A Rejoinder to Neil Brodie

As Neil Brodie's response to my original post below makes clear, we agree on much more than we disagree on, including the importance of engaging local communities in site protection efforts, and on the fundamental importance of linkage (on which more below. And as I suspected, at least some of our disagreements are not substantive but semantic. As a policy researcher I tend to think of "effort and resources" as terms that refer to what the government or military actually provides to the archaeologists, museum curators, police, and military personnel -- not to the efforts that archaeologists, museum curators, police, and military personnel expend in order to try to persuade the government or military leadership to empower them. In his response, Neil comes some way towards making this distinction as well. 

But even with this distinction in place, we continue to disagree. This is a question of evidence. Neil seems to believe that the focus in Iraq by archaeologists, curators and military personnel, advocacy-wise, was exclusively on site protection; and because the sites were not protected, this proves that advocating for site protection is a waste of time in all circumstances. 

That strikes me as logically fallacious. But it also seems mistaken as a matter of evidence. I think the record shows that archaeologists, curators, and military personnel concerned about Iraq's archaeological heritage did not in fact make site protection the exclusive focus of their advocacy efforts. In fact, because archaeologists and conservation groups themselves are neither trained nor interested in how to secure sites, it wasn't even the central focus of their advocacy efforts. Of course they castigated and chastised the military, and rightfully so. But look at what they asked for or willingly accepted from government and from foundations, and where the money went: into training conservators and archaeologists, into GIS mapping systems, into rebuilding the museum, into turning Babylon into a tourist attraction, into decks of playing cards to sensitize GIs about the need to do no harm to sites (but not to guard them), into cultural sensitivity awareness-raising talks by the head of the AIA to officers headed overseas. All fine things, but not related directly to stopping looting. In contrast, it took years for Elizabeth Stone to find the money to buy satellite photos simply to be able to document the massive looting that had occurred. And in the absence of that documentation, the Bush administration was permitted to not have to take responsibility for protecting the sites -- while it could, on the other hand, speak proudly about funding these conservation and cultural-sensitivity-training efforts. Oh, and also speak proudly of backing UNSCR 1483 and imposing its own emergency ban on imports of Iraqi materials into the US. Meanwhile thousands of sites were looted.

That does not mean that UNSCR 1483 was ineffective, necessarily. Indeed, Stone believes it accounts for the decline in looting that eventually did occur, though of course the caveat here is that looting continues at a higher level than in earlier times when the antiquities police were stronger (and as Stone herself admits, another possible cause for the decline in looting may be that after three years of massive digging the market was saturated). The point is that it is that we need both more and better supply-end policing and more and better demand-side policing.

Neil, by contrast, suggests that the solution is trade regulation at the international level. Exactly what that would mean I am not sure. But if he has in mind a worldwide ban like that imposed by 1483, now applied to all antiquities whatsoever, I am puzzled. Such a ban would be lovely, of course. But what chance is there of passing such a ban? And if passed, how would the sustainable resources for enforcing the ban be found?

My opinion is that a worlwide ban enforced by robust international policing is pie in the sky. It is almost impossible to imagine it being put in place to begin with, and if it were, it is equally difficult to imagine the international community coming up with the money to make it effective. 

Which brings me to "linkage". Neil and I agree wholeheartedly that it is the buyers of antiquities who fuel the looting, and that therefore any sustainable solution to the problem of looting must recognize the linkage between collecting and looting. But where I think we may differ is that I want a policy that makes this linkage work for our purposes, a policy that would link collecting not to looting but to looting prevention (as well as to policing of the illicit international trade, which would require sustained funding of criminological research of the kind that Neil does so brilliantly). 

As I have argued for quite some time now, one feasible way to begin doing this would be to tax domestic purchases of antiquities and direct the proceeds into policing efforts -- including funding international taskforces, domestic undercover operations and other activities in destination countries, but also including funding for site protection efforts of various sorts in "countries of origin". This proposal is far from what the collectors have in mind when they call for site protection. I agree with Neil that in their case the call is a way of trying to shirk responsibility and shift guilt. My proposal forces collectors to take economic responsibility and is modeled on the "sin tax" model of public policy, so I'm not sure why Neil thinks what I am suggesting sounds like what the collectors say.

