Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities: Looting Still a Problem

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Despite attempts of the supporters of the no-questions-asked trade in antiquities to deny this, ancient sites and monuments in post-invasion Iraq are being plundered by smugglers and illegal diggers. This is according to the Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The ministry spokesperson Ali al-Hashemi said that the Antiquities Department has experts who are following auctions across the world and that they have noted a sharp rise in Mesopotamian artefacts for sale. The Iraqis are doing their best to have the stolen pieces returned. Hashemi is quoted as saying that:

most of the country’s 12,000 archaeologically significant sites are unguarded, making it very easy for anyone to carry out illegal digs, gather the finds and sell them on the open market. “We are facing a huge problem. The roots of the problem are illegal and haphazard excavations which have resulted in the theft of more than 117,000 artifacts,” Hashemi said. [...] Hashemi said the ministry has asked the government to allocate resources in order to recruit 13,000 new guards to protect the country’s archaeological riches from smugglers and illegal diggers. “We only have 2,400 guards for more than 13,000 archaeological sites,” Hashemi said.

Hashemi did not say how the ministry had estimated the figure of artefacts looted - or to what precisely it refers - but certainly the artefacts taken and put onto the market are only a fraction of the archaeological evidence disturbed in digging for them.
 



Shaymaa Adel, 'More than 17,000 archaeological pieces stolen from Iraqi ancient mounds, says official', Azzaman, June 13, 2012