US Cultural Aid for Iraq

The White House Office of the Press Secretary has released a fact sheet on U.S.-Iraq Cooperation (April 14, 2015) to "demonstrate the expansiveness of this important bilateral relationship". Among the areas covered are:

" Education and Culture: The United States and Iraq strongly support [...] the preservation and promotion of Iraq’s rich cultural heritage, and expansion of educational, cultural, and professional exchanges between our nations.[...] The United States returned to the Government of Iraq numerous items of cultural heritage that had been removed unlawfully from Iraq and seized by Department of Homeland Security agents [..] U.S. funding in support of the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage (IICAH) has provided technical expertise in a variety of preservation areas to Iraqi antiquities specialists from throughout the country. The United States supported major renovations to the galleries, storerooms, laboratories, and climate control systems of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, which has just reopened to the Iraqi public. Through the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation, the State Department has invested nearly $3 million since 2010 in emergency stabilization and conservation of the Ishtar gate and other major structures and artifacts in Babylon.