghdad Museum” that first inspired my project, in which the author, Roger Cohen paid special attention to Dr. George’s role in the recovery of half of the approximately 15,000 artifacts that were looted from the Iraq Museum in April, 2003. Additional details also rose to the surface in the story: under Saddam Hussein, Dr. George worked at archaeological sites to avoid Ba’ath Party meetings and also sidelined as a drummer in the band “99%”—short for 99% of excellence— which specialized in Deep Purple and Pink Floyd songs. It was after reading this that I fell in love with him. He was a lot like an artist, I thought, circumventing authority to do what he believed in and surviving. My project, in addition to presenting reconstructions of missing artifacts from the museum, featured drawings that detailed these and other events in Dr. George’s life, including his and his family’s sudden and tragic exodus to Syria in August of 2006 after his son was threatened by insurgents if a ransom was not paid, and his arrival to the US in December of that year, where he would teach at SUNY Stony Brook. Inspired by Dr. George’s rock star pursuits, the crowning element of the installation was a cover of Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water,” performed by the New York-based band Ayyoub, complete with Arabic instrumentation.

It was clear to me that Dr. George’s story was the story of millions of Iraqis who fled—and continue to flee—their country as refugees. It was a story that was also mirrored in the status of the stolen artifacts, many of which turn up in other countries such as Jordan, Iran, Italy and the USA, and are unable to be repatriated because it is still too dangerous.

I had the good fortune to meet Dr. George in February 2007, shortly after his arrival to New York. The occasion was hosted by SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone and arranged by Barbara Paley, whose husband Sam, who passed away last year, was a distinguished archaeologist and very close with Dr. George. At the brunch, colleagues and old friends officially welcomed him and his family to the US and donated books, some of them their own scholarly works, to fill the shelves of Dr. George’s office at the university. It was very moving, warm, and celebratory.

When he did visit my show in New York, I was unfortunately at home in Chicago. Dr. George would later explain to me that he became emotional while standing in front of the reconstructed artifacts because he discovered that this was probably as close as he was going to get to the originals ever again.

Over the next four years, I got to know Dr. George more and more. As I heard one incredible story after another of his undying and continuing efforts to recuperate stolen and damaged artifacts from his old museum, I added more drawings to the project. Inasmuch as the work was about humanity’s collective loss of a shared cultural heritage and history, it had also become a loving portrait of a man I greatly admired.

One of the stories that Dr. George told me is one that doesn’t get told enough, and I feel underscores who he was, as someone who upheld his beliefs and maintained his integrity, under any circumstance. As he recounted to New York Magazine, he was the head of fieldwork at the excavation site in Babylon in 1987 when the Iraqi president paid a visit. “I met him and took him around. He was very calm. He was just listening. In one of the museums there, we had some inscriptions translated. In one, Nebuchadnezzar was saying that one of the gods had sent him to protect ‘the black-headed people.’ Saddam said, ‘You should change that.’ And I said, ‘No, sir, it’s scientific, we can’t change it, this is exactly as it was said. It doesn’t mean that people are black, it means “all the people.” Because if you have a crowd of Iraqis, all you see are their black heads.’ He wanted to change it to ‘all the people.’ And I said no. Later, one of his bodyguards took me aside and said, ‘How can you say no to the leader?’ And I said, ‘It’s science.’ And he said, ‘Well, good. God bless you. Otherwise, you would have vanished.’”

I only knew Dr. George for four years. It feels like I lost a family member. Maybe I see my grandfather, who fled Iraq in 1946, in him. Maybe I see the story of every Iraqi who is not at home, who is not able to return. Maybe I see a devoted husband and father who did everything he could to save his wife and children and give them a good life. Whatever it is, I feel the huge loss that his family, friends and colleagues are feeling and today, I said goodbye to him at his funeral here in Chicago.

My last drawing from “The invisible enemy” featured a personal message from me to Dr. George. In pencil, I wrote the traditional Arabic greeting, “Ahlan wa Sahlan, Dr. George.” As many know, it is loosely translated as “May you arrive as part of the family, and tread an easy path (as you enter)”. I was thinking to close my personal remembrance of this great man with an awesome line from a Deep Purple or Pink Floyd song. Somehow, I think Dr. George would have liked that. But instead, I found sections of a fragmentary Sumerian lullaby, translated from tablets dating from 3,000 B.C.

