Baghdad Museum: are "US Tax Dollars" the most important issue here?

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Professor Lamia al-Gailani Werr wrote on the University of Chicago's IraqCrisis list (Letter from Baghdad, May 24th 2011) of some of the recent archaeological and heritage events in Iraq, including some ongoing problems in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad with inventorisation, archiving and conservation despite having been helped by a grant from the Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation. Most people on reading such a text would consider it a shame that so much cultural property is in peril and feeling deep sympathy and empathy for those colleagues who are fighting these problems out of their own concern for the situation (for example the people in Iraq who alerted prof al-Galiani Werr to the problems). They would be considering ways to offer their support and help. Not so the US collecting mob. Lawyer Tompa "Cultural Property Observer" considers this text as highlighting why the US should not be aiding the Iraqis attempting to preserve the cultural heritage of the country that was so recently subject to US-led invasion and occupation (Your tax dollars at work: Fraud, Waste and Abuse at the Iraq Museum). He seems not to notice that the problems highlighted in the text go far beyond the particular one the US ambassadors threw a bit of money at (largely one suspects as a public relations gesture, the US having earned such bad press over the way they treated the Iraq Museum and similar institutions during the Invasion). He apparently places the blame for this "fraud" (eh?), "waste and abuse" of US tax dollars on "Crusading Western archaeologists". He seems not to notice that the number of tax dollars spent on repairing the roof and showcases of the shelled and gutted Museum are insignificant compared to the number of tax dollars spent on invading a sovereign country, bombing, shooting arresting, torturing and killing its citizens, searching for imaginary super weapons and toppling a former US ally. He sees no evidence of Fraud, Waste and Abuse in the conduct of that war.

As for US tax dollars lost through the failure of those distributing them to apply some more effective form of fiscal accountability from those receiving them, "stuff happens" Mr Tompa. Is that not the US attitude? You cannot blame financial mismanagement and wastage on "crusading western archaeologists".

Is it not a bit much to blame the Iraqi people for the shortcomings of their heritage protection efforts today, given the huge human and humanitarian problems the country faces? The people of Iraq have gone through three wars in twenty years, had to suffer under a dictator that America's leaders would have the world believe was one of the worse in the world. They had to endure ten years under US imposed sanctions, a US-generated program of economic and social destabilisation, then a US-led invasion and and cope with the consequent instability that has prevailed until now. I wonder how well the heritage would fare in any other country (including the US) if it was forced to endure such conditions.

This sort of use of other peoples' misfortunes as pro-American "it could never happen here" and "look at what the wily Orientals are doing now" propaganda is upsetting when it is offered as an excuse for ceasing to express support and concern or offer help. The use of commercial interests of reports of other peoples' misfortunes as oblique propaganda for Tompa's trade partners arguing for the sustaining of current ongoing antiquity looting and smuggling (because "it's better off in US collections") is simply disgusting.

UPDATE 13.06.11
It seems the Iraqis, still less those dastardly 'crusading archaeologists' are not the whole (or maybe main) culprits here: Paul Richter, 'Missing Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say', Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2011:

U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion, sent by the planeload in cash and intended for Iraq's reconstruction after the start of the war. [...] U.S. officials often didn't have time or staff to keep strict financial controls. Millions of dollars were stuffed in gunnysacks and hauled on pickups to Iraqi agencies or contractors, officials have testified. House Government Reform Committee investigators charged in 2005 that U.S. officials "used virtually no financial controls to account for these enormous cash withdrawals once they arrived in Iraq, and there is evidence of substantial waste, fraud and abuse in the actual spending and disbursement of the Iraqi funds." Pentagon officials have contended for the last six years that they could account for the money if given enough time to track down the records. But repeated attempts to find the documentation, or better yet the cash, were fruitless.

So, a leaky roof in a foreign museum is just the tip of the iceberg of a problem involving considerable mismanagement of US funds, by the representatives of US administration itself and nothing to do with archaeologists and preservationists.

Slime Attack

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ACCG's Peter Tompa continues his slime-attack on whistle-blowing archaeologist Donny George, reinforcing his earlier intimations (on the basis of unconfirmed second-hand information) that the archaeologist had been involved in “looting” of museums and collections in Kuweit during the 1990 Iraqi invasion. Now he writes:

Despite Dr. George's protestations that all was done in accordance with international law, does anyone really believe that Saddam's Baathist regime intended to give everything back voluntarily after the end of hostilities had Iraq prevailed in the First Gulf War? Or is it more likely Saddam's government [which Dr. George willingly served at the time] intended to take the same path as past conquerors […]?