Cellphones as Weapons Against Illicit (Antiquities) Networks: Google Ideas Has My Idea

Jason Felch, ahead of the pack as always, has posted on the Wikiloots facebook page links to an organization that looks as if it might actually be able to push forward the anti-looting agenda in a big way. Google Ideas, a self-described "think/do tank" spun off, it appears, by a few Google millionaires and run by a former State Department official, Jared Cohen, "convenes unorthodox stakeholders, commissions research, and seeds initiatives to explore the role that technology can play in tackling some of the toughest human challenges."

One of those challenge, as it happens, is illicit networks, about which the site says:

The persistence of illicit networks—including organized crime, narcotics, human trafficking, arms trafficking, terrorism, and cybercrime—affects every country and every demographic. While various illicit networks may differ from each other in terms of the goods they move and the objectives they pursue, their tactics are often remarkably similar.

Illicit networks strive for maximum secrecy and efficiency to evade law enforcement. Despite all of this, most efforts to investigate and intercept illicit networks have been siloed rather than holistic, depriving those who seek to combat them of opportunities to learn from one another. 

The increasing ubiquity of connection technologies will both empower those driving illicit networks as well as the citizens seeking to curb them. These networks have been around for centuries, but one thing has changed—the vast majority of people now have a mobile device, empowering citizens with the potential to disrupt the secrecy, discretion, and fear that allow illicit networks to persist. As illicit networks grow in scope and complexity, society’s strategy to reduce their negative impact must draw on the tremendous power of technology.

In brief: use social networks powered by cellphone technology to force into visibility looters, smugglers, dealers, and collectors of illicit antiquities. Since this is basically what I have been urging for the past several years on this blog, I am thrilled to find the basic concept is being thought about by people with the means to realize it.

My joy is tempered and made a bit bittersweet, however, by the knowledge that antiquities are not mentioned (at least not so far as I can discern, though I'd be happy to be shown otherwise) in the very minimal copy provided on the organization's site. This is all the more depressing because it turns out that Jared Cohen has direct experience of looted antiquities. He was the point person for the Google project to put the Iraq National Museum's artifacts online, a task that led him to visit Baghdad. Was he apprised then of the massive looting of archaeological sites by his State Department colleagues? I wrote at the time that the failure to get Google engaged in trying to help the Iraqis monitor their archaeological sites was a major missed opportunity. It would be terrible to miss the chance this time round as well. So if anyone reading this knows how to get hold of Jared Cohen, please pass along the heartfelt hope that he and Google Ideas will recognize that illicit antiquities networks would make an excellent candidate for a proof-of-concept.

Securing Heritage in Crisis Situations: Some Thoughts on the Egyptian Scientific Institute and Sri Lanka's Volunteer Heritage Police

As with the Cairo Museum, security cameras, fences, and personnel were apparently not enough to protect the Egyptian Scientific Institute:

T

hese treasures are guarded by security personnel 24 hours a day, along with surveillance cameras positioned throughout the library’s interior and exterior. An advanced system can extinguish fire in seconds, and an electric fence lines the premises.

Here's more evidence, if it were needed, that normal security systems are not designed to deal with the kinds of security challenges posed by crisis situations.

The lesson should be clear: cultural authorities everywhere should be thinking now about worst-case scenarios and developing contingency plans. The starting point might well be to take advantage of the institution's own employees. That is a lesson the late Donny George might have taught (he and a few other colleagues returned when they heard about the looting of the Iraq Museum and spent several days holding the fort before the Americans finally showed up). It is somewhat surprising to learn that 2300 people work for the Egyptian Scientific Institute. That is a large crew, and it is too bad that some of them were not conscripted to form a human chain around the Institute, as Egyptian citizens did at the Cairo Museum.

But it is the country's citizens themselves who could and should provide the primary resource to be called upon during emergencies to protect their nation's heritage. And not just emergencies: Sri Lanka's National Heritage Ministry, for instance, is setting up a volunteer force to assist the police in guarding monuments against antiquities looters. Developing non-governmental organizations devoted to protecting heritage is something that should be high on the agenda of foundations, international organizations, and cultural officials in-country.

RIP Donny George Youkhanna

Word from Abdulamir Hamdani that Donny George has died. A great-hearted and brave soul, who put his life on the line to try to protect the Iraq National Museum in its most desperate hour, he is one of my heroes, and someone who deserves to be remembered and honored by the world.

