Profile of State Department's Archaeologist in Afghanistan

Excellent profile of Laura Tedesco, who as the State Department's archaeologist in Afghanistan is doing even more dangerous duty than her colleagues in Iraq, the only other country, as the article notes, where the State Department has posted an archaeologist. It takes great courage and commitment to put one's body on the line as archaeologists in both countries have done, and they deserve our gratitude for that.

As a matter of policy, it is interesting to compare the approach taken in the two countries. In Iraq, the focus has been on redeveloping Babylon and restoring the Iraq Museum as heritage tourism destinations, with little attention paid to the massive destruction of other sites by looting or encroachment. In Afghanistan, in contrast, the focus has been on one extraordinary recently deiscovered archaeological site, at Mes Aynak, that is certain to be destroyed, even though it could in theory have become a major tourist attraction if it did not sit atop mineable natural resources worth far more than tourism could ever generate. Tedesco is coy about how much is being spent on salvaging what can be saved from Mes Aynak, but admits it runs into the millions. It is worth asking how much might have been saved from being destroyed by antiquities looters in Iraq if the policymakers at the State Department and in the Pentagon had recognized that there was an equivalent need to protect Iraq's threatened archaeological heritage, and not just to exploit the part of it that would generate tourist revenues.

After the Iraq Museum Was Looted, Senior Bush Administration Officials Told It Still Needed to Be Secured. Three Days Later It Was.

As cables from the Iraq war continue to ooze out onto the internet, more details are gradually emerging to fill in the small gaps that still exist in the picture of the Bush administration's ineptitude and indifference. From the particular angle of interest to readers of this blog -- the failure to secure the Iraq Museum and archaeological sites -- this cable reconfirms what we already knew: that even after the news of the looting at the museum reached authorities, the museum remained unsecured for days. What we still do not completely understand, all these years later, is who dropped the ball during that interim period, when Donny George and a few other museum employees armed with nothing more than metal pipes were fending off further attacks on the museum.

In the cable, Amb. John Limbert, a former Iran hostage who had been tapped to deal with Iraq's cultural ministry after the expected cakewalk, writes on April 13. The museum had been looted between April 10 and April 12, when Donny George and other Iraqis returned and drove out the looters. Limbert writes from Kuwait, weeks after the invasion began, having been denied, along with most other post-war reconstruction officials, the chance to go into Iraq along with the military.

In addition to the important call to issue offers of amnesty for return of stolen items and to define looted antiquities as stolen property, Limbert urged that

Coalition authorities should provide security for
remaining objects and for other high-value cultural
sites.

Limbert might have been more forceful had he written instead that "coalition authorities should provide security for remaining objects AT THE MUSEUM" but his point is clear: the museum itself needs to be secured.

Who received this message?

EPT FOR NEA LAROCCO PM BLOOMFIELD AND INL SIMONS
IRAQ TASK FORCE FOR PM ACTION TEAM
DOD FOR WOLFOWITZ
DOJ FOR SWARTZ AND ODAG/EONS JAMES MCATARMNEY
DEPARTMENT PASS NSC FOR SUZANNE MCCORMICK

That would be, then:
a) from the State Department: James Larocco, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, 2001-2004; Lincoln Bloomfield, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs from 2001-2005; and (probably) Paul E. Simons, then acting assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. Simons was one of three State Department officials to write a memo in February 2003 warning that there were major gaps in the military's postwar planning. Suzanne McCormick's status at that point is unclear, but she later became Director of the Office of Intelligence Operations at the NSC.
b) from the Justice Department: Bruce Swartz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division in charge of international issues, with duties that include interacting with foreign governments on counterterrorism and criminal justice issues. Like McAtarmney, another lawyer, they are probably on the list to push the legal angles.

Policy players all, but not as far up the policy food chain as Paul Wolfowitz, who needs no introduction. He could, one assumes, have picked up the phone and ordered the museum to be secured immediately. But he probably had his hands full with other matters at this point, and it was to be another three days before a tank crew finally arrived at the museum on April 16, 2003.

What Happened at Saqqara: An Eyewitness Account

Lee Rosenbaum posts an anonymous report from a French archaeologist detailing the looting at Saqqara. It is notable that robbers began appearing very soon after the police abandoned their posts; that the military response at first was to make a show of force with a tank, but that that was inadequate to cow the looters; that the army did a good job protecting the Museum and magazines at Saqqara; and that the sites were secured on the third day after the start of looting. All in all, that is not a bad record. Let's remember that it took the US military six days to get around to arriving at the Iraq Museum to secure it, that almost nothing was ever done by the US military to protect Iraq's archaeological sites, and that as late as this fall, Iraq still had not reconstituted a functioning archaeological police, with only 50 out of 5,000 in place.

