Posted on 04/12/2003 7:05:07 AM PDT by kalt
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Looters have sacked Baghdad's antiquities museum, plundering treasures dating back thousands of years to the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia, museum staff said on Saturday.
They blamed U.S. troops for not protecting the treasures.
Surveying the littered glass wreckage of display cases and pottery shards at the Iraqi National Museum on Saturday, deputy director Nabhal Amin wept and told Reuters: "They have looted or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years...They were worth billions of dollars."
She blamed U.S. troops, who have controlled Baghdad since the collapse of President Saddam Hussein's rule on Wednesday, for failing to heed appeals from museum staff to protect it from looters who moved in to the building on Friday.
"The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened," she said. "I hold the American troops responsible for what happened to this museum."
The looters broke into rooms that were built like bank vaults with huge steel doors. The museum grounds were full of smashed doors, windows and littered with office paperwork and books.
"We know people are hungry but what are they going to do with these antiquities," said Muhsen Kadhim, a museum guard for the last 30 years but who said he was overwhelmed by the number of looters.
"As soon as I saw the American troops near the museum, I asked them to protect it but the second day looters came and robbed or destroyed all the antiquities," he said.
ARMED GUARDS
Amin told four of the museum guards to carry guns and protect what remained.
Some of the museum's artifacts had been moved into storage to avoid a repeat of damage to other antiquities during the 1991 Gulf War.
It houses items from ancient Babylon and Nineveh, Sumerian statues, Assyrian reliefs and 5,000-year-old tablets bearing some of the earliest known writing. There are also gold and silver helmets and cups from the Ur cemetery.
The museum was only opened to the public six months ago after shutting down at the beginning of the 1991 Gulf War. It survived air strikes on Baghdad in 1991 and again was almost unscathed by attacks on the capital by U.S.-led forces.
Iraq, a cradle of civilization long before the empires of Egypt, Greece or Rome, was home to dynasties that created agriculture and writing and built the cities of Nineveh, Nimrud and Babylon -- site of Nebuchadnezzar's Hanging Gardens.
It IS either/or. I don't understand your reasoning. (or lack of it) Our troops are engaged in combat, searching for POWs, and preparing to bring food and water into the city and there are not enough boots on the ground to sashay over to the Museum to do docent duty.
I have done some reading about this museum and there are some shady circumstances which leads me to believe that this looting was not unwelcome by the people who run it. Many of the artifacts are copies and the real artifacts are in museums in the western world.
You obviously don't know anything about the military nor do you seem to care. You might want to think on that if you are able to think.
I would like to know too, but have a feeling that a list of 'artifacts' contained in the museum would be similar to Saddam's weapons declatartion...and every bit as hard to verify item by item.
I have reservations about the article as well. The fact that it's clearly a hit piece ruins any claim to credibility it might have.
That's true. But notice that the headlines do not read: Terrorists Ignite Iraq's Oil Wells. That's because we committed men and resources to protect them, to preserve them for Iraq and for the world. We recognized their value and treated them accordingly. Even if the only true value is economic value, we apparently failed to recognize the value of what that museum held.
There isn't anything there worth a single American life.
The contents of that museum are--or rather were--easily worth mine.
Right on both counts. That's why all of these hysterical calls for US troops to suddenly turn their backs on the guns and homocide bombers in front of them in order to answer some suspiciously premature call for 'peacekeeping'.
NONE of our troops should be forced to die because some armchair general insists that they should forgot about their goal, forget about why they're there and suddenly go investigate every possibly bogus claim of looting.
IMO, this is the beginning of the hard drive to force the UN into Iraq as 'peacekeepers', to 'restore order'.
No way. The UN is a large part of all the problems of oppressed people all over the world.
After all, without dictators, oppressed people and chaos, what need would there be for the UN?
If we are THAT short on troops (it would only have taken a few men and a sign that says "looters will be shot" then maybe THAT'S a problem too. I hope you are right about the museum and that the items were not that valuable. If not, it is a crying shame that those things were taken and just as bad that we could have done more to deflect the criticism or better yet show we had paid attention to every detail and garnered good will. I hope when the war is over we will send in experts who can help the Iraqis get the stuff back. We ought to do something, not just blow it off because after the war the loss of this stuff will be felt more, not less keenly because it COULD have been prevented.
The ownership of many priceless artwork has become questionable because of how each was acquired. Some were gotten through outright theft, others were the spoils of war. IN this case the "acquisition" is a result of the repression and its resultant anger by the inhabitants of the region where the art was originally created. Now to what extent the inhabitants today are related to those who created the works I don't know. The main point is that eventually, the art/artifacts will find their way into the hands of buyers and at that point it is up to legal authorities to determine how it is returned.