Come sleep, come sleep…
And you, lie you in sleep.
Array the branches of your palm tree,
It will fill you with joy…
Stand at the side of Ur
Goodnight, Dr. George. I will miss you.



Love,

Michael

The following citation was originally published in January, 2008 in the SAFE Beacon Award Souvenir Journal when we honored Dr. George:

“I am simply doing my duty. I believe that if the time comes, I am ready to sacrifice my life to save any item of Cultural Property anywhere in the world. But what I am sure of is that I am not alone in this.”

Born in Habbania, al-Anbar Province, on October 23, 1950, Dr. Donny George developed a relationship with the landscape of Iraq as a youth that inspired a lifetime of study of ancient cultures as both a scholar and archaeologist that has motivated colleagues around the world for more than three decades.

While pursuing his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Baghdad, where he received his M.A. in Archaeology in 1986, Dr. George began his career at the Iraq Museum in 1976, where he held various positions. These include Director of the Documentation Center in 1980 and Field Director for the Babylon Restoration Project from 1986 through 1987. He conducted archaeological investigations in the eastern wall at Nineveh in 1988 and 1989 and served as Scientific Supervisor for the Bekhmeh Dam Archaeological Rescue Project (northern Iraq) in 1989. He was appointed Assistant Director General of Antiquities for the Scientific Affairs department in 1995, the same year he received his Ph.D. in Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Baghdad. During 1999 and 2000, Dr. George directed the excavation team at Um al-Agarib (southern Iraq) and served as head of the Technical Committee at the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (which analyzes artifacts brought to the Iraq Museum voluntarily by the Iraqi citizens).

From 2000 to 2003 Dr. George served as Director General of the Department of Research and Studies at the Iraq Museum. He witnessed the fall of Baghdad, endured the subsequent looting of the Iraq Museum in April 2003, and played a central role in the restoration of the Museum and the recovery of nearly half of the estimated 15,000 artifacts stolen from the Museum and archaeological sites.

In recognition of his service, Dr. George was appointed Director-General of the Iraqi Museums in November 2003 and became a member of the Iraqi National Committee for Education, Science, and Culture in January 2004. In 2005, he left his position at the Iraqi Museums when he was appointed President of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, a position he held until he was forced to flee Iraq in August of 2006. He simultaneously held two academic positions as Lecturer Professor for Computer and Archaeology, Documentation, Anthropology, and Prehistory in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Baghdad, and Lecturer Professor at the College of Babylon for Theology and Philosophy.

His unique skills, knowledge of ancient Mesopotamian cultures, extensive field experience, and unflappable personality allowed Dr. George to rise above the tragic events that occurred in Iraq after the 1991 war and the events since 2003. The looting of the Baghdad Museum has attracted considerable media attention to the destruction of cultural heritage and the illicit antiquities trade worldwide, and has given Dr. George the audience that a lifetime of training and experience has equipped him to address. He is now a major force in bringing the world’s attention to the ruination of Iraq’s archaeological landscape, through his participation in conferences organized by Interpol, ICOM, AIA and UNESCO. He has given presentations on the conditions of archaeological sites and museums in Iraq at conferences and symposia at the British Museum and at UNESCO in Paris, Vienna, Essen and Mainz. He has also spoken at the “Archaeology in Times of War” conference in Bonn (2003), at meetings of the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in London (2003), for the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies at the Royal Ontario Museum, and at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. He also maintains an active schedule of public speeches across the U.S. and has conducted interviews with various publications as well as PBS’s “Charlie Rose” program.

Dr. George is also a prolific author, having written Tell Es-Sawwan: Architecture of the Sixth Millennium B.C. (London, 1996) and The Stone Industries in Tell Es-Sawwan (London, 2005), as well as contributing to The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia (New York, 2005) and the forthcoming Antiquities Under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection after the Iraq War (New York, 2008). He remains an active member of Interpol’s International Regional Committee, the German Archaeological Institute, the Society for American Archaeology, and is an Honorary Member of the Archaeological Institute of America. He currently holds the position of Visiting Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

In response to the looting which took place in the aftermath of the invasion of Baghdad in 2003, the United States House of Representatives proposed HR 2009 (initiated by Congressmen Phil English and James Leach and later implemented as S. 671), to prohibit the importation into the United States of any archaeological or cultural material removed from Iraq without appropriate documentation. This law works to keep the cultural heritage of Iraq in Iraq, and seeks to eliminate the supply of freshly looted or stolen materials to the antiquities trade. Will similar legislative actions be taken given the current situation in Egypt?