In line with the typical black propaganda Americans now consistently use against their former close Middle Eastern ally Saddam Hussein, the “past conquerors” to which Tompa compares the late Iraqi leader however were not Eisenhower, MacArthur or even (since we are dealing with Moslem leaders from Tikrit, Saladin) but – how could it be otherwise - “like Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, etc” (Scipio Africanus, Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Tommy Franks etc too no doubt).

Mr Tompa claims godlike ability to see into men’s hearts. Just how “willingly” somebody has served a country’s strongly enforced regime seems however to me remarkably difficult to measure, especially from afar. It is the subject of still-ongoing deep reflection and public discussion here in post communist Eastern Europe, but I expect Tompa is unaware of any of that.

While I am not going to speak for Donny George, I can say that I would be placed in an ethical dilemma if as an archaeologist I was asked to help empty a storeroom at an airbase in northern Poland containing antiquities and artworks because my (democratically elected) government could not guarantee their safety because the buildings were going to be turned over to the a foreign government’s agents (let’s say the CIA) to use as one of their secret prisons in which they were going to illegally hold and torture “suspects”. Should I refuse, not wanting to facilitate my government allowing something that I abhore and regard as immoral or illegal? Then, on the other hand if I refuse, would a few dozen boxes of potsherds and bones, old coins and other stuff stop the foreign agents moving in? If no properly trained professionals could be found to do it, would not my country's government property agency anyway just get a band of squaddies to bundle the whole lot in some lorries and shift them to some leaky sheds and hangers somewhere, thus clearing space for the torturers? To be honest I really do not know what I would do. My job however is to preserve the remains of the past, to look after the heritage of the past, leaving a museum store to be cleared by unsupervised unskilled and uncaring squaddies potentially leading to loss of information and damage to the objects would not be ethical either.

Mr Tompa until recently served a government of the (as far as I am concerned) war-criminals that in his name invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, killed civilians, tortured prisoners imprisoned in various secret bases and camps all over the world, and one infamous one in Cuba, without charges and generally made a bloody great mess. Did he do it “willingly” though? Who knows? Maybe he found it convenient just to play along, close his eyes to the abuse and corruption, do what he was required to, and wait for another government to come in?

Tompa has not noted that Iraq ratified the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in December 1967. This, among other things, obliges them to take care of museum collections in territory under their occupation. Tompa suggests that this is somehow against "international law". He fails to note that Dr George reports that a full inventory was made of the material that was removed when Iraq occupied Kuwait City. The material was apparently packed properly and evacuated to a place outside the zone of unrest and further conflict. It also was returned when peace was restored (and I really do not think Dr George is responsible for what was in Saddam’s heart or plans for the future of the material). Tompa calls this securing of the collections “looting”. Let us compare it with what happened just a few years later in the same region during the chaos of another invasion.

The stormtroopers of the United States shot and bombed their way into Baghdad in April 2003 and the occupying forces allowed public order to break down almost immediately. Looting began within a few hours, the Iraq National Museum was one of the targets of this robbing. The United States of America to their shame only ratified the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict in 2009, well after these disgraceful events. No inventory was made by the US occupier of what was taken out of the museums that were in their hands, it was not packed up in nice boxes and removed under military guard to safe storerooms outside the zone of unrest and further conflict. And neither, seven years on, has a substantial part of it been returned, because the US occupier immediately lost control of it. Some of it has now been appearing in markets all over the Middle East and in the United States. What happened to the museums and libraries of Iraq under occupation by the forces led by Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush and General Tommy Franks was “looting”.

What Saddam’s intentions were for the cultural property from the Kuwaiti collections might of course be revealed by the archives of the Ba’ath party . But these were siezed by the Americans during the invasion. They managed to hold on to much of them and withold the information they contain from the Iraqi people. Seven years on they are no nearer being restored to Iraq (Iraqi Files in U.S.: Plunder or Rescue?)

In the context of the accusation Tompa levels at Donny George, let us also note that the "internationalist" antiquity collecting and dealing clients of Mr Tompa's law firm ( Bailey and Ehrenberg PLLC) are only too happy to profit from the dispersal of 'ancient art' as a result of the military exploits of the US in sovereign states. The ACCG notoriously fought the passing of regulations to curb the illicit flow of looted material from Afghanistan onto the US market after the US invasion. The ACCP reportedly wanted to see a free market for newly dispersed collectable antiquities from Mesopotamia on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq (and Tompa sits on the board of the CPRI which though now moribund, seems likely to have been intended as a revival of the discredited ACCP in a new form). Bailey and Ehrenberg are reportedly now on their clients' behalf fighting government measures on curbing the imports of illegally obtained items from Cyprus and China, aiming to (re-)establish a free trade in such items in the US.