As a fellow historian, I agree!
From: http://www.archives.gov/research_room/holocaust_era_assets/art_provenance_and_claims/oss_art_looting_investigation_unit_reports.html:
"President Roosevelt established the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas, also known as the Roberts Commission, on June 23, 1943."...
"The Commission was instrumental in the War Department's establishment of a Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives [MFA&A] program in its Civil Affairs Division to protect cultural materials in war areas." ...
"The Commission cooperated in the formation of the Art Looting Investigation Unit (ALIU) within the Office of Strategic Services."
MFA&A officers were attached to Army units during World War II and entered Germany before VE day.
There are a bunch of websites that discuss this and there was even a History Channel program on the MFA&A units. However, the best material appears to be in written form.
The troops were already protecting the oil fields. Moving them would be a problem.
Hospitals are more important than museums. (Sad to say, we've already shown we've had problems with protecting hospitals.)
I assume the people running the museums must have figured for some time that, one way or another, their collections were in danger from looters, fires, bombs, conquerors...you name it. They've had weeks to do something with the most precious (and/or most easily moveable?) items. They've had plenty of time to consider arming the guards. Why did the museum folks assume that the moment Saddam's police were gone the US military would be there to step in?
I'll bet some items actually were quietly moved in the past three weeks (or even before then).
Once again, my comments should be understood as assuming these initial reports to be true. I have some doubt and hope that they are not.
I have to agree that we don't know the whole story. The coalition's guilt could be even be worse than the deputy director describes.
The deputy director is quoted in this article. What happened to the head director? What happened to the rest of the staff? Was this poor woman left alone in that big museum?
Right. It's like people are trying to say, Oh hell the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, the Sistine Chapel, those things are not worth a single life. That's just spin. I think they are worth human lives. And society agrees because obviously people risk thier lives defending valuable property every single day, we call them police men. Nobody says, "Oh I would not want the policeman to risk his life to keep my house from being robbed." That's their JOB. Like I said, a few soldiers around that museum could have prevented this...that's their job. They don't have to do it for every building but it would have been smart to think about that ONE building because what is in it is as priceless as the Mona Lisa. Let's hope it's value has been exagerated.
The coalition did not destroy the museum. They didn't even destroy it during weeks of bombing.
That's a great observation. The math just doesn't pencil. How may mini-pickup trucks would that take to move it all? And to where???
Yep, a great place for a lot of reasons. Chicago is a terrific museum town.
(My favorite is still the British Museum.)
Who are you? General Barry McCaffrey? Again, I must remind you that our troops are still at war and were not available at the time to protect material artifacts. Strange how some people think more of material things instead of human life.
After the Gulf War over 4000 items supposedly went missing from that museum and American troops were not in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein had control over the funding and everything else in that museum. It would not surprise me if some of his Republican Guards are some of the looters.
Instead of immediately jumping on the bandwagon blaming the American troops who fight so you can post such drivel, perhaps you should consider that there were extremely legitimate reasons why that museum could not be protected by the troops. After the looting of that museum in the Gulf War, the museum officials should have been better prepared with their own security guards.
I can tell you that it is not. It held the world's premier collection of Mesopotamian antiquities. It was world-famous, and was generously supported by Saddam Hussein. (Since he saw himself as the putative heir of Hammurabi, Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin, archeology served his political purposes.)
We can hope that its destruction has been exaggerated, however.
As I recall there were a few headlines reporting torchings, not as many as anticipated, but a few. We had the advantage of experience there.
As to the economic value of that museum: I would reckon it to be a fraction of what this director claims. I would expect little, if anything, of scholarly value from this psycopath's promotion of himself as the incarnation of Nebuchadnezer.
I am telling you right now these particular material things should have been guarded at the risk of human lives. By your logic you would have to argue argue that bankers think more of their money than human life because they hire bank guards who risk their lives to protect that money. You are going to have to argue that if a guy comes to rob a bank you can't shoot him but must let him take the money because his life is worth more than the money. Suppose a mob went into the Smithsonian and took everything in it. How would you like that? How do you propose to stop that mob unless you threaten them with force, even deadly force? The fact is that in human society we pay people to risk thier lives protecting property. That's how important property is. So please don't get on some sort of moral high horse.
Much more care should have been taken by all but we are going to take the blame. And regardless of blame that stuff is gone, most of it probably forever. And as I said, the more time passes the more it is going to soak in how tragic it is. We have to do everything we can to help get it back. We can't just shrug this off.
It's just a debacle. I don't want to think about it any more.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.