Why Distort the Facts when they support you?

The Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld responded to the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad by saying, "Stuff happens... the images you are seeing over and over and over. It's the same pictures of some person walking out of some building with a vase and you see it twenty times. And you think, my goodness, were there that many vases?" Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?" Those are callous and ridiculous comments to be sure, and there were a myriad of failings in protecting the museum when hostilities began.

However Naomi Klein in her new book The Shock Doctrine is just plain wrong when she attempts to criticize the coalition forces after the Iraq invasion. An excerpt of her new book is published in today's Guardian. After reading the piece I wondered, why distort the facts so badly when the solid facts actually could support your position. Here is the relevant excerpt:

The bombing badly injured Iraq, but it was the looting, unchecked by occupying troops, that did the most to erase the heart of the country that was.

"The hundreds of looters who smashed ancient ceramics, stripped display cases and pocketed gold and other antiquities from the National Museum of Iraq pillaged nothing less than records of the first human society," reported the Los Angeles Times. "Gone are 80% of the museum's 170,000 priceless objects." The national library, which contained copies of every book and doctoral thesis ever published in Iraq, was a blackened ruin. Thousand-year-old illuminated Qur'ans had disappeared from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which was left a burned-out shell. "Our national heritage is lost," pronounced a Baghdad high-school teacher. A local merchant said of the museum, "It was the soul of Iraq. If the museum doesn't recover the looted treasures, I will feel like a part of my own soul has been stolen." McGuire Gibson, an archaeologist at the University of Chicago, called it "a lot like a lobotomy. The deep memory of an entire culture, a culture that has continued for thousands of years, has been removed".

Thanks mostly to the efforts of clerics who organised salvage missions in the midst of the looting, a portion of the artefacts has been recovered. But many Iraqis were, and still are, convinced that the memory lobotomy was intentional - part of Washington's plans to excise the strong, rooted nation that was and replace it with their own model. "Baghdad is the mother of Arab culture," 70-year-old Ahmed Abdullah told the Washington Post, "and they want to wipe out our culture."

As the war planners were quick to point out, the looting was done by Iraqis, not foreign troops. And it is true that Rumsfeld did not plan for Iraq to be sacked - but he did not take measures to prevent it from happening either, or to stop it once it had begun. These were failures that cannot be dismissed as mere oversights.

During the 1991 Gulf war, 13 Iraqi museums were attacked by looters, so there was every reason to believe that poverty, anger at the old regime and the general atmosphere of chaos would prompt some Iraqis to respond in the same way (especially given that Saddam had emptied the prisons several months earlier). The Pentagon had been warned by leading archaeologists that it needed to have an airtight strategy to protect museums and libraries before any attack, and a March 26 Pentagon memo to coalition command listed "in order of importance, 16 sites that were crucial to protect in Baghdad". Second on the list was the museum. Other warnings had urged Rumsfeld to send an international police contingent in with the troops to maintain public order -another suggestion that was ignored.

Even without the police, however, there were enough US soldiers in Baghdad for a few to be dispatched to the key cultural sites, but they weren't sent. There are numerous reports of US soldiers hanging out by their armoured vehicles and watching as trucks loaded with loot drove by - a reflection of the "stuff happens" indifference coming straight from Rumsfeld. Some units took it upon themselves to stop the looting, but in other instances, soldiers joined in. The Baghdad International Airport was completely trashed by soldiers who, according to Time, smashed furniture and then moved on to the commercial jets on the runway: "US soldiers looking for comfortable seats and souvenirs ripped out many of the planes' fittings, slashed seats, damaged cockpit equipment and popped out every windshield." The result was an estimated $100m worth of damage to Iraq's national airline - which was one of the first assets to be put on the auction block in an early and contentious partial privatisation.

From what I understand, Klein argues in her book that crisis has been manipulated by leaders to bring about sweeping social change. That seems like an interesting hypothesis, and its the kind of controversial and engaging argument that I usually find interesting. But in discussing the looting of the Iraq museum, she gets a myriad of facts wrong, distorts the truth, and wholly fails to account for the good work American soldiers, led by former prosecutor, and then Colonel Matthew Bogdanos did in tracking down objects. I talked about this last year.

Most notably, the 170,000 figure has been discredited, and the number of objects still missing is probably around 3,000. That's still an alarming number to be sure, but why quote old and inaccurate estimates? Also, the Iraqi military occupied the site, and fired on coalition troops from the museum. To be sure, the invading forces dropped the ball when they neglected to secure the museum after the museum was abandoned, but that paints a very different picture from what Klein describes here. When you have plenty of good accurate evidence to support your position, why would you resort to this kind of lazy inaccuracy? I presume that in her zeal to lay out here position she neglected to account for other points of view. This is the same kind of myopic view which has plagued the current administration. It becomes all the more puzzling though when you consider Rumsfeld did most of Klein's work for her.