The circumstances in Egypt are different in many regards from that which existed in Iraq in 2003. Absent the sense of responsibility which came from an overt US presence on the ground and a UN Security Council Resolution, where is the political will to back up the need for such legislation? Congressmen Phil English and James Leach are no longer in office; who might sponsor such a bill?

Are emergency legislative reactions necessary? Given the Schultz decision clarifying Egypt’s national ownership law, there already exists the legal basis for seizing looted Egyptian antiquities in the US.

Whether or not legislation is required, until order is restored, we believe that if the demand for Egyptian antiquities is curtailed, if not stopped, the loss of Egypt’s cultural patrimony during this tumultuous time would be curbed. We are happy to see that Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, agrees.

Also, we hope that Egypt (as of 1973, party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention) would make a request for a bilateral agreement to restrict importation of antiquities into the US.

What do you think? Please cast your vote.

The many accounts of looting and destruction in Egypt in the last few days have been alarming and at times, confusing. Reports about the nature and extent of the damage – and who caused the damage – have been numerous and sometimes conflicting. What are rumors? What are facts?

One recalls a similar situation in 2003 when the Iraq Museum was looted, and the number of objects became a source of confusion. Matthew Bogdanos’s article in The American Journal of Archaeology “The Casualties of War: The Truth About the Iraq Museum” (and the 2005 book Thieves of Baghdad) recounts that situation in great detail, and goes a long way to dispel early misconceptions.

As with the Iraq situation, we will probably not know all the facts for some time. But while information about the exact scope of the destruction – and who did what – is still being assessed, what we do know for certain is that one of the world’s richest and oldest cultural heritages is at risk. One artifact looted or destroyed is one too many.

We also know this: Egyptian antiquities can fetch huge sums. In December, 2010 alone, 13 artifacts reportedly sold at Sotheby’s for a total of $9,789,500.

So how will we respond?

A number of organizations have issued a statement that includes a “call on United States and European law enforcement agencies to be on the alert over the next several months for the possible appearance of looted Egyptian antiquities at their borders.” SAFE believes that we should also alert dealers, collectors, conservators, auction houses, museums, antique galleries. Any artifacts looted from Egypt during this tumultuous time will presumably end up on the antiquities market outside the country.

Will the trade exercise restraint or curtail its appetite for Egyptian collectibles during this time? Will it perform special due diligence? We hope it will.

The following is published at the request of its author, Dr. Donny George:

Dear All,
since the first gulf war of 1991 everybody’s been accusing the Iraqis of steeling the Kuwait’s antiquities, and no one has asked the Iraqis for their opinion about it. I was reserving this to be included in a book I started writing, but let me explain this Kuwaiti mater in some details.

Prior to the first gulf war we had done the preparations to evacuate the antiquities from the Iraq museum, since the war was coming no matter what was said in the daily news inside Iraq, then we got the orders from the ministry of culture, to go and insure the evacuation of the Kuwait museum, exactly as we did for the Iraq museum, we had no orders to check the private collections, that was not our job, and before we did so the director general of Iraqi antiquities informed the UNESCO, that according to Hague convention of 1954, Iraq was going to do it’s duties to evacuate the official Kuwait museums, because they were in an area of expected armed conflict, and for that we started the evacuation, before that I myself made a video film for the two museums, the Kuwait national museum, and Dar al-Athar Al-Ilamia, later on we sent a copy of that film to the Kuwaiti authorities through the UN representative, then we started packing and transporting all what we could to Baghdad, then distributing the material in Iraq for safe keeping.

