Changes in Baghdad

Dr. Ameera Idan Hlaihel, Director of Iraqi National Museum and Chairperson of the State Board of Heritage and Antiquities (SBAH) has apparently been replaced in the position by Qaees Hussein Rashed Al-Magases (Director General of Excavation and Investigation). That must be a suprise for those western "observers" who presumably would have expected Dr Abbas al-Husseini, who they recently described as "the leading archaeologist in Iraq," when he talked to journalists to have got the job.