Baghdad Museum: Five Years On

Without question the invasion of Iraq has produced tremendous theft from Museums, as well as illegal excavation. It has been five years since the Iraqi National Museum was ransacked. At the time, reports were too-quick to judge the damage, and many outlets reported that as many as 170,000 objects had been taken. As it turns out, present estimates indicate that perhaps 15,000 objects were taken, and of that number a still-disheartening half are missing. Plus, the museum itself still seems a long way from opening its doors.

Last week, at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. the University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center held a panel discussion, "Antiquities Under Siege," to examine the ongoing situation in Iraq. The event is in conjunction with the publication of Antiquities Under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection after the Iraq War, edited by Lawrence Rothfield. I haven't yet had a chance to read this, but the work aims to look at went went wrong with the protection of Iraqi heritage, and what can be done better in the future. Also last week, there was an exhibition called "Catastrophe!" at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum.

Setting aside the issue of whether the invasion was even an acceptable course of action, it seems to me a straightforward problem arose, which was entirely predictable. Looting of art and cultural sites is an inevitable outflow of armed conflict, and where the US and coalition forces did not have nearly enough troops to accomplish what they had intended, looting of all kinds occurred.

Below is a riveting interview with a couple of journalists, John Burns and Dexter Filkins of the New York Times. If you pick up the interview at just before the 40-minute mark, Filkins is describing the theft of Arabian horses on April 9, 2003 from the Iraqi Olympic headquarters right in front of American marines. There were only 7,000 troops policing an area where Saddam had had 250,000.




There's another very interesting article in the Sunday Times by John Curtis of the British Museum who had conducted digs in Iraq in the past, and who flew to Baghdad on April 22 with reporters from the BBC:

Files, papers, index cards, photographs, films and computer software had all been swept off the shelves and onto the floor. It seemed that the intention had been to start bonfires, but fortunately this did not happen. All the safes in the building had been broken open. It was also clear that the intruders had broken into the storerooms, but at this stage nobody had been inside to assess the extent of the losses. There has been much speculation as to whether the looting that took place was spontaneous or organised – and who, precisely, was behind it. Theories have ranged from the involvement of Ba’athist loyalists, determined to cause maximum civilian unrest, to the connivance of international antique-dealers, requesting items to be stolen to order. Five years on, these questions remain unanswered. The whereabouts of looted material is also hotly disputed. There is clearly a black market in Iraqi antiquities, but where the pieces have ended up is not yet known.

The Baghdad museum suffered theft which has been well-documented, but a number of other sites have been damaged at the hands of coalition forces and looters, including the looting of a museum in Mosul, and the damage at Babylon. Coalition forces are finally now being educated and informed, but there is a continuous problem of widespread looting in more remote regions.

I think it is great that more attention is being paid to Iraqi Heritage at the 5-year anniversary. However this looting and theft will continue into the foreseeable future. Policing of sites is important, however that seems incredibly difficult given the security situation in the country. Perhaps we could continue to make sure the appropriate penalties are in place for buying and selling these objects as both the US and the UK have done; but the looting appears to be ongoing. Buyers all over the world seem inclined to buy these objects, and this demand will likely continue to make it profitable to steal objects and illegally excavate sites.

Google to Create Digital Archive of Iraq's National Museum

Google has announced it will create a digital record of the Baghdad museum's collection, and will make the images available online by early next year.  As Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive announced last week, "The history of the beginning of - literally - civilization... is preserved in this museum."  Over 14,000 images have been taken, allowing the Iraqi public, and the rest of the world to see the images. 

Rod Norland notes in an article for the New York Times that the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had already digitized part of the collection, and created a website, the virtual Museum of Iraq.  So there is some duplication here.  A few things to take away from the announcement.

First, it seems like a good idea to digitize these objects, and make the images available to to public generally.  However many other museums are unlikely to take this step, at least in the short term.  We don't know how expensive an undertaking this was, as the costs are born by the US State Department and Google.  But museums also will fear the loss of revenue from their own publications.  As many museums prohibit photography, often the only way to take home a photographic souvenir of the visit is to purchase the shiny museum publications.  Of course part of the impetus for this digitization project is to make these work accessible—at least in a digital way—to members of the public who are unable to visit the Baghdad museum.

Secondly, I wonder what procedures google followed with the project.  Are these high-resolution images which will be useful for scholars?  Will these images contain information on the history of the objects? When they were excavated? Where they were unearthed?  And finally, will these images be made available to the various stolen art databases.  If another tragedy were to befall this important museum, will these images be useful to help prevent the sale of artifacts? 

1. Rod Nordland, Google Chief Announces Plan in Baghdad to Put Iraqi Artifacts Online, The New York Times, November 25, 2009.
2. Google to digitise Iraq artefacts, BBC, November 24, 2009.