After the end of the war, and the UN resolutions to return everything back to Kuwait, we had the first meeting with representative of the UN security counsel, he officially presented a list of (2500) items demanded by the Kuwaiti side to be returned to Kuwait, we all, the Iraqi side were surprised for that small number of the demanded items, we said what we have is much more than that, and I handed the UN representative two volumes for over (25 000) twenty five thousands items that we had, because every thing was completely documented in a professional manner before any thing left the Kuwait museums . The representative was surprised after he saw the complete lists, and aske to end the meeting that day, so that he will go back to the security counsel in order to have a special resolution for the antiquities to be handed over according to the Iraqi lists and not according to the Kuwaiti ones, and this was what happened
The Iraq museum at that time was not on display and was closed, and of course no Kuwaiti antiquities were displayed there for sure, but the Kuwaiti material was finally collected there for handing over.

When the handing over started, it took place in some of the Iraq museum galleries, no Kuwaiti people were there, but the representatives of the UN, the Kuwaiti side was represented by a British lady, Ms.Marsh, an American gentleman , and an Indian gentleman, every item was handed over from the Iraqi representatives to the UN people, registered in lists by computers, then handed over to the Kuwaiti side then they handed things to the packing company, all done in the Iraq museum, all with the protection of the museum guards.

After everything was taken from Iraq, for several times we had some questions about some missing items from the Kuwaiti side through the UN, and when we would go back to our copy of the handing over lists, we would find what they were asking for, so we would tell them that that item is listed in Number so and so in the list number so and so , then there were no claims in this regard.
Special Notes:

1. we knew nothing about private collections in Kuwait, therefore we were not involved with them, our concentration was only on the official museums.

2. When the handing over was finished, the head of the Kuwaiti side, Ms. Marsh, invited the Iraqi side representatives for a dinner reception in a fine Baghdad restaurant, Khan Marjan, I asked Ms. Marsh whether that was her idea, but she told me that she could not do such a thing without the Kuwaiti approval, and also mentioned, that there will come a time the Kuwaitis will thank you all personally for what you have done for these antiquities.

3. Everybody should know that only the Kuwait National museum contained Kuwaiti antiquities, the other museum was dedicated for Islamic art, and all its material was purchased from the markets all over the world, including material from the site of Samarra in Iraq.

4. after all that we see from time to time articles, especially in the Guardian, going back to the same subject, where such kinds of claims are mentioned, while I am sure the Kuwaitis themselves know that this is not the whole truth, but it is used for political matters only, including an article that was interviewing Ms. Marsh herself, and was given the title of, the lioness of Baghdad, and again in the Guardian, were she was describing her struggle with Iraqis, to extract every single item from them under the weapons of solders !!!! (the museum guards).

5. this is my information about this subject, and it is my responsibility to tell it to the world, the museum, archaeological community all over the world, and it is my responsibility in front of my God, that this is the whole truth, and whatever is said about this subject that does not include these facts, is all lays and false accusations, these people should be ashamed of themselves.

Donny George

This weekend marks the 7th anniversary of the tragic looting of the Iraq Museum—an anniversary that is especially important for SAFE. Cindy Ho founded SAFE in response to the mass looting in 2003, and since then, SAFE grew from a single-purpose public awareness campaign into a non-profit organization, the only one of its kind, with a much broader mission.

SAFE and others around the world have commemorated the looting of the museum each year with special events, like candlelight vigils. These gatherings are an easy way to say that we have not forgotten, and they also remind us of the challenges Iraq faces today to protect its cultural heritage. One of the major challenges we were reminded of this year is the reopening of the museum. SAFE, like most other media outlets, all too eagerly announced that the museum was reopened in February 2009. Our friend and former director of the Iraq Museum, Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, warned us that these reports were misleading:

…they made the ceremony for two hours, then the closed the museum, it is not opened since then, no one from the public goes in, except VIP’s and journalists, can go in with an appointment, but they would go through the back door, that is through the administration building, and as for the displayed material, nothing from the original small items are displayed, they are still in their hiding place, only the large items that fixed to the walls and the floors are there, and some of the material that was brought back to the museum, and some later excavations, nothing from the original material.

Of course, I would love so much to see the museum open, but still it is not a good time in Baghdad.

Not only are these vigils a way to remember Iraq specifically, but they can also draw attention to other situations around the world. This year we might also think about the destruction in Kashgar and Haiti, for example. Remembering and looking ahead are the two major themes of SAFE vigils that prove to be relevant year after year. In that way, these events would support a case for nationally recognized day (akin to Earth Day) to remember the importance of cultural heritage (something that we applaud Paul Barford for suggesting in an earlier post). But until our cause achieves national recognition, SAFE hopes that our members and friends will attend a vigil, or host their own, to acknowledge that we are all responsible for the protection of our shared past.

