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IRAQ: Worldwide Move to Stop Sale of Loot
By Julio Godoy
PARIS, Apr 15 (IPS) - Worldwide moves have been launched to stop illegal
sale of archaeological treasures looted in Iraq in recent days.
Director-general of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and
Cultural Organisation) Koichiro Matsuura has urged Interpol, the World
Customs Organisation, the International Confederation of Art and Antiquities
Dealer Associations (CINOA), the International Council of Museums (ICOM),
and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to join a
"comprehensive mobilisation so that stolen objects do not find their way to
acquirers."
Matsuura has pointed out that the Hague Convention for the Protection of
Cultural Properties in the Event of Armed Conflict forbids trade in works of
art stolen during a war.
The Hague Convention was drawn up in 1954 in the wake of massive
destruction of cultural heritage during World War II. It aims to protect
monuments, archaeological sites, works of art, manuscripts, books, and other
objects of artistic, historical, or scientific interest.
Neither the U.S. nor Britain have signed the Hague Convention.
UNESCO also called Tuesday for a meeting of experts in Paris to assess
the damage to Iraq's cultural and historic treasures. The experts from 30
countries will also seek to make an inventory of the losses.
Art galleries and antiquities traders have assured UNESCO they will
support the campaign against illegal trafficking of Iraqi treasures.
Auction houses and art brokers in Paris and London say they will not deal
in stolen Iraqi treasures. "We don't want to have anything to do with such a
market," said a spokesperson of the Paris auction art house Drouot.
But archaeologists point out that many objects stolen from archaeological
sites during and after the first U.S.-led war against Iraq 12 years ago have
surfaced in the international market in Europe, Britain and the U.S.
The treasures now in the hands of collectors and dealers include several
wall reliefs going back 2,700 years from the palace of the Assyrian king
Sennacherib. Historians and experts in Iraqi archaeology were contacted
throughout the nineties to certify the authenticity of other ancient works.
This time plunderers took away or destroyed thousands of invaluable
treasures over the past few days, dating from up to 5000 years before
Christ. At the National Museum in Baghdad alone at least 170,000 objects
were either stolen or destroyed, Iraqi archaeological authorities say.
The rich museum of Mosul was also plundered. Among the many treasures
stolen are a solid gold harp from the Sumerian era, a sculpture of the head
of a woman from the Sumerian city of Uruk, stone carvings, gold jewellery,
tapestry fragments, ivory figurines of goddesses, friezes of soldiers,
ceramic jars and urns.
The museum held the tablets with Hammurabi's Code, considered the world's
earliest legal documents, early texts describing the epic of Gilgamesh, and
mathematical treatises that reveal a knowledge of Pythagorean geometry 1,500
years before Pythagoras.
"The National Museum in Baghdad was certainly the most important
archaeological site in the world," says Bertrand Lafont, archaeologist at
the French National Centre for Scientific Research. "The pillaging there is
a tragedy. Many treasures from the Assyrian and Sumerian cultures may well
have disappeared for ever."
The pillaging took place despite repeated warnings. The International
Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) had urged the U.S. and British
governments early in March to "act in the spirit and the letter of ...the
Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Properties in the Event of
Armed Conflict."
The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
(IFLAI) had also said that looting of Iraqi museums and archaeological sites
was looming with the war. "The pillage of archaeological and historical
treasuries is a major problem after armed conflicts," acting director of
IFLAI Ross Shimmon had told IPS March 26.
Despite such warnings, U.S. troops watched the pillaging of the National
Museum of Baghdad without intervening.
German archaeologist Michael Petzet, president of ICOMOS, accuses the
U.S. military authorities of committing "a crime against humanity" by
ignoring the warnings.
"It is impossible to understand that the U.S. troops only stood by while
thieves were plundering the Iraqi museums," Petzet said. "The U.S. army was
informed about the risks of looting long before the war began and could very
well have prevented the destruction and the plunder with a handful of
soldiers."
Jeremy Black, a specialist on ancient Iraq at Oxford University, said:
"What has befallen Baghdad and Mosul museums was foreseen by archaeologists
worldwide. Meetings were held with the American military before the war to
warn of the extreme likelihood of looting should an invasion occur."
Black said it was regrettable that "the U.S. troops failed to implement
measures to protect Iraq's and the world's cultural heritage. U.S. and
British forces must now act immediately to safeguard what remains in the
museums and at key archaeological sites."
Iraqi archaeologists say that the only installation that U.S. troops
seemed keen to protect was the ministry of oil.
(END/2003)
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