Looting From Iraq: A Better Perspective

I'd like to devote some time today to the issue of looting following the invasion of Iraq in April, 2003. Specifically, I'd like to point out the perspective of Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, a Manhattan District Attorney, classics scholar, and Marine who led a specialized multi-agency task force. Immediately after the invasion, countless news agencies and press reports claimed that 170,000 Iraqi antiquities had been stolen while American forces stood by and let things happen. Bogdanos has recently published a book about his exploits, Thieves of Baghdad, and has also written scholarly articles, including this one from the American Journal of Archaeology.

Much of the recent book details his personal experience as the son of Greek immigrants in New York, his decision to study classics during his time in law school, and also his experiences near ground zero on September 11, 2001. He is passionate about his service in the marine corps, and about his mission in Iraq, which may put some readers who are critical of the war and the invasion ill-at-ease. However, Bogdanos remains candid throughout, pointing out the struggles of marines in Iraq in dealing with the media, tribal leaders, and even western misconceptions.

The strength of Bogdanos' account of the looting of the Baghdad museum is the way he brings a prosecutor's attention to detail to the whole controversy. He creates a time line, and gives his opinion as to what the US military should or should not have done at various times during the invasion of the city of Baghdad.

In my view, a lot of commentators took their anger at the invasion, and turned it into blind criticism of how the military should have protected these antiquities . After reading Bogdanos' account, clearly mistakes were made, but not to the extent that initial reports indicated. The Baghdad museum itself was rarely open to visitors under Saddam Hussein. In fact, American troops would have likely done more harm to the objects in the museum if they had been more robust in capturing the museum earlier, as there were Iraqi troops inside the museum. This picture shows a hole left by an american tank which was being fired upon from the archway. Granted, there are many arguments against the US-led invasion of Iraq, and the loss of Iraqi cultural heritage is a shining example of what went wrong, just not to the extent initially reported.

Who exactly looted the museum remains unknown for sure, but the US military's policy of amnesty for the return of objects helped to bring back a number of priceless artifacts, including the sacred vase of Warka, which is 5,000 years old and considered one of the oldest existing sculptures. Unfortunately many priceless objects are still missing, and are on the FBI's most wanted art thefts list.

In the end, after reading Bogdanos' account, the tragedy of recent Iraqi history becomes manifest. This is the cradle of civilization; unfortunately now it is the location of a great deal of violence. Sadly, the recent death estimates which exceed 600,000 illustrate this.

Donny George Youkhanna on Iraqi Heritage

Mike Boehm of the LA Times has an interesting summary of the talk given by the former director of the Baghdad museum, Donny George Youkhanna, at the Bowers Museum on Sunday. It's a troubling account. Here's an excerpt:

"To have the museum hurt in this way, it bleeds my heart," George said in a quiet, even voice during the opening moments of his talk and slide presentation Sunday at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art. Among the images worth a thousand sad words were before-and-after photographs of statuary that had been pulverized or beheaded. And there were numerous "before" photos with no "after" standing in for some of the 7,500 or objects still missing from the museum -- most of them small items such as coins and cylindrical seals used to press imprints into clay tablets.

The huge projections on the auditorium's screen during George's 75-minute talk included views of an almost perfectly round hole left by American tank gunners above the entry arch of the Iraq Museum's children's wing. George said the gunners had returned the fire of Iraqis who had taken up positions on the museum's rooftop during the U.S. ground assault to capture Baghdad in April 2003. An image from last January showed the same building, hole-free, but with one wall now marred by huge bloodstains -- part of the spatter-pattern from a car bombing in the street below.

George, a stocky, graying man who speaks English fluently, is a war refugee who has landed at Stony Brook University in New York, where he is a visiting professor of anthropology. He told of how, in short order during 2006, he was stripped of his authority and forced to resign because "this institution should not be led by a Christian, it should be led by a Shiite Muslim." Simply living in Iraq soon became untenable. His 17-year-old son received a death threat -- an envelope containing a bullet and a message that accused the youth of "cursing Islam, teasing Muslim girls" and having a father who was helping the Americans.

George said that during the American ground assault on Baghdad, he and a colleague who had been baby-sitting the Iraq Museum were forced to leave for three days. When they returned, its interior looked "as if it had been hit by a hurricane."

Initial media reports said the museum had been utterly ransacked, with 170,000 objects stolen or destroyed, but the truth was closer to 15,000. Many priceless collections, including the fabled Treasures of Nimrud, a horde of exquisitely wrought gold and jewelry, had long been secured in Iraq's Central Bank. Still, an investigation-and-recovery task force led by Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos found that looters who knew what they were looking for -- and probably gained entry with help from somebody with inside knowledge -- had made off with 40 prime objects on display in the galleries and more than 10,500 items that had been secreted in a basement storeroom.