From Lamia al-Gailani Wehr, via the Iraqcrisis listhost:

SBAH and the Iraq Museum were victims to the bombing of the Foreign Ministry last week. Many of the glass windows were broken, part of the roof of the children’s nursery collapsed, fortunately there was no fatality, just bruises and minor injuries. One of the accounts was at the Ministry of Finance when it was also bombed, he was injured and taken to hospital. I understand some of the exhibited antiquities in the the Museum were also damaged. I hope they have already been photographed.

Worrying issue, I heard that most of the staff ran away. Was there any emergency plan to deal with this kind of situation, such as the closure of all the doors, particularly the ones leading to the Museum and the storerooms? Apart from the police guards, is there a team whose duty to take charge whenever the Museum is under threat?

Prof. al-Gailaini Wehr raises a very important question, one that it is to be hoped will be asked as well by all those who wish to help the Iraqi government do what it can to secure the museum for a future that may well involve more bombings and even, god forbid, a breakdown of civil order on a much larger scale. Until now, the State Department has blithely pursued a Pollyannish policy that has ignored repeated warnings by archaeologists that it was too dangerous to reopen the museum. Instead of focusing on security for the museum (or archaeological sites for that matter), we have acceded to the Maliki government’s desires to use it for propaganda purposes as a symbol that things are returning to normal. As part of that fantasy, US money has been plowed into site assessments, sustainable tourism planning, and training for archaeologists — all good ideas but surely secondary in importance to the need for far better protection of Iraq’s cultural heritage against looting and bombing. If the report of damage to exhibited artifacts is true, our negligence has once again borne bitter fruit, albeit on a much smaller scale than the looting of the museum and archaeological sites in the 2003-2007 period.

Speaking recently about the State Department’s involvement in a site assessment of the ancient city of Ashur, a Public Diplomacy Officer remarked,

As the U.S. forces look toward our draw down out of the country, this is a great potential legacy that we can leave behind; showing that we took proper care of the ancient sites and history of the Iraqi people. When the security situation arrives at the point when there is an opportunity for wide-spread tourism, our good stewardship of these sites will pay off because we will have met the immediate needs to preserve these sites now.

The danger is that if we do not recognize that taking proper care means worrying about security first and foremost, the legacy that we leave behind will be of a country whose heritage remains inexcusably vulnerable.Let us hope that we learn from it and refocus our cultural policy in Iraq.

In April 2003, like many of us, Lawrence Rothfield watched with great concern as news accounts detailed the pillage of Iraq’s National Museum. Since then, the looting of sites around Iraq has not ceased, and Rothfield, as co-founder and former director of the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, has been working on an extensive inquiry into how such wholesale thievery and destruction was allowed to occur.

In his resulting work, The Rape of Mesopotamia (University of Chicago Press, 2009), Rothfield reconstructs the planning failures – originating at the highest levels of the U.S. government – that led to the invading forces’ utter indifference to the protection of Iraq’s cultural heritage from looters. Widespread incompetence and miscommunication enabled a tragedy that continues even today, despite widespread public outrage. Bringing his story into the present, Rothfield argues that the international community has yet to learn the lessons of Iraq – and that what happened there is liable to be repeated in future conflicts. The Rape of Mesopotamia is a powerful, infuriating chronicle of the disastrous conjunction of military adventure and cultural destruction.

Rothfield was recently featured in the article “Iraq War’s cultural costs as seen through a Chicago prism” by Julia Keller in The Chicago Tribune, where Rothfield reveals that one of the reasons that spurred him to write this authoritative account was its many connections to the city of Chicago.

The Rape of Mesopotamia is essential reading for all concerned with the future of our past, and is now available from the SAFE Store.

In an interview with American Public Media’s Dick Gordon, AIA President and Professor at University of Pennsylvania Brian Rose describes his recent first trip to Iraq where he saw ancient sites cratered by looters.

Professor Rose also speaks about the cultural heritage briefings he has been giving to American soldiers on the archaeology of Iraq and Afghanistan, and his visit to the Iraq Museum.