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium;
atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Tacitus Agricola Bk 1 (21)
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Photo: July 1990, U.S. Ambassador in Iraq, April Glaspie assures Saddam the US will not interfere in his border dispute with Kuwait - but then as we all know they went back on that assurance.

CPAC Resignations 18th April 2003

Six years ago, on 18th April 2003, three cultural advisers to the White House resigned in protest at the failure of US forces to prevent the looting a few days earlier of Iraq's national museum during the US-led invasion .
The three resigned from the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, an 11-member advisory committee composed of experts and professionals from the art world. They were Martin Sullivan - who had chaired the CPAC for eight years. The other two members to resign were Richard S Lanier (director of a New York foundation) and Gary Vikan (director of Baltimore's Walters Art Museum). According to the Associated Press, Mr Lanier criticised the Bush administration's "total lack of sensitivity and forethought regarding the Iraq invasion and loss of cultural treasures".

After the resignation of Martin Sullivan over this matter the chair of the CPAC was filled by Jay Kislak (2003-2008).

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.

US Money for Iraqi archaeology

Now its on its way out of power, and five years too late, the Bush administration has just (October 16, 2008) announced that it is putting resources into assisting Iraq in the conservation and preservation of its cultural heritage which suffered greatly under Sanctions and the US-led invasion. It has found thirteen million dollars for a programme of regeneration of Iraqi museums (good), creating a Conservation and Historic Preservation Institute in Arbil, northeast of Mosul, (good, but well away from the looted sites of southern Iraq), and a (separate?) programme to publish heretofore unpublished archaeological excavation reports prepared by Iraqi archaeologists; (good).

Larry Rothfield commenting on this announcement draws attention to the fact that it completely fails to address the problem of the looting of archaeological sites to produce collectables for the antiquities market. He asks “will the Iraq Cultural Heritage Project serve as a cover for washing our hands of the problem?”. Nasty pessimist that I am, I think that will be the case.

I think it will have a further effect. If Iraqi archaeology is a beneficiary of a 13 million buck handout from the US, individual archaeologists are going to be keen to work with the American administrators of these funds and might be wary of shouting too loudly about the destruction that past US measures have led to. As we know, the positions of those who ‘rock the boat’ over heritage issues is not always a comfortable one, and I can appreciate that many of my colleagues in Iraq might prefer to keep quiet when it may affect the chances of their project getting some of this money.

After all, don’t you know, the State Department is at pains to emphasise (a bit further down) “Since 2003, several million dollars have been applied to [...] improved archaeological site security in Iraq”. Yeah, right. We’d all love to hear more about this please. Maybe we could have access to the satellite imagery which would show this in progress?

Now let us see if the United Kingdom will make a similar offer. The Minister of Culture promised, but as I recall, all it sent in the end was a delegation to "look".

Denying the US market in Iraqi artefacts

US dealers of portable antiquities have always opposed the imposition of the emergency restrictions on the import of Iraqi antiquities (without export licences) into the US. They claim that the American market for unprovenanced bits of other people's portable antiquity heritage is entirely guiltless of any involvement in the trafficing of looted artefacts from Iraq. The internet pro-collecting propaganda is full of solemn assertions of portable antiquity dealers stating outright things such as: “so far as I am aware not even a single instance has been reported of any reaching Western art markets." They strenuously assert things like: “very few such objects ever surfaced in Western art and antiquities markets, or any other identifiable and monitored trade channel through which they could be sold to collectors".*

These dealers ask questions like: "what justification is there for asserting that Western collectors and art markets are responsible for looting in Iraq, and are therefore morally obligated to cease their activities to help solve the problem? Especially when there is still no credible evidence that the looted artifacts are being traded in Western markets, or finding their way into the hands of Western collectors?” How unfair, they suggest, that "despite all that has been said regarding the influence of Western antiquities markets upon the ongoing looting in Iraq, no one has yet presented credible evidence of any significant number of such antiquities being offered for sale in these markets. Until there is some evidence that looted Iraqi antiquities are actually reaching Western markets, there is no objective reason to take the sort of action Dr. Mayah is requesting.”

The dealers may say what they want, on the other hand we have statements from portable antiquity collectors in the US such as Nader Rastegar referring to “the flood of antiquities that we have all been witnessing” and “....though somehow mysteriously a steady stream of those items seem to be in possession of US Troops, and showing up in the USA!” So what is the truth of this matter?