From Saddam's Palace to Museum

Interesting plans to convert a palace built by Saddam Hussein into a museum near Basra:

John Curtis, head of the British Museum's Department of the Ancient Near East - the first foreign museum expert in the world to visit Iraq - said: "The building ... has the advantage of a rather wonderful setting, where you could one day have a beautiful garden with fountains."

He added: "This is terribly important in the regeneration of Basra and the wider region. While all kinds of infrastructural projects like electricity, water, hospitals and schools are being tackled, cultural resources are almost entirely lacking ... not just a museum but even a public library."

The original museum recording the region's 5,000-year-old history, which includes some of the richest archaeological sites in the world, was ransacked by looters during the Gulf war in 1991. The city was also the legendary home of Sinbad the sailor, an association that fuelled a flourishing tourist trade which has been destroyed by the wars.

What remained of the museum's collection, which included beautiful vases, terracotta and stone figures, bronze weapons, jewellery, thousands of cuneiform inscribed clay tablets and carved seals, was transferred for safekeeping to the national museum in Baghdad, just before the start of the allied attack in 2003. Ironically, the Baghdad museum's own collection was one of the worst casualties of the war, with hundreds of pieces still missing, but the Basra collection, with those of other provincial museums, remained safe in a sealed store which was not discovered by the looters.

Rare Good News in Iraq

There appears to be some rare good news in Baghdad of late. There are indications that attacks in Iraq are way down. Also, John Swain of the Sunday Times reports today on the likely reopening of the Baghdad Museum next month, according to Amira Emiran the acting director.

Visits will be confined to just two galleries on the ground floor containing Assyrian and Islamic treasures that are too large and heavy to be easily removed. The remaining 16 galleries will remain empty and closed and security will be tight. Nevertheless, Iraqi and American officials are keen to portray the opening as a sign that security in Baghdad has improved after the chaos of the past few years...

The Assyrian Hall has monumental sculptures, including stone panels from the royal palace at Khorsabad and two winged bulls. The other large gallery that is opening, the Islamic Hall, has the eighth century mihrab from the Al-Mansur mosque in Baghdad. It is also hoped to display 10 monumental Parthian sculptures from Hatra in the courtyard which links the two galleries and through which visitors will pass.

The decision was welcomed by Matthew Bogdanos, a colonel in the US Marine Corps reserves, who investigated the theft and destruction of thousands of artefacts from the museum and from thousands of Iraq’s poorly protected historic sites where looting has been conducted “on an industrial scale” since the war.

Bogdanos, a New York prosecutor, said: “I don’t know if there is any such thing as a right or wrong moment to open the museum. But great things are won by great risk and the museum should open and it should stay open. If it means doubling security, then double security.”

Estimates of the number of missing objects vary, but about 10,000 objects are probably still missing, out of a total of 15,000 objects taken. One piece still missing is the ivory plaque pictured above, Lioness Attacking a Nubian, 8th c. BC. News of the reopening is welcome news, especially given it was seldom open to the public in the two decades preceding the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The announcement was made last week at the meeting of UNESCO's International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding of Iraqi Cultural heritage.

The news from Iraq is not all good however. The Bush administration is tempering its goals in Iraq, as military progress has been gained but the US will begin its major drawdown of troops following the "surge", (i.e. escalation). US Officials are lowering their expectations, dropping plans for an oil-sharing plan and regional elections. The increase has yielded some important military successes, reflected in the decrease in attacks, but this military presence is not sustainable. One wonders if the decision to reopen the museum was made by Iraqi's or if it was encouraged by their American counterparts. Even if it were the latter, the fact that Iraqis may now be able to view some objects safely is perhaps cause for cautious optimism.

Update on the Baghdad Museum

Martin Bailey has a very interesting interview with John Curtis, the Keeper of the Middle East at the British Museum on the current state of protection of archaeological sites in Iraq, now that we are approaching the five-year anniversary of the invasion, and the looting of the museum which soon followed. Here's an excerpt:

TAN: How serious is looting of archaeological sites?

JC: The situation has been very bad, particularly in the south, at sites such as Isin, Tell Jokha (ancient Umma) and Bismaya (ancient Adab). However, recently there seems to have been an improvement. Professor Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University in New York State is monitoring satellite images of sites for evidence of digging. There now seems to be quite a falling off in the digging.

TAN: Why the improvement?

JC: Dr Abbas al-Hussainy, until recently the head of antiquities, had good contacts with tribal groups in the south and he stressed to them the importance of preserving sites. Another reason is that the market seems to have dried up, and there is no point in digging if you cannot realise quick profits. There may have been an improvement in policing of sites, but this is very recent, only in the past few months.