New Ambassador to Iraq Confirmed -- No Help for Iraq's Endangered Archaeological Sites Likely

The Senate has just confirmed James Jeffrey as the new ambassador to Iraq. As part of the confirmation process, Jeffrey was posed a few questions in writing about the State Department's policies regarding the protection of archaeological sites. Here are the questions, and Jeffrey's responses:

Questions for the Record Submitted to
Ambassador - Designate James Jeffrey by
Senator John Kerry (#5)
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
July 20, 2010

A recent front-page story in the NY Times reports that looting of Mesopotamian archaeological sites is surging again, as it did in the 2003-2006 period. In 2008, the Iraqi government shifted responsibility for protecting archaeological sites from the Federal Protection Police to a new antiquities police force that was supposed to field 5000 officers. As of December 2008, however, State acknowledged that it “has no mechanisms at its disposal to provide ongoing security at archaeological sites and museums in Iraq,” and a major $13 million initiative, the Iraqi Cultural Heritage Project, announced in October 2008 by First Lady Laura Bush, did not include any funding for site security assistance.

a. What is the State Department’s policy for assisting the Iraqi government in protecting Iraqi antiquities?
b. How actively committed to the antiquities police force has the Iraqi government been? How large is the antiquities police force?
c. What personnel and what level of resources are being allocated to the specific issue of antiquities policing? Will antiquities policing be included in the police training program, when the State Department takes over next year?


Question:

a. What is the State department’s policy for assisting the Iraqi government in protecting Iraqi antiquities?

Answer:

Our policy for assisting the Iraqi government in protecting antiquities includes training and developing the capacity of the Iraqi police broadly. While the small antiquities police unit has yet to become effective, we will give this issue due attention. In addition, in the “Strategic Framework Agreement,” Section IV, Cultural Cooperation, the United States committed to “Promote Iraqi efforts and contributions to international efforts to preserve Iraqi cultural heritage and protect archeological antiquities, rehabilitate Iraqi museums, and assist Iraq in recovering and restoring its smuggled artifacts through projects such as the Future of Babylon Project and measures taken pursuant to the U.S. Emergency Protection for Iraqi Cultural Antiquities Act of 2004.” Our assistance to Iraq in the antiquities field therefore falls under the policy umbrella of the Strategic Framework Agreement.

The U.S. Embassy is playing a leadership role in helping Iraqis preserve their cultural heritage and antiquities. The $12.9 million Iraqi Cultural Heritage Project (ICHP) will upgrade the Iraqi National Museum, train Iraqi conservationists, and partner with Iraqi institutions to protect the priceless heritage of Mesopotamia.

Question:

b. How actively committed to the antiquities police force has the Iraqi government been? How large is the antiquities police force?

Answer:

The Iraqi government has established an office to address protection of archeological sites, and to our knowledge, this office has hired approximately 100 officers. The officers have not yet assumed an active role in protecting archeological sites. Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) has held meetings with the Ministry of Interior (the agency responsible for Iraqi police) and other Iraqi government agencies to discuss nationwide protection of archeological sites. If confirmed, I will press for the antiquities police to play an active role, and for the SBAH to make further progress.

Question:

c. What personnel, and what level of resources are being allocated to the specific issue of antiquities policing? Will antiquities policing be included in the police training program, when the State Department takes over next year?

Answer:

The decisions on personnel and resources for the entire Police Development Program (PDP) are currently under discussion. The PDP will include broad, multi-purpose training for investigators, but does not envision a separate component for antiquities police.

A number of prominent archeological sites, such as the world-famous ruins at Babylon, Samarra, and Ur have Iraq-supported police and army guard forces in place to protect them. Some other sites, where there is no Iraqi police presence, are protected by Iraqi army units. The State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) has held meetings with the Ministry of Interior and other Iraqi government agencies to discuss nationwide protection of archeological sites. We are not aware of Iraqi governmental plans to include antiquities policing in future training programs, although SBAH has requested this. If confirmed, I will look into this.

I would be interested to know if any readers of this blog have a more sanguine interpretation of these remarks than I do, but to me they are very saddening. It sounds as if "due attention” to the problem of looting means jawboning the Iraqis, and that’s about it -- no targeted funding for site protection or even specialized training for antiquities police (or any other material support – walkie-talkies, vehicles, weaponry, satellite photos, gasoline, etc. -- that is also desperately needed by those few Iraqis who are now deployed). How likely is it that the Iraqi government will respond to ambassadorial pressing without any carrots? I’m glad the ambassador is at least saying he’s going to press, but unless we put our money where our mouth is, it seems very unlikely that the dysfunctional Iraqi government will move on this issue.

It is particularly galling to see the ICHP presented as having something to do with the issue of protecting sites from looting, since the introductory paragraph before the questions points out that the ICHP includes no money for site policing. And its money has almost certainly been spent already by now; this was the Bush administration's (only) initiative. But it is understandable that Jeffrey's assistants went to the well of the ICHP to defend themselves, because they were given an opening by the way the question was posed. It did not say protecting archaeological sites, just “protecting antiquities.” If you don’t specifically distinguish the policing of antiquities on sites from “protection of antiquities,” State will continue to do what it has done since 2003: disingenuously point to the good work done at the Museum, and fudge the fact that while they have been doing this good work but doing almost nothing to help secure and police archaeological sites, a huge disaster has taken place out in the countryside.