The interview can be heard here in the second part of the broadcast.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i32/32b01701.htm

From the issue dated April 17, 2009
A Fragile History, Besieged
A post-mortem examination of the cultural disaster in Iraq

Six years ago this month, the National Museum of Iraq was extensively looted amid the chaos of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad. Among the stolen objects was the Mask of Warka, a 5,100-year-old Sumerian artifact that is believed to be one of the earliest surviving representations of a human face. The mask was found buried on an Iraqi farm five months later — but thousands of other precious objects were destroyed or disappeared into the black market.

“We do not know, and we may never know, a great many lessons about how human civilization first arose, because of this disaster,” says Lawrence Rothfield, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Chicago and a former director of the university’s Cultural Policy Center.

In his new book, The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum (University of Chicago Press), Rothfield examines the sacking of the museum and the “slow-motion disaster” of the looting of archaeological sites across Iraq since 2003.

Rothfield recently spoke with The Chronicle’s David Glenn. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

Q. Why should the world care about Iraqi antiquities? Doesn’t this issue pale in comparison to the war’s political struggles and tens of thousands of deaths?
I hear that question sometimes: Why should we care? Why should we worry that all of this material is being brought onto the black market? After all, isn’t this making available to the rest of the world the beauty of all these objects that otherwise would not have been available for us to see?

One reason to worry is that this material is being ripped out of its context. The individual intact pieces that fall into the hands of collectors might be beautiful. But most of what we know about the origins of civilization has come from piecing together fragments and reconstructing contexts. The Epic of Gilgamesh was pieced together from fragments that looters today would have crushed underfoot.

Q. Before 2003 the National Museum of Iraq was regarded as one of the best in the region. Despite all of the cruelties and travails of Saddam Hussein’s regime, this institution thrived. Why was that?
Saddam thought of the Mesopotamian past as a propaganda tool — which meant that at least he cared enough about it to impose severe penalties on looters, and to spend the resources needed to support the work of the museum. And even before Saddam came to power, Iraq had some longstanding relationships with European and American archaeological institutions, including the Oriental Institute here at Chicago. So for decades, they had been training archaeologists to produce work that was of very high quality.

Q. Why did the United States do such a bad job of protecting the museum in 2003?
Before the war, nobody except archaeologists was worried about civilians looting the archaeological sites and the museum. And that includes the Iraqi exiles who were advising the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project, which was supposed to develop plans for the postwar period. They set up working groups on all sectors of society — but they forgot about culture.

Q. But would it have made a difference if the Future of Iraq Project had paid attention to culture?
No, it wouldn’t have made any difference at all, given that the military threw all of their plans in the garbage can anyway.

Now, the military itself was very interested in doing its job in terms of protecting cultural sites and museums. But under international law, its job is defined as not destroying or looting cultural sites itself — not as preventing civilians from destroying sites.

So before the war, they reached out to archaeologists, and they did a perfect job of identifying sites to put on a no-strike list. None of those sites was destroyed in active combat operations.

Unfortunately, they ignored warnings from the same archaeologists they were working with that the museums and sites might be looted by Iraqis. The Pentagon should have known about that issue. Nine museums were looted after the 1991 Gulf War. The military did not learn its lesson from that experience.

Q. There were reports last year that the military had asked archaeologists to develop a similar no-strike list for cultural sites in Iran. And some archaeologists have argued that it is unethical to cooperate with that project, because they say an American attack on Iran would be immoral. Have you been part of those debates?
My thought is that requiring the military to spend time and effort to protect cultural sites actually makes the cost of war higher for the military than it would otherwise be. So if you’re interested in doing what you can to discourage the U.S. from going to war, raising the cost of war is one way to do so.

There’s no contradiction between speaking out publicly against the war and making sure that the military protects cultural sites if it does go to war.

Q. Do you believe the American military has learned lessons since 2003?
It’s a mixed picture. The new Army Field Manual includes on its task list the imperative to secure and protect cultural sites and museums. That’s a huge step forward in itself. They’ve also been developing excellent cultural-awareness training programs to sensitize soldiers heading into war zones, working with the Archaeological Institute of America.

But there is also the separate question about what to do going forward in Iraq — and in Afghanistan, where matters are arguably even worse. There is still severe looting in both countries. The British recently returned several tons of Afghan antiquities that had been seized at London airports since 2003, just to give you some sense of the size of the problem.