TAN: Are looted Iraqi antiquities turning up in western markets?

JC: There doesn’t seem to have been much Iraqi material appearing in London or western markets, and very little on eBay. There may be collectors buying in the Gulf states and the Far East, but this is speculation. Probably a lot of the looted material has remained in Iraq.

TAN: How much damage has been caused to sites by Coalition troops?

JC: Iraq is a vast archaeological site. You cannot have military manoeuvres without causing a great deal of damage.

I expect a number of new five-year what now retrospectives on the looting of the Baghdad museum, and the ongoing looting in Iraq. It seems to me that this issue is still under-reported, particularly by American journalists. What are American and Iraqi officials doing to safeguard sites? Sadly, I think they are doing very little, because the security situation in the country remains unstable.

Did UN Troops Violate the 1954 Hague Convention?

I am just catching up on this story, but it strikes me as particularly troubling. 6,000 year-old paintings of animal and human figures have been spray-painted over by UN peacekeepers in the Western Sahara. The UN personnel with the Minurso mission in the Western Saraha signed and dated their work, and in some cases revealed their identities. As the Times reported back in January:

One Croatian peacekeeper scrawled “Petar CroArmy” across a rock face. Extensive traces of pigment from rock painting are visible underneath. Another left behind Cyrillic graffiti, and “Evgeny” from Russia scribbled AUI, the code for the Minurso base at Aguanit. “Mahmoud” from Egypt left his mark at Rekeiz Lemgasem, and “Ibrahim” wrote his name and number over a prehistoric painting of a giraffe. “Issa”, a Kenyan major who signed his name and wrote the date, had just completed a UN course, Ethics in Peacekeeping, documents show.

The Middle East Online reported that Morocco's director of national heritage has accused the UN forces of graffiti on ancient sites, but also the theft of cave paintings, desecrating graves, and removing engraved paving stones.

Such disregard for important heritage of course implicates the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. To add to the difficulty, the head of the UN mission in Western Sahara (Minurso), seems to have bungled an apology, and served to incite more unrest between the groups he should be monitoring.

I'd really recommend those interested to have a look at what David Nishimura has to say on this, as I picked up the story from him. He notes the parallels with the coverage of the theft of objects from the Iraqi Museum, and the part coalition forces may have played in the looting of the museum in Baghdad. However he notes "the greatest damage in Iraq has been indirect, a consequence of civil disorder, rather than the direct result of military action. The vandalism in the Sahara is particularly shocking due to its deliberateness and the identity of those responsible, along with the complete lack of mitigating circumstances."

I think that's exactly right, and this story has received very little media attention in the West, particularly in the United States. There was a lot of legitimate outrage at the actions of the US military on the heels of the looting of the Baghdad Museum, however the actions of these UN forces deserves an equal measure of outrage in my view, and the troops responsible should be subjected to criminal penalties for looting and vandalizing these sites. Sadly, I think this reveals just how ineffective the international legal regime has been in protecting sites during armed conflict.

I know by monitoring the url logs that this site attracts some interest of journalists, notably when some of my ideas may prove useful for a story, which is great. However rather than writing the same story about Marion True for example, why not broaden coverage to encompass the full nature and extent of the antiquities problem?

Footnotes

Google Earth Image of Leptis Magna, one of Libya's Important Heritage Sites

• UNESCO is warning the art and antiquities trade to be "particularly wary of objects from Libya in the present circumstances".
• Is art theft on the rise? 
• Prof. Jen Kreder has a number of strong criticisms of the Department of Justice with respect to its positions on Nazi-era restitution suits in an Op-Ed for the Detroit Free Press. 
• More on the long-running dispute between George Grosz's successors and the Museum of Modern Art.
• How many Degas sculptures are authentic? Are Degas heirs "rubber-stamping" these works for a share of the proceeds?
• Two very different reports of a recent appearance by representatives from the FBI's Art Theft Program at a gathering of the Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association. One report in the Santa Fe New Mexican said David Kice "drew laughs" when he asked for help identifying illicit artifacts. Another AP report says the laughs were drawn when the FBI revealed it paid $2,800 for four prayer stones which would have been lucky to fetch $100. Dace Hyatt argued the government "was clearly inducing felony charges with an erroneous value system". Another account from Kate Fitz Gibbon suggests the AP article had a more accurate depiction.
• Museum staff in Baghdad are really struggling to create an inventory of the Baghdad Museum's collection—what is not mentioned is that many museums have not completed a complete inventory, it is expensive and time-consuming.

Recovered Picasso a Fake?

The work of art recovered by Iraqi forces last week may be a fake.  This label on the back of the work has some spelling mistakes, and indicates the Louvre sold the work to the Kuwait Museum.  However the Louvre has said it has never had a Picasso. 