Let's tally this up: The Museum holds 170,000 pieces, and lost 15,000 in the invasion; anywhere from 200,000 to half a million artifacts are estimated to have come out of the ground (or been destroyed by diggers) since 2003. The disaster is going to accelerate again as the Obama administration pulls out. It won't be the dramatic public relations black eye that the Iraq Museum turned out to be for Bush, because the damage is not as vividly concentrated, but it is in some ways even more inexcusable.

Pace Pres. Obama, where keeping Iraq's archaeological heritage safe is concerned, we appear to be as careless getting out as we were careless getting in.

Google Documents Iraqi Museum Treasures-- How about Documenting Site Looting Next?

Sci-Tech Today | Google Documents Iraqi Museum Treasures

Google chief Eric Schmidt is quoted saying, "I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and ideas from your civilization, from the very beginnings of time, available to billions of people worldwide."

Here's another use of Google's time and resources that might be better: gather time-series satellite images of archaeological sites in Iraq (and other looting-prone countries) from GoogleEarth, and use your programmers' expertise together with archaeologists to develop automated methods for counting holes. That would enable countries to finally be able to track what has happened, and what is happening right now, on their sites.

Kaylan Continues to Try to Rewrite History, Now Smearing Bogdanos as Well as Curtis and Stone

Melik Kaylan's attempt to rewrite history continues, now with increased desperation including a smear of Matthew Bogdanos. I've posted a comment on the Forbes site, which I append here:

Col. Bogdanos is certainly inconvenient for Kaylan's story. A Marine war-hero and Republican who is a prosecutor in NYC when not on anti-terrorism missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, he hardly fits the anti-American, anti-military mold, yet he concluded that approximately 15,000 artifacts were looted in April 2003. 5,000 or so of these were cylinder seals, the best of which (that is, the kind that would go to the museum) sell for over $100,000 apiece; that is an inconvenient truth that would explain why looters would target the museum and thousands of archaeological sites. Kaylan therefore chooses, shamefully, to smear him as self-serving, ignoring that Bogdanos has donated to charity the profits from his book (for which he received the National Humanities Medal from George W. Bush). Kaylan also chooses to ignore reports by the Italian carabinieri and Polish forces that describe ongoing looting in the 2003-4 period, and ignores as well the evidence from satellite photos proving a massive surge in site looting began just before the war when Saddam moved his troops away from archaeological sites to the front lines. All this information, and much more, I shared with Kaylan when he contacted me in July 2008 while he was preparing his first story. For him to claim now that he got no help from the archaeological community is... well, I leave it to readers of Forbes to decide what it is. Professor Lawrence Rothfield University of Chicago

Rereading this I realize I forgot to also defend the honor of Donny George, also smeared.

New Damage to the Iraq Museum

From Lamia al-Gailani Wehr, via the Iraqcrisis listhost:

SBAH and the Iraq Museum were victims to the bombing of the Foreign Ministry last week. Many of the glass windows were broken, part of the roof of the children’s nursery collapsed, fortunately there was no fatality, just bruises and minor injuries. One of the accounts was at the Ministry of Finance when it was also bombed, he was injured and taken to hospital. I understand some of the exhibited antiquities in the the Museum were also damaged. I hope they have already been photographed.

Worrying issue, I heard that most of the staff ran away. Was there any emergency plan to deal with this kind of situation, such as the closure of all the doors, particularly the ones leading to the Museum and the storerooms? Apart from the police guards, is there a team whose duty to take charge whenever the Museum is under threat?

Prof. al-Gailaini Wehr raises a very important question, one that it is to be hoped will be asked as well by all those who wish to help the Iraqi government do what it can to secure the museum for a future that may well involve more bombings and even, god forbid, a breakdown of civil order on a much larger scale. Until now, the State Department has blithely pursued a Pollyannish policy that has ignored repeated warnings by archaeologists that it was too dangerous to reopen the museum. Instead of focusing on security for the museum (or archaeological sites for that matter), we have acceded to the Maliki government's desires to use it for propaganda purposes as a symbol that things are returning to normal. As part of that fantasy, US money has been plowed into site assessments, sustainable tourism planning, and training for archaeologists -- all good ideas but surely secondary in importance to the need for far better protection of Iraq's cultural heritage against looting and bombing. If the report of damage to exhibited artifacts is true, our negligence has once again borne bitter fruit, albeit on a much smaller scale than the looting of the museum and archaeological sites in the 2003-2007 period.

Speaking recently about the State Department's involvement in a site assessment of the ancient city of Ashur, a Public Diplomacy Officer remarked,

As the U.S. forces look toward our draw down out of the country, this is a great potential legacy that we can leave behind; showing that we took proper care of the ancient sites and history of the Iraqi people. When the security situation arrives at the point when there is an opportunity for wide-spread tourism, our good stewardship of these sites will pay off because we will have met the immediate needs to preserve these sites now.

The danger is that if we do not recognize that taking proper care means worrying about security first and foremost, the legacy that we leave behind will be of a country whose heritage remains inexcusably vulnerable.Let us hope that we learn from it and refocus our cultural policy in Iraq.

Iraq War's cultural costs as seen through a Chicago prism

Chicago Tribune cultural critic Julia Keller interviewed me about Rape of Mesopotamia.