In The Guardian, 8 de Junho de
2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2098272,00.html
In
Iraq's four-year looting frenzy, the allies have become the
vandals
British and American collusion in the pillaging of Iraq's
heritage is a
scandal that will outlive any passing conflict
Simon
Jenkins
Friday June 8, 2007
<http://www.guardian.co.uk> The
Guardian
Fly into the American air base of Tallil outside Nasiriya in
central Iraq
and the flight path is over the great ziggurat of Ur,
reputedly the earliest
city on earth. Seen from the base in the desert haze
or the sand-filled
gloom of dusk, the structure is indistinguishable from
the mounds of fuel
dumps, stores and hangars. Ur is safe within the base
compound. But its
walls are pockmarked with wartime shrapnel and a
blockhouse is being built
over an adjacent archaeological site. When the
head of Iraq's supposedly
sovereign board of antiquities and heritage,
Abbas al-Hussaini, tried to
inspect the site recently, the Americans
refused him access to his own most
important monument.
Yesterday
Hussaini reported to the British Museum on his struggles to
protect his
work in a state of anarchy. It was a heart breaking
presentation. Under
Saddam you were likely to be tortured and shot if you
let someone steal an
antiquity; in today's Iraq you are likely to be
tortured and shot if you
don't. The tragic fate of the national museum in
Baghdad in April 2003 was
as if federal troops had invaded New York city,
sacked the police and told
the criminal community that the Metropolitan was
at their disposal. The
local tank commander was told specifically not to
protect the museum for a
full two weeks after the invasion. Even the Nazis
protected the Louvre.
When I visited the museum six months later, its then director, Donny
George,
proudly showed me the best he was making of a bad job. He was about
to
reopen, albeit with half his most important objects stolen. The
pro-war
lobby had stopped pretending that the looting was nothing to do
with the
Americans, who were shamefacedly helping retrieve stolen objects
under the
dynamic US colonel, Michael Bogdanos (author of a book on the
subject). The
vigorous Italian cultural envoy to the coalition, Mario
Bondioli-Osio, was
giving generously for restoration.
The beautiful
Warka vase, carved in 3000BC, was recovered though smashed
into 14 pieces.
The exquisite Lyre of Ur, the world's most ancient musical
instrument, was
found badly damaged. Clerics in Sadr City were ingeniously
asked to tell
wives to refuse to sleep with their husbands if looted objects
were not
returned, with some success. Nothing could be done about the
fire-gutted
national library and the loss of five centuries of Ottoman
records (and
works by Piccasso and Miro). But the message of winning hearts
and minds
seemed to have got through.
Today the picture is transformed. Donny
George fled for his life last August
after death threats. The national
museum is not open but shut. Nor is it
just shut. Its doors are bricked up,
it is surrounded by concrete walls and
its exhibits are sandbagged. Even
the staff cannot get inside. There is no
prospect of reopening.
Hussaini confirmed a report two years ago by John Curtis, of the
British
Museum, on America's conversion of Nebuchadnezzar's great city
of Babylon
into the hanging gardens of Halliburton. This meant a
150-hectare camp for
2,000 troops. In the process the 2,500-year-old brick
pavement to the Ishtar
Gate was smashed by tanks and the gate itself
damaged. The archaeology-rich
subsoil was bulldozed to fill sandbags,
and large areas covered in compacted
gravel for helipads and car parks.
Babylon is being rendered
archaeologically barren.
Meanwhile the
courtyard of the 10th-century caravanserai of Khan al-Raba was
used by the
Americans for exploding captured insurgent weapons. One blast
demolished
the ancient roofs and felled many of the walls. The place is now
a ruin.
Outside the capital some 10,000 sites of incomparable importance to
the
history of western civilisation, barely 20% yet excavated, are being
looted
as systematically as was the museum in 2003. When George tried to
remove
vulnerable carvings from the ancient city of Umma to Baghdad, he
found gangs
of looters already in place with bulldozers, dump trucks and
AK47s.
Hussaini showed one site after another lost to archaeology in a
four-year
"looting frenzy". The remains of the 2000BC cities of Isin and
Shurnpak
appear to have vanished: pictures show them replaced by a desert
of badger
holes created by an army of some 300 looters. Castles, ziggurats,
deserted
cities, ancient minarets and mosques have gone or are going.
Hussaini has 11
teams combing the country engaged in rescue work, mostly
collecting detritus
left by looters. His small force of site guards is no
match for heavily
armed looters, able to shift objects to eager European
and American dealers
in days.
Most ominous is a message reputedly
put out from Moqtada al-Sadr's office,
that while Muslim heritage should be
respected, pre-Muslim relics were up
for grabs. As George said before his
flight, his successors might be "only
interested in Islamic sites and not
Iraq's earlier heritage". While Hussaini
is clearly devoted to all Iraq's
history, the Taliban's destruction of
Afghanistan's pre-Muslim Bamiyan
Buddhas is in every mind.
Despite Sadr's apparent preference,
sectarian militias are pursuing an orgy
of destruction of Muslim sites.
Apart from the high-profile bombings of some
of the loveliest surviving
mosques in the Arab world, radical groups opposed
to all shrines have begun
blasting 10th- and 11th-century structures,
irrespective of Sunni or Shia
origin. Eighteen ancient shrines have been
lost, 10 in Kirkuk and the south
in the past month alone. The great monument
and souk at Kifel, north of
Najaf - reputedly the tomb of Ezekiel and once
guarded by Iraqi Jews
(mostly driven into exile by the occupation) - have
been all but destroyed.
It is abundantly clear that the Americans and British are not
protecting
Iraq's historic sites. All foreign archaeologists have had to
leave. Troops
are doing nothing to prevent the "farming" of known
antiquities. This is in
direct contravention of the Geneva Convention that
an occupying army should
"use all means within its power" to guard the
cultural heritage of a
defeated state.
Shortly after the invasion,
the British minister Tessa Jowell won plaudits
for "pledging" £5m to
protect Iraq's antiquities. I can find no one who can
tell me where, how or
whether this money has been spent. It appears to have
been pure spin. Only
the British Museum and the British School of
Archaeology in Iraq have kept
the flag flying. The latter's grant has just
been cut, presumably to pay
for the Olympics binge.
As long as Britain and America remain in
denial over the anarchy they have
created in Iraq, they clearly feel they
must deny its devastating
side-effects. Two million refugees now camping in
Jordan and Syria are
ignored, since life in Iraq is supposed to be "better
than before". Likewise
dozens of Iraqis working for the British and thus
facing death threats are
denied asylum. To grant it would mean the former
defence and now home
secretary, the bullish John Reid, admitting he was
wrong. They will die
before he does that.
Though I opposed the
invasion I assumed that its outcome would at least be a
more civilised
environment. Yet Iraq's people are being murdered in droves
for want of
order. Authority has collapsed. That western civilisation should
have been
born in so benighted a country as Iraq may seem bad luck. But only
now is
that birth being refused all guardianship, in defiance of
international
law. If this is Tony Blair's "values war", then language has
lost all
meaning. British collusion in such destruction is a scandal that
will
outlive any passing conflict. And we had the cheek to call the
Taliban
vandals.
simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk
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