Bush's ghostwriters on the looting of the Iraq National Museum

George W. Bush's utterly mendacious ghostwritten memoir contains only one mention of the looting of the Iraq National Museum. It comes in the context of a rare admission that "there was one important contingency for which we had not adequately prepared":

     In the weeks after liberation, Baghdad descended into a state of lawlessness. I was appalled to see looters carrying precious artifacts out of Iraq's national museum and to read reports of kidnapping, murder, and rape. Part of the explanation was that Saddam had released tens of thousands of criminals shortly before the war. But the problem was deeper than that. Saddam had warped the psychology of Iraqis in a way we didn't fully understand. The suspicion and fear that he had cultivated for decades were rising to the surface.

    "What the hell is happening?" I asked during an NSC meeting in late April. "Why isn't anybody stopping these looters?"

    The short answer was that there was a manpower shortage in Baghdad. The Iraqi police force had collapsed when the regime fell. The Iraqi army had melted away. Because of Turkey's decision, many of the American troops who liberated Baghdad had been required to continue north to free the rest of the country. The damage done in those early days created problems that would linger for years. The Iraqis were looking for someone to protect them. By failing to secure Baghdad, we missed our best chance to show that we could.

True enough. But the excuse that "Saddam had warped the psychology of Iraqis in a way we didn't fully understand", cultivating "suspicion and fear" that were now "rising to the surface," reflects the stupidity and intellectual laziness that characterized Bush and his gang.  As I and many others have made abundantly clear, there was massive evidence that Iraqis were willing and able to loot their country's cultural institutions if given the opportunity: the many regional museums looted within 24 hours of the establishment of no-fly zones back in the 1990s should have made that clear enough that the national museum would be targeted. McGuire Gibson, the Archaeological Institute of America, and many others from the archaeological community warned explicitly that looting was almost certain to occur (Gibson in a face-to-face meeting with Ryan Crocker in late January). And, as we know now thanks to Elizabeth Stone's forensic examination of time-series satellite imagery, the redeployment of Iraqi troops away from the site areas in January 2003, in preparation for the impending invasion, unleashed a wave of looting on Iraq's sites even before the US arrived.
     These looters were not driven by a warped psychology of suspicion and fear, but by a much simpler psychological mechanism that Bush and other freemarketers certainly could have understood: the profit motive. Antiquities are valuable commodities. It doesn't take a genius to imagine that a country reduced to anarchy will resemble the purest of free markets. But it is easier to blame Saddam instead.
    In any case, once Bush saw that the museum had been looted (how, it is hard to say, since to my knowledge there is no footage showing looters carrying objects out of the museum), he should have immediately asked, "What the hell is happening?" Yet he waited until late April to pose this question (assuming that the memoir didn't just make up this remark). That speaks volumes about the fecklessness of our worst President.

Le Monde report on Iraq National Museum

A new article in Le Monde retraces mostly already covered ground, but does shed a little additional light on the Iraq National Museum's pathetically underfunded and understaffed initiative to recover its stolen antiquities:

Au premier étage, nous montons voir Abbas K. Abbas, patron du département de recherche des antiquités disparues. Le sympathique quinquagénaire moustachu ne cache pas son désarroi. Il est chargé de scanner la presse mondiale et le maximum de catalogues des salles d'enchères pour essayer de repérer les ventes d'objets volés dans son pays. Pour effectuer ce travail de titan, il a trois employés (un seul lit l'anglais), deux ordinateurs antédiluviens et "pas de budget" pour se rendre sur le lieu d'une vente suspecte.

The Iraqi government should be funding this (as they should be funding the antiquities police), of course, and it is just one more sign of the government's negligence, incompetence, or perhaps corruption with regard to its own cultural patrimony. But in the case of the museum, the largest source of funding in the past few years was not the Iraqi government but the Bush administration's last-minute $17 million. Presumably those delivering the money were also helping the museum officials figure out how to use it best. One can only wonder why it is that so little of that funding was allocated to Abbas' department that he cannot afford even up-to-date computers, much less to fly to London or New York to examine artifacts that may be showing up at Christie's or Sotheby's. 

Who Stole the Iraqi Torah, and How Did It Get Out of Iraq in the Middle of an Invasion?

One worth watching. This investigation (who, exactly, in the US is going to do the investigation is an important question) may yield some interesting insights into what was going on behind the scenes before and during the invasion to facilitate the taking of the scroll by US troops (or other authorized personnel) during a period when, we are told by defenders of the military, there were not enough troops to secure the Iraq National Museum.

U.S. Returns Iraqi Artifacts Without Thinking Much About Who Takes Them

Yet one more piece of evidence, if that were required, that the State Department dropped the ball completely by focusing its efforts on restoring the museum rather than on helping the Iraqis get their cultural policy infrastructure set up properly:

While Iraqi officials celebrated the repatriation of what they called invaluable relics — “the return of Iraq’s heritage to our house,” as the state minister of tourism and antiquities, Qahtan al-Jibouri, put it — the fate of those previously returned raised questions about the country’s readiness to preserve and protect its own treasures.

Appearing at a ceremony displaying the artifacts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaidaie, pointedly said a previous shipment of antiquities had been returned to Iraq last year aboard an American military aircraft authorized by Gen. David H. Petraeus, only to end up missing.

“They went to the prime minister’s office, and that was the last time they were seen,” said Mr. Sumaidaie, who has worked fervently with American law enforcement officials in recent years to track down loot that had found its way into the United States.

It was not immediately clear what happened, and Mr. Sumaidaie said he had tried and failed to find out. He did not directly accuse Mr. Maliki’s government of malfeasance, but he expressed frustration that the efforts to repatriate works of art and antiquities had resulted in such confusion and mystery.

Ali al-Mousawi, a government spokesman, demanded that the American government account for the artifacts since an American military aircraft delivered them. “We didn’t receive anything,” he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Jibouri, one of Mr. Maliki’s advisers, said that if the relics were not somewhere in the prime minister’s custody, then they would probably be with the Ministry of Culture, which oversees the country’s museums. Its spokesman declined to comment.

Amira Edan, the director of the National Museum, said none of the objects had been returned to her collection, which is where, she said, they all belonged.

How do earrings from one of the most spectacular archaeological finds of the 20th c. end up on the auction block at Christie's?

The story in yesterday's papers about the return of artifacts to Iraq has more facets than the Hope Diamond. One is noted in Jane Arraf's Christian Science Monitor story:

The earrings were found after they offered for sale at auction at Christie’s in New York last December. The catalog listed them as having been acquired by the owner before 1969, the year before a UNESCO convention made it more difficult to trade in antiquities.

The earrings were recognized by Iraqi archaeologists as part of the treasures of Nimrud, excavated in 1989 when an Iraqi team discovered a royal tomb overlooked by previous British excavations. They were believed stolen from the Baghdad Museum before the collection was put into safekeeping in bank vaults before the 1991 war with the US over Mr. Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

Christie’s, which had put opening bids at $45,000 to $65,000 for the earrings, withdrew them after the Iraq Embassy launched a formal claim.

As Arraf notes, the Nimrud treasures are "considered one of the most spectacular finds of the 20th century, on a scale of the gold found in King Tut’s tomb." One would think such objects would be easily recognized by experts. And yet, somehow, they appear at auction at Christie's with a phony provenance. Either Christie's authenticators are incompetent, or Christie's is simply leaving the task of spotting illegitimate antiquities to the archaeologists. Either way, it is disgraceful.

Interview on Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio show Artworks

The producers on this show did a pretty nice job gathering audioclips, and the interviewer had actually read my book, which was a pleasant surprise.

Middle East Geo-Database for Antiquities

This sort of database is an important tool for any country seeking to develop a robust national heritage conservation program that can rationally set priorities for conservation. The only caveat is that the recording of sites is "based on the existing national registry collected by the SBAH and using available surveys". If those data-collecting mechanisms are not regularly and frequently updated -- and if time-series data is not maintained -- then there will be no way to promptly assess where damage is being done presently to sites by looting, development projects, etc.

The next step for GCI, World Monument Fund, and UNESCO is to persuade Google (whose head visited Iraq and announced Google would digitize the Iraq National Museum's holdings) to work with them and the Iraq SBAH to

a) link the registered sites to GoogleEarth satellite imagery;

b) develop a computerized program designed to compare time-series images for sites and identify sites that have been damaged or looted.

Such a project for Iraq could serve as a pilot project that could then be implemented worldwide.