The looting of the Iraq museum was terrible, but the amount of material lost from the slow looting of Iraq’s archaeological sites dwarfs the amount that was taken from the museum. Estimates are that roughly half a million pieces have been destroyed or taken from the ground since 2003.

Q. If you had half an hour to talk to people at the Pentagon or the State Department, what would you say?
Archaeologists have been asking for years now for the military to share satellite photographs of the Iraqi archaeological sites so that they could count the number of holes and track the rate of looting around the country. They’re still waiting.

I would also urge the Pentagon to form a task force to develop operational plans to inject resources into those areas where it’s possible to make a difference. In some cases that might mean providing cars, weapons, and walkie-talkies to the civilians who are supposed to be protecting sites.

And I would suggest a tax on all sales of antiquities from Iraq and Afghanistan. The proceeds could be used to help finance anti-looting efforts in those countries.

Q. At the end of your book, you wrote that you didn’t expect the Iraq museum to reopen “for years to come.” But in February, after your book went to press, a part of the museum reopened. Were you surprised?
Well, I was dismayed by it, as were [the museum's former director] Donny George and a number of other Iraqi archaeologists. Conditions in Baghdad are still very fragile. And the museum is nowhere near ready to be open to the public, even if the situation weren’t so touchy. The recent reduction in violence is heartening, but it only brings us down to levels that are equivalent to other long-running civil wars.

David Glenn is a senior reporter at The Chronicle.

http://chronicle.com

Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 55, Issue 32, Page B17

On the eve of the sixth anniversary of the looting of the Iraq Museum which spawned the founding of this organization SAFE/Saving Antiquities for Everyone, we urge individuals around the world to pause in commemoration by joining us in the Global Candlelight Vigil, not only for Iraq, but the world over.

SAFE Member Leila Amineddoleh takes this opportunity to revisit the tragic event with the book Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos, winner of the SAFE 2005 Beacon Award. She shares with our readers her thoughts here:

Thieves of Baghdad begins like an archeological detective mystery, reminiscent of an Indiana Jones movie, with the story’s narrator searching for answers about the fate of some of the world’s most historically significant looted cultural artifacts. Baghdad, located on the Tigris River, is at the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, a region that holds secrets about early human societies. Baghdad lies near ancient Babylonia, and is home to some of the greatest archeological treasures of mankind’s early artistic and societal accomplishments. The value of these pre-historic artifacts is impossible to determine; they are irreplaceable links to the past, providing us with clues about how our ancestors lived in pre-biblical times. After the American invasion of Iraq in April of 2003, looters took advantage of the vulnerability of the Iraq Museum (a museum with an unrivaled collection of Mesopotamian art) and began looting and selling the museum’s holdings on the black market. The robbers stole thousands of priceless items. Included in the cache of looted works was the Mask of Warka (the oldest known naturalistic carving of a human face), the Vase of Warka (the oldest known carved stone ritual vessel), the treasure of Nimrud (over a thousand pieces of gold jewelry and precious stones from the eighth and ninth centuries B.C.), and an eighth century ivory plaque entitled the Lioness Attacking a Nubian. Some of the artifacts have been recovered, while others have vanished without a trace.

Matthew Bogdanos, a U.S. reserve for the marines and an Assistant District Attorney, tells the story of the pillaging and subsequent recovery of the some of the world’s greatest treasures. As a student of classics, he is the perfect narrator because he appreciates the significance of these treasures. His book describes the importance of the pieces’ recovery as an event of international concern and pride amongst the Iraqi people. As an investigator, Bogdanos helped recover hundreds of pieces during his tour of duty in Iraq where he led a team of soldiers on a recovery mission, while maintaining their physical safety. Bogdanos also contended with the press’s often faulty reporting, and grappled with the cultural and political barriers separating his team from the Iraqi people who were often unwilling to assist the U.S. army to recover artifacts, who questioned the motivation for American involvement with Iraqi cultural issues, or who mistrusted U.S. military presence in their nation. Bogdanos and his group of men not only faced the mystery of the Iraq Musem’s missing works, but the strife of life in a war-torn country, the ever-present threat of Al-Qaeda terrorists, and the difficulties of tracking down armed robbers. During his time in Iraq, Bogdanos longed for his family and life in the U.S., but he also learned to accept and understand the culture of the modern Iraqi people and the power and mystery of their ancient culture and customs.

