http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GB17Ak01.html
The plunder of Iraq's treasures
By Humberto Marquez
CARACAS - One million books, 10 million documents and 14,000
archaeological artifacts have been lost in the US-led invasion and subsequent
occupation of Iraq - the biggest cultural disaster since the descendants of
Genghis Khan destroyed Baghdad in 1258, Venezuelan writer Fernando Baez told
Inter Press Service (IPS).
"US and Polish soldiers are still stealing treasures today
and selling them across the borders with Jordan and Kuwait, where art merchants
pay up to $57,000 for a Sumerian tablet," said Baez, who was interviewed during
a brief visit to Caracas. (A Sumerian tablet is pictured at right.)
The expert on the destruction of libraries has helped
document the devastation of cultural and religious objects in Iraq, where the
ancient Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Akkad and Babylon emerged, giving it a
reputation as the birthplace of civilization.
His inventory of the destruction and his denunciations that
the coalition forces are violating the Hague Convention of 1954 on the
protection of cultural heritage in times of war have earned him the enmity of
Washington. Baez said he was refused a visa to enter the US to take part in
conferences.
In addition, he has been barred from returning to Iraq "to
carry out further investigations", he added. "But it's too late, because we
already have documents, footage and photos that in time will serve as evidence
of the atrocities committed," said Baez, the author of The Cultural Destruction
of Iraq and A Universal History of the Destruction of Books, which were
published in Spanish.
IPS: What do you accuse the United States of doing?
FB: In first place, of violating the Hague Convention, which
states that cultural property must be protected in the event of armed conflict.
That is a criminally punishable offence, which is why Washington has not signed
the convention, or the 1999 protocol attached to it. And perhaps it is one
reason the administration of George W Bush is seeking immunity for its
soldiers. But it is not only the United States; the rest of the coalition
forces are also guilty.
IPS: But according to the reports, it was Iraqi civilians
and not US soldiers who looted libraries and museums.
FB: But the US Army was criminally negligent, failing to
protect libraries, museums and archaeological sites despite clear warnings from
UNESCO [the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization], the UN, the
University of Chicago's Oriental Institute and the former head of the US
president's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property, Martin Sullivan. The
Iraqis who went out to loot interpreted the negligence as a green light to act
without restraint.
IPS: So the sin committed by the US was one of omission?
FB: Not only that. There was also direct destruction and
looting. In Nassiria in May 2004, a year after the formal end of hostilities,
during fighting with [Shi'ite cleric] Muqtada al-Sadr's militants, 40,000
religious manuscripts were destroyed in a fire [set by the coalition forces].
And when soldiers found out that the Sumerian city of Ur [in southern Iraq] was
the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, they took ancient bricks as souvenirs.
IPS: You also accuse soldiers from other countries, besides
US troops.
FB: That's right. In late May 2004, the Italian Carabinieri
were caught trying to smuggle looted cultural artifacts over the border into
Kuwait. And the British Museum reported that Polish forces destroyed part of
Babylon's ancient ruins, to the south of Baghdad.
IPS: Can we suppose that these events are part of phases of
the conflict that have already been left behind?
FB: No. More recently it was found that Polish troops drove
heavy vehicles near the Nebuchadnezzar Palace, which dates back to the sixth
century BC, and then covered large areas of the site with asphalt, doing
irreparable damage. There were also attempts to gouge out bricks at the Gate of
Ishtar. To that is added the collapse of ancient walls due to the continuous
passage of US trucks and helicopters, and walls spraypainted with graffiti,
like "I was here" or "I love Mary".
IPS: Can we expect the situation to improve with time?
FB: Another accusation that can be made against the United
States is that it has created a less safe country overall, by generating the
conditions for cultural destruction, which will be even worse in future years,
due to the situation of legal insecurity. In the days of the looting of
Baghdad, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went so far as to say that
looting "isn't something that someone allows or doesn't allow. It's something
that happens." Today Iraq is like a golf course for the world's terrorists, and
its cultural treasures will not be safe in the future.
IPS: What impact has there been on the United States?
IPS: One of its reactions was to rejoin UNESCO, which the US
had withdrawn from during the era of [Ronald] Reagan [1981-1989] on the pretext
that the UN agency served as "a communist front". Experts at the US State and
Defense departments are trying to mitigate the damages. US military police
helped Iraqi police track down the Lady of Warka, dubbed the "Mona Lisa of
Mesopotamia", (pictured at right) a 5,200-year-old marble sculpture that is one
of the earliest known representations of the human face in the history of art.
IPS: How significant are the losses?
IPS: The Lady of Warka may be worth $100 or $150 million. A
Sumerian cuneiform tablet or an Assyrian stela can fetch $57,000 at the border.
Some Iraqis have been purchasing books at used-book markets in Baghdad to
return them to the libraries. But the damage is incalculable. In the Baghdad
National Library, around one million books were burnt, including early editions
of Arabian Nights, mathematical treatises by Omar Khayyam, and tracts by
philosophers Avicena and Averroes.
IPS: Thousands of relics were also lost from the National
Archaeological Museum.
FB: The initial reports spoke of 170,000 objects, but 25
major artifacts as well as 14,000 less important ones actually disappeared. An
amnesty for the looters led to the recovery of around 3,500, according to the
US colonel who led the investigations, Matthew Bogdanos. But besides the
national museum and library, the al-Awqaf library, which held over 5,000
Islamic manuscripts, university libraries and the library of Bayt al-Hikma also
suffered. At least 10 million documents have been lost in Iraq altogether.
IPS: Do you believe military forces have been the worst
enemy of books?
FB: No, actually I don't. I believe intellectuals are the
worst enemies. Intellectuals have burnt books in the name of the Bible or the
Koran. Vladimir Nabokov [1899-1977] burnt El Quixote in front of his students.
Destroyers like Adolph Hitler or Slobodan Milosevic were bibliophiles. Saddam
Hussein himself, an archaeologist and philologist, published three novels.
Joseph Goebbels, the genius of Nazi propaganda, was a philologist. And many of
those who have led the US to war in Iraq are academics. It is a paradox: the
inventors of the electronic book returned to Mesopotamia, where books, history
and civilization were born, to destroy it.
Baez has said his research into the destruction of libraries
and archives was first motivated by his painful childhood memories of a flash
flood that wiped away the library in his hometown, San Felix in southeastern
Venezuela. He cherished the municipal library because since his parents worked,
he had often been left with relatives who worked there, and spent his days
reading.
His research culminated in A Universal History of the
Destruction of Books, which documents the catastrophic loss of books during
wars, like the Library of Alexandria, which burnt down in 48 BC, or the burning
of millions of books by the Nazis.
(Inter Press Service)
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