Posted on 04/17/2003 4:13:39 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
PARIS, April 17 (AFP) - Much of the looting of treasures at Iraq's national museum was carried out by organised gangs who traffic in works of ancient art, according to experts at a United Nations conference called on Thursday to examine the war-damage to the country's cultural heritage.
"It looks as if at least part of the theft was a very deliberate, planned action," said McGuire Gibson, of Chicago University's Oriental Institute, who is president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad.
"Probably (it was done) by the same sorts of gangs that have been paying for the destruction of sites in Iraq over the last 12 years and the smuggling out of these objects into the international market," he said.
Looters sacked the National Archaeological Museum in Baghdad last Friday, removing or destroying thousands of artefacts and provoking widespread criticism of the occupying US army for failing to take steps to protect the building.
Among the items lost was a collection of around 80,000 cuneiform tablets that contain examples of the some of the world's earliest writing, Gibson said.
A 5,000 year-old Sumerian alabaster vase -- known as the Warka vase -- also disappeared.
The meeting of 30 international experts at the Paris headquarters of the UN's cultural organisation UNESCO was called to take stock of the damage to Iraq's heritage, recommend ways of safeguarding what remains and act to stop pillaged items reaching the world's art market.
In an address to the meeting, UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura urged US and British forces to set up a "heritage police" to protect Iraq's cultural sites and called on states to adopt legislation to prevent the import of any "cultural, archaeological or bibliographical object having recently left Iraq".
He also announced the creation of a Special Fund for Iraqi Cultural Heritage, to which Italy has already contributed 400,000 dollars (euros).
The meeting ended with agreement to send a fact-finding mission to Iraq as soon as possible to assess the losses.
At a news conference, experts and UNESCO officials admitted their knowledge of the extent of the looting was sketchy. But Gibson said: "Some very important pieces which you would find in any introductory art book have been lost."
In addition to sacking the National Archaeological Museum -- with its unique collection of artefacts dating from the start of civilisation -- looters destroyed the National Archives Centre in Baghdad and burned the National Library burned. A museum in the northern city of Mosul was also looted.
A library of Korans in the religious endowments ministry was set on fire and a collection of 20th century Iraqi figurative art collected by the Gulbenkian museum was destroyed, the UNESCO conference was told.
Eye-witnesses have described some of the looters as being directed by well-dressed men who knew what they wanted to take. Gibson said these organisers had keys to the vaults where they believed the most valued items were kept.
According to Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum in London, some of the most important treasures were relocated in the Iraqi National Bank before the US-British invasion on March 20. And though this too had been looted it was unclear if the artefacts there had been taken.
Traffickers in Iraqi archaeological items have thrived since the 1991 Gulf war thanks to growing international demand and an economic crisis in Iraq which encouraged ordinary people to find innovative new ways to make money, according to experts.
"You could have 300 or 400 people working on just one site," according to Gibson, who said the gang leaders were based abroad and passed orders back to agents in Iraq. These then directed the illegal diggings and smuggled the artefacts out.
Three days after the looting in Baghdad, there were reports that art dealers in Paris and other European cities had already been contacted with offers of stolen items, Gibson said.
Experts said one of the first tasks would be to establish a database of items what had been housed in the National Archaeoligical Museum. It was unclear if the museum's own inventory -- contained in several ledgers -- had survived.
"If you want to destroy the illicit market (in stolen artefacts) there must be a clear database... The level of proof for criminal convictions does presuppose this kind of database," said MacGregor.
Exactly. And it wasn't just Saddam and his cronies. It is becoming apparent that the staff of the museum was probably padding their own bank accounts over the years by selectively selling off items and replacing them with replicas. The fact that the written records and even computer hard drives were destroyed by the "looters" bears that out.
I heard on FNC that the museum keepers supposedly had a 48-hour emergency evacuation plan wherein they would remove the antiquities to a safe location. They should have put that plan in action in the weeks before the troops got to Baghdad. (During the sandstorm would've been optimum.) Methinks the curators may have themselves been involved in orchestrated "looting." I hope items are found eventually (and some will be) and the new "owners" are charged with theft.
We bombed the hell out of Germany to end the Nazi regime and destroyed historical items and buildings. Did anyone choose preservation of artifacts as being more important than getting rid of the Third Reich?
But, thanks to Iraqi preparations before the war, it seems the worst has been avoided. Donny George, the director-general of restoration at the Iraqi Antiquities Department, Wednesday said his staff had preserved the museum's most important treasures, including the kings' graves of Ur and the Assyrian bulls. These objects were hidden in vaults that haven't been violated by looters.
"Most of the things were removed. We knew a war was coming, so it was our duty to protect everything," Mr. George said. "We thought there would be some sort of bombing at the museum. We never thought it could be looted."
The Wall Street Journal article concludes with the paragraph containing the U.S. colonel's account that his force was taking fire from the museum and thus could not protect it from looters. It is quite ignored by the NYT and the alphabetnetwork that U.S. forces did not return fire on the museum although they would have been within their international rights to have done so.
The Leftist propaganda eunuchs are not interested in the truth, but only in their continuing caterwauling that thanks to the cowboy who would be president the sky is falling in irreplaceable chunks.
O the humanity.
Eye-witnesses have described some of the looters as being directed by well-dressed men who knew what they wanted to take. Gibson said these organisers had keys to the vaults where they believed the most valued items were kept.
Three days after the looting in Baghdad, there were reports that art dealers in Paris and other European cities had already been contacted with offers of stolen items, Gibson said.
And I'm certainly tired of hearing how it's our fault.
O'Reilly has been all over the military for not doing their duty and protecting the museum. He claims it was "apathy."
I would certainly say no more than the number of Iraqi-lives that the Iraqis were willing to sacrifice. Seems there were none. I think we will be learning a lot more about this as the days go by. The story was changing after the FBI announced it will investigate. Seems it wasn't quite as bad as they (museum folks) thought.
And while we're on the subject, and since Sullivan was such a big proponent of repatriation, shouldn't any Iraqi artifacts that have sold or given out over the past thirty years be returned to Iraq? They weren't loaned, sold, or given away with the approval of the Iraqi people.
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