This book is an engaging read because Bogadnos’s love of art is apparent. With his knowledge of classics, he describes the importance of these pieces with historical insight. Besides taking the reader on a journey of recovery through an insider’s perspective, Bogdanos also teaches a lesson on antiquities. The art is described in its historical context, allowing someone without an art background to understand the magnitude of the damage done by the museum’s looters. Against the back-drop of armed combat, Bognadnos informs us about the importance of these missing treasures and the potential for future damage to artifacts. The U.S. army has recovered many museum pieces, yet a large number of works remain missing, and there are major obstacles that lay ahead in the recovery of those pieces.

Thieves of Baghdad makes a case for devoting additional funding and resources to the protection of cultural artifacts and the recovery of looted works. Bogdanos reminds us that we all have a responsibility to protect the richness of humankind’s accomplishments and the art that represents our common cultural past.

A curator checks artifacts at the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad on March 17, 2008 in a National Geographic article “Iraq Museum Still Too Damaged to Reopen”. Photograph by Thaier al-Sudnai/Reuters.

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The following open letter was posted on the Iraqcrisis List.

Mr. Nouri al Maliki, Prime Minister of Iraq
Mr. Mufeed al Jazairi, Head of Cultural Committee, Iraqi Parliament
Mr. Qahtan al Juburi, Minister of Tourism
Mr. Qais Husain Rashid, Acting Chairman of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage

February 11th, 2009
Dear Sirs,

We write to you with serious concern about the preservation of the cultural heritage of our country. As you know, the 2003 war resulted in extensive damage to the museums and historical sites of Iraq. We are now facing another type of destruction, the destruction that can result from lack of knowledge. We have learned of the plans to open the Iraq Museum within two weeks. While we are not in principle opposed to the opening of the museums of Iraq, and feel that the cultural heritage of a nation ought to be open to the public, such an act must proceed according to international standards of museology and conservation. Opening a museum is not simply unlocking a door. Preparing a museum collection for opening usually requires at least one year of careful work, even in the best of circumstance. From a curatorial perspective, it takes many months to do this in a professional and responsible manner.

The plan to open one of the world’s most important museums in a period of two weeks displays a remarkable unawareness of cultural heritage management. The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities seems to be unaware that there are internationally acknowledged standards and disciplines of museology and cultural heritage management, that scholars with doctorates and years of experience in these fields will necessarily be better able to judge what procedure needs to be followed in order to protect the country’s museums and historical sites.

Similar conservation concerns arise regarding the government’s plans for large-scale demolition and reconstruction in the historical cities of Najaf, Kerbala, Old Basra, in Basra, the authorities are ignoring the inspector of antiquities who points out that this is a threat to the old city of Basra, and Wasit. We would respectfully point out that the Iraqi Antiquities Law Number 55 for the year of 2002 and other properties laws requires that the scholars of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage must be consulted on all such matters and that archaeological field surveys must be conducted before any land is given over for large scale construction projects. These laws were
wilfully disregarded by the American occupation’s construction projects under the administration of George Bush, and it is equally wrong if they are disregarded by the government of Iraq, or the international firms who are given the contracts for the construction.

The museums and historical sites of Iraq should not fall victim to the political whim of the moment, and be sacrificed for the sake of a public relations campaign on behalf of government. They do not belong to the government but to the people of Iraq. It is the government’s duty to hold the cultural heritage in trust for the people. When a government does not, it is the duty of the people to voice their concerns. We therefore take it as our duty to make public these very grave concerns.

Sincerely,

Dr. Zainab al Bahrani, Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University, New York. Formerly curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Dr. Lamia al Gailani, Research scholar, and former Curator, the Iraq Museum, Baghdad.

Dr. Selma al Radhi, Monument preservationist and archaeologist. Winner of the 2007 Agha Khan Prize for Architectural Preservation.

Dr. Nada al Shabout, Professor of Art History, University of North Texas, curatorial advisor to the
Qatar Museums Authority.

Dr. Donny George Youkhanna, Professor of Archaeology, State University of New York at Stony Brook New York, former Chairman of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of Iraq.