From the AP:

The London-based Art Loss Registry said it has no record of any paintings missing from the Kuwait National Museum, and no record of this particular painting as missing at all.  The Picasso Museum in Paris and France's national museum were searching their archives for signs of the painting, which Iraqi forces seized Tuesday during a raid on a house near Hillah, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Baghdad.  A local judge in Hillah, Aqeel al-Janabi, said Thursday the painting will be sent to Baghdad after an investigation but refused to provide details.  In a video released by the Hillah police, the man detained for trying to sell it, 33-year-old Maitham al-Issawi, said it belonged to his father, who gave it to him before his death. His father, al-Issawi, was an army officer who took part in the invasion of Kuwait, which led to the 1991 Gulf War.  In the video, officers hold up the canvas, which has fold marks on the front. Police have said the painting bears Picasso's signature but would not comment further Thursday.

Vanishing Heritage in the Cradle of Civilization

Things are looking increasingly grim in Iraq these days, with the US considering arming Sunni groups that once attacked coalition forces. Soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, western journalists visited the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad and reported incorrectly that 170,000 objects were stolen from the museum. More careful reporting soon accurately placed that number far lower, and current estimates seem to indicate that a still alarming 3,000 objects are still missing, with about 47 main exhibition artifacts missing.

Thus I always maintain a healthy bit of skepticism when articles come out detailing the loss of archaeological context and heritage in Iraq. The article last Friday by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian titled "In Iraq's four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the vandals"even viewed skeptically reveals some very troubling things about the way archaeological sites are treated by coalition forces.

The catalyst for the discussion was a presentation by Abbas al-Hussaini, the head of Iraq's board of antiquities and heritage to the British Museum. He detailed a number of disturbing things. The former head of the antiquities board in Iraq, Donny George, left for a teaching position in New York, fearing for his life. Today the national museum "is not open but shut... Its doors are bricked up, it is surrounded by concrete walls and its exhibits are sandbagged. Even the staff cannot get inside." A 10th century caravenserai of Khan al-Raba was used to explode captured weapons. Looters are better armed than the Iraqi forces seeking to protect the ancient monuments. Two 4,000 year-old cities, Isin and Shurnpak, have been demolished by looting pits. The 11 teams Hussaini has organized travel the countryside attempting to retrieve any artifacts the looters have left behind. Even muslim sites are subject to destruction, with a number of bombings of mosques from the 10th and 11th centuries

When I was in Istanbul in May, I saw some of the glazed bricks from the Ishtar gate leading to Babylon, and they are stunning. The lion image above was very impressive. For me then perhaps the most disturbing claims detail the destruction taking place at the ancient city of Babylon:

Hussaini confirmed a report... on America's conversion of Nebuchadnezzar's great city of Babylon into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a 150-hectare camp for 2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick pavement to the Ishtar Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself damaged. The archaeology-rich subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags, and large areas covered in compacted gravel for helipads and car parks. Babylon is being rendered archaeologically barren.

Despite some unnecessary snarking by Jenkins here, the destruction at Babylon is a grave tragedy. He does conveniently overlook some facts though. The coalition forces only seem to be continuing the destruction and disdain Saddam Hussein had for the site when he was in power. This slide show taken by US Marine Gunnery Sergeant Daniel O'Connell in 2003 shows the ancient city, the unfortunate modern reconstruction by Hussein on top of the archaeological site, and the modern palace he built where marines first stayed. The colonel in charge of the site apologized last year, and UNESCO officials are even considering developing the place into a tourist attraction at some point.

It seems very unfortunate that coalition forces, in the face of the looting of so many sites, should have blundered so badly at Babylon, which is in one of the most secure regions of Iraq. The Geneva Convention dictates that forces should treat opposing cultural heritage with care. Also, though the US and UK have failed to implement the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict(because it might restrict their ability to use nuclear arms), they notionally abide by its tenets.

The US is doing a good job of policing its antiquities market, as a Fox News cameraman was arrested for smuggling Iraqi antiquities into the country recently. The UK also has legislation preventing the import of Iraqi antiquities. Jenkins gets a final jab in at the Department of Culture Media and Sport which seems far more concerned with the upcoming London Olympics than the illicit cultural property market. I wonder if the £400,000 recently spent on the unfortunate mascot would have been better served policing the antiquities market. The Met's Art and Antiquities squad has only 3 full time investigators, and is in jeopardy of further budget cuts. But only so much can be done when provenance or a title history is not routinely given during transactions. As long as the market is hidden from view, looters will continue to find purchasers for their ill-gotten gains.

Looted Objects Returned to Afghanistan

The BBC reports on the return of 1,500 objects which were seized by customs agents at Heathrow airport.  A great deal of attention was given to the looting of the Baghdad Museum and other sites in Iraq.  But are we ignoring the problems in Afghanistan?  This may be only a fraction of the objects which are escaping its borders. 