Well, we find that at least one archaeological item looted from Baghdad museum seems to have been seized at a US airport within days of the fall of Baghdad. Several journalists and one American soldier were under investigation. Matthew Bogdanos refers in his book to other stuff being handed over to him in New York when he returned from his Iraq mission. In November 2003 it was being reported that looted Iraqi artefacts had been found in London by the Metropolitan Police's specialist arts and antiques squad. A number of men had been arrested, including one at a central London gallery.

At about the same time as certain biased newspapers were suggesting in the summer of 2008 that the looting of archaeological sites in Iraq was reducing, two news items suggested that the role of the US market was by no means as innocent as the portable antiquities traders were suggesting.

On the 9th June 2008 we learnt that eleven agate and alabaster cylinder seals stolen in 2003 from the Baghdad Museum had been seized by U.S. customs officers in Philadelphia in May and were handed over to the Iraqi embassy in Washington from where they were returned to Iraq. The circumstances of the seizure were - suspiciously - never made public.

Now we learn from that on 15 September 2008 in a transfer ceremony at Iraq's embassy in Washington an even larger cache of unprovenanced archaeological artifacts has been returned to Iraq's government, thanks to a multi-year initiative by U.S. customs authorities to intercept items being smuggled into the United State. Iraqi ambassador Samir Sumaida'ie took possession of more than 1,000 rare objects, many of which date back to Mesopotamian times. The objects include inscribed ceramic pieces, figurines, tablets, and ancient coins. They were seized from smugglers who either hid the objects or misrepresented their country of origin to U.S. customs officials. In handing them over, Julie Myers the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said: "These items are much more than souvenirs or art objects - even though that is how people who tried to profit from them treated them; these are part of Iraq's priceless history".Presumably, the artifacts would have been put up for sale in the US had they not been intercepted. These however are just those items that were detected and intercepted. Despite the unamimous denials of those involved in this trade this collection of objects gives ample reason to assume that many more recently-looted items will have slipped through the net and entered the United States despite import restrictions are among those currently on offer as unprovenanced Mesopotamian artefacts on the western markets. How can one attempt to deny this? Do the dealers making such claims expect us to treat them seriously?

* this one with the utterly curious suggestion “There seems to be every reason to think that a system broadly modelled on the UK Treasure Law and Portable Antiquities Scheme would find favor among the Iraqi people” (sic).

Reference Matthew Bogdanos with William Patrick 2005, "Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine’s Passion for Ancient Civilizations and the Journey to Recover the World’s Greatest Stolen Treasures". Bloomsbury USA. ISBN 1582346453.

„Stuff happens”: portable antiquity collectors disagree

Donald Rumsfeld made light of the looting taking place during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As civil order collapsed and the occupying forces were insufficient in number to re-establish it, unsecured public buildings including the National Museum in Baghdad were emptied. As is well-known, Rumsfeld apparently unconcerned about the occupier's responsibilities under international law, merely quipped to journalists “stuff happens”.

The news was suddenly full of reports on destruction in and looting of Iraqi museums, libraries, archives, and then the continued attention paid to the looting of archaeological sites in post-invasion Iraq, together with the reports of seizures of numerous Mesopotamian archaeological artefacts bound for foreign markets. There is no doubt that this became yet another stick for opponents of the war to hit the warmongers with. Nevertheless the facts are undeniable. Stuff happened in 2003 that could have been predicted, stuff happened that could have been prevented, stuff happened that should not have happened. Another blow to US prestige. Not to mention Iraq’s assets, heritage and identity.

But there was another casualty, the portable artefact collector in the western world. Despite their care in their creation of a beneficial public image, things were not going well in the years following 2003. A number of high profile investigations and trials were in progress in the US, and now this. Iraq and looted artefacts. Suddenly looted artefacts were daily fare in the newspapers. Lots of people were talking about looted artefacts, this was unwelcome public scrutiny of some issues some would like to keep out of the public view.

Collectors and dealers were gratified to find that there had been some hasty journalism going on, some of the early reports of the looting of the Baghdad Museum quoted figures which were soon found out to have been exaggerated and downright wrong. This gave them some wiggle room. I remember being set upon at the time by a British artefact hunter hiding for mentioning Iraqi looting in a discussion on artefact hunting on the Portable Antiquities Scheme Forum. Its all lies, he stressed. Fortunately the PAS is based in the British Museum who had just sent a mission out there, and a post on the Forum set the situation straight. Still the mistaken figure of “170 000 objects” (gossip obtained by a journalist from a woman met in the museum grounds and later repeated without verification) is still being dragged out as an example of the alleged “lies” of the conservation lobby – