New Yorker asks me about looting

The New Yorker has done a Q & A with me about my new book, The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum.

Real Progress: Iraq Troops Bust Smuggling Ring, Recover 235 Looted Artifacts

Good news from Iraq: it appears that the Iraqi Army is beginning to score successes against antiquities smugglers in southern Iraq.

Brian Rose's radio interview -- a few comments

AIAPresident 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.

Rose was struck by the great number of sites that had been looted, and waxed eloquent on what has been lost: history has been murdered. Hammering home this reality is vital, and Rose is to be commended for doing so with great effectiveness. Even more important is to translate the despair at what has been lost into a determination to do something going forward to stop the looting. Here again Rose met the challenge. His visit, he said, had a purpose, which was to add to the credibility of suggestions for how to protect the sites, since “archaeologists have been talking about what would be the best way to safeguard the archaeological sites and antiquities yet few of us have actually been there on the ground witnessing the situation as it really exists, so we were making recommendations without a full deck of cards.”

No doubt Rose is correct in believing that speaking as one who has been “in country” will give recommendations the patina of being based on an assessment of the situation “as it really exists.” The problem, however, is that it is not clear from the interview how full or accurate a view of what really exists he achieved during a State Department-run tour that, at least from what one can glean from the interview, included stops at Babylon and at Ur, both sites that have been visited already by others and that have had military bases established on or near them since 2003. (See my earlier blogs on the visit of the British Museum team in June/July 2008.) A better view of the overall situation as it really exists would have been gained if the State Department had instead given the AIA time-series photos of a representative sample of sites, so archaeologists could count the number of new holes.

The more serious concern, however, is about whether recommendations from archaeologists for safeguarding the sites will go beyond site management plans such as the one for Ur that Rose mentions discussing with Iraqi officials eager to promote tourism to Abraham’s birthplace. For major sites like Ur and Babylon that have long been well-protected, site management may be just fine, but most sites are not so lucky. They need to be secured from looters, not managed for tourist visits.

And site security is not going to be achieved by cultural awareness training for troops, something Rose has been doing for the past five years. Not that such efforts are not extremely important for other reasons and worth continuing. They are crucial. But if sites are going to be secured archaeologists need to give the military and the State Department pointed practical directions for specific tasks they can and should undertake to secure them, and the tools needed to perform that job. It would have made no difference whatsoever had the tank crew that approached the Iraq Museum received a lecture in the history of Mesopotamia – they had no riot gear, no tear gas, no barbed wire, no crowd control training, and were barred under the rules of engagement from firing over the heads of looters.

Figuring out what these tasks and tools are is not that difficult, but it is not the kind of thing that archaeologists are used to thinking about. In fact, while Rose speaks of recommendations being made about how to protect sites, there are none from the archaeologists – at least not to my knowledge, and I would be delighted to be told otherwise – that are based on input from site security experts, cultural police like the carabinieri, or the Iraqis themselves, who have repeatedly decried shortages of money for site guards, gas for vehicles, communications equipment, etc.

The Italians are coming back in to help train Iraqis to fight the trafficking of antiquities, and it would be fantastic if the AIA set up a task force with them and other policing experts to develop teaching modules. When Brian Rose’s lectures for deploying officers include a powerpoint segment entitled “how to secure a site from looters”, with a bulleted tasklist linking to resources, this trip will have been worth it.

eBay reduces looting -- maybe

There's a fascinating article in the May/June issue of Archaeology magazine, arguing that the electronic buying and selling of antiquities on eBay has actually reduced the looting of ancient objects, rather than fuelling it.

On a quick first read, it seems logically persuasive, with some caveats. One is that if eBay is expanding the market then even if fakes bring the prices down relative to what a market with lower level of supply would charge, the increase in the number of potential buyers might drive the price back up, leaving the incentive to loot about what it was before. 


A hat tip to Scott Rosenblum for alerting me to this.

Q & A with Chronicle for Higher Education

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

Interview about Rape of Mesopotamia with ABC Radio Australia's PM Program

Iraq Welcoming Archaeological Tourism, As Sites Remain Unprotected

The Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities continues its public-relations offensive with the announcement that Iraqi archaeologists have uncovered 4,000 Babylonian artifacts. The good news, dutifully splashed across the headlines by Reuters ("Iraqi Archaeologists unearth Babylonian Treasures"), is engineered to support the Ministry's agenda, as the article notes:

Iraq, which lies in the heart of a region historians call the cradle of civilisation, is hoping a decrease in violence to levels not seen since late 2003 will encourage tourists to visit its ancient sites.

In late 2003, let us recall, looting of Iraq's archaeological sites was going into overdrive, and there is some reason to believe that despite improvements in security the looting continues. That dark underside of this tourism marketing is missing from the headline, but shows up at the end of the article:

Qais Hussein Rasheed, acting head of the antiquities and heritage committee, told reporters Iraq still had a big problem with looters ransacking archaeological sites.

"These sites are vulnerable to endless robbery by thieves, smugglers and organised gangs because they are not protected," he said. "We have asked the relevant ministries to allocate policemen but haven't received very many so far."