More than 1,500 artefacts were recovered in an 11-day operation. Many are priceless objects of Islamic art looted in illegal excavations.

They include a magnificent tall bronze bird. Nine-hundred years ago, its owner would have burned incense in the drawer that slots into its puffed chest.

"We are really happy to have our objects back," says Mohammad Fahim Rahimi, who has been preparing descriptions of the recovered treasures in the Dari language for the display cabinets.

There are prehistoric tools - up to 6,000 years old - and ancient coins, as well as more recent Islamic tiles, inscribed basins and bronze candlesticks.

"We wish all the countries around the world - if they have our collections - would transfer them back to our country too," Mr Rahimi says.

During Afghanistan's civil war, Kabul museum was on the front line. Used as a base by the Mujahedin, the building was badly damaged. But most devastating of all - 70% of its rich collection was systematically looted and smuggled abroad.

Much of what survived was then smashed to bits by the Taliban.

AP: Antiquities Trade "Growing problem at US Ports"

Tamara Lush has an overview of antiquities coming through US ports:

_ On Monday, federal authorities will repatriate some 1,000 items, including a rare temple marker worth $100,000, to Iraq. On June 7, 2001, ICE agents in New York received information from the Art Loss Register that a Sumerian Foundation Cone, buried under a Babylonian temple, was being sold by auction at Christie's New York. ICE New York agents seized the artifact from Christie's and discovered that it, and several other items in the U.S., had been stolen from the Baghdad Museum and other locations at the end of the first Gulf War.

_ In May, four tons of fossils from Argentina — including 200-million-year-old dinosaur eggs, egg shell fragments, petrified pine cones and fossilized prehistoric crabs — were seized by federal agents in Tucson, Ariz. Authorities said a corporation based in Argentina had brought the fossils into the country. No arrests have been made, but the fossils were repatriated.

_ In February, an Army pilot was arrested and charged with stealing 370 pre-dynastic artifacts from the Ma'adi Museum near Cairo, Egypt, and selling them to an art dealer in Texas for $20,000. The artifacts, dating to 3000 B.C. and earlier, were originally discovered during excavations in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s. The pilot, Edward George Johnson, pleaded guilty in June and is awaiting sentencing.

Lush does not follow her argument to its logical extension though. She notes the new AAM and AAMD guidelines, as well as the difficulty ICE agents and others have in establishing criminal wrongdoing. She fails to note looted antiquities can still slip through this patchwork regulatory framework because of the paucity of accurate provenance information given in antiquities transactions.

Iraq Museum to Reopen This Month

From Reuters,

Iraq will reopen later this month its renowned national museum, home to priceless artefacts plundered in the unchecked chaos following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, an Iraqi minister said.


The long-awaited reopening marks a milestone in the government's efforts to retrieve and preserve artefacts and archaeological sites from Iraq's history after almost six years of theft, destruction and violence.

The country is said to be the site of the 'cradle of civilisation', the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and the looting of relics -- some thousands of years old -- was seen as a tragedy for Iraq and for the world.

Qahtan al-Jibouri, Iraq's minister of state for tourism and antiquities, said the government had been renovating the museum in central Baghdad for several months and planned to open its doors to the public before the end of February.

The Weiss Case: Pleading Guilty to Getting Duped

Two "genuine fake" ancient coins

My grandfather once had a shiny piece of jewelry (I think it was a cubic zirconia pinky ring) which he would describe as a "genuine fake diamond ring". He would say it fast enough that if you weren't listening close you thought he would just say 'genuine'.

Early this year a prominent physician, Arnold Peter C. Weiss, was arrested and charged with dealing in recently looted coins. Last week Weiss pleaded guilty to three counts of attempted criminal possession of the coins. He thought they had been recently excavated. But they were in fact modern forgeries—a predictable consequence of not asking enough questions about the history of these objects before their acquisition. Unlike Charles Stanish, who is heartened by these fakes which don't cause the looting of a site, I think these fakes do pollute our understanding of the past and defraud our collective cultural heritage.

Chasing Aphrodite reports that as part of the plea agreement reached with the Manhattan District Attorney's office, the defendant must serve 70 hours of community service, forfeit 23 other ancient coins seized, and pay a $3,000 fine. But he has some writing to do as well:

The court also required Weiss, the former treasurer of the American Numismatic Society, to write a detailed article in the society’s magazine detailing the widespread practice of dealing in coins with unclear ownership histories. It will describe the corresponding threat to the archaeological record and propose solutions for reforming the coin trade. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said, “Thanks to today’s disposition, the article to be written by the defendant for a coin trade magazine will raise needed awareness about unprovenanced coins, and will promote responsible collecting among numismatists.”

It should be a real page turner. I suspect Matthew Bogdanos, the Manhattan assistant DA had much to do with that writing assignment.

Paul Barford notes of the fakes:

Those coins always looked to me suspect, too fussy and the Akragas looked like it was a copy of another in a published collection, but who am I to question what the US authorities are up to, eh? (back in January, I was asked to keep my suspicions to myself, so did, but glad to see I am not going crazy). Anyway it turns out that those "priceless ancient coins" "weren't worth a wooden nickel".

Rick St. Hilaire thinks this case may be the start of increased use of state laws to police the illicit antiquities trade:

Indeed, all fifty states have receiving stolen property laws on the books, which can be applied in cases where a person is in criminal possession of stolen cultural property. The states also have "attempt" laws, which would cover a person's attempt to possess stolen cultural property or possession of forged cultural property believed to be authentic. Beyond these statutes, the states maintain consumer protection laws with applicable penalties to guard against the appearance of fraudulent and stolen items in the marketplace. The states also have nonprofit enforcement statutes that may be applied to specific cultural institutions or boards of directors that acquire illegal art, archaeological finds, or ethnological artifacts.

Let's hope so. But the same obstacle to state prosecutions exists for federal prosecutions as well. The trade makes it terribly difficult to gather sufficient evidence to establish wrongdoing in an anonymous trade. Bogdanos has been looking hard for a dodgy antiquities dealer to prosecute since the Baghdad museum looting. He has one now. But Weiss was duped by the under-regulated antiquities trade. Perhaps that notion will cause him to sit down to write his assignment with some real vigor (Peter, if you are reading, I'm happy to read a first draft). 

Footnotes

Is art in America in bad shape? Stephen Colbert probably says no.

• The arts in America are ailing.
• In San Francisco a homeless man with mental illness who stole 40 prints and works of art from the San Francisco Botanical Gardens library, and objects different institutions was sentenced to four years probation after he entered a guilty plea.
• Donn Zaretsky notes the hypocrisy in deaccessioning.
• Does the "insane wealth of socially worthless Wall Street zillionaires" produce a climate for the "worthless" works of Damien Hirst?
• Robert Wittman is organizing a paid seminar (for $2,500) from June 12-17 on art recovery, security, and protection.
• Will the Baghdad Museum open its doors this Spring? The $13 million provided by the U.S. government through the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project should help with better security. Though they could have saved a lot of trouble with more care eight years ago.
• Also, a new documentary is on the way, "Road to Nasiriyah" which has "stunning footage" of the looting of Iraq's archaeology.

Here's the New  York Times' video of damage and restoration at Babylon:

Footnotes 3.26.2010

• King Tut is taking a tour through New York, first stopping at the Met (for the 30 year anniversary), then the Brooklyn Museum, and lastly Times Square.
  
• An interesting new art and literary magazine, title Sw!pe, speaks from the viewpoint of museum security staff.
• Some feel that museums have a moral obligation to return Nazi-looted .
• The Staffordshire Hoard will remain in the north of England.
• Mark Durney will take over as new management of the Museum Security Network, though it appears Ton Cremers will continue to forward on information to the network.
• Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, author of Thieves of Baghdad, will be speaking at Georgetown University Law Center on April 13th at 7:00pm.
  

Iraqi Museum Objects Seized in Syria

The AP is reporting (via Syria's official news agency) that Syrian customs officials have seized 40 objects stolen from the National Museum in Baghdad.

The report quotes the chief of the customs department, Nabil al-Sayyouri, as saying the pieces were seized at al-Tanaf crossing on the Syrian-Iraqi border. They were hidden in a bag in an Iraqi crossing into Syria. The artifacts include different-sized glassware and clay tools.

Al-Sayyouri said the seized pieces were "rare and would be handed back to Iraq."

This is the third smuggling attempt aborted in less than two months by Syrian customs officials. Last month, the Syrian Cultural Ministry handed Iraq back some 700 pieces of looted priceless antiquities seized inside Syria.

Syria really seems to be taking the lead on policing its borders, with a number of important seizures in recent months.

Donny George hired at Stony Brook University

Donny George, the former director of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad has been hired as a visiting professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island. George left Iraq recently, after he feared for his safety. For many, he was the public face of the much-publicized (and sometimes over-exaggerated) theft and looting of Iraqi antiquities in 2003. George featured prominently in Matthew Bogdanos' work, Thieves of Baghdad, which I discussed earlier here. It is indeed unfortunate that George cannot continue his work in Iraq, but the situation there seems to be growing increasingly unstable. Unfortunately, protecting the nation's antiquities, and ancient sites, is not a priority for the Iraqi government, nor the foreign forces stationed there.

The picture is of the ancient city of Babylon, taken by an American soldier from a blackhawk helicopter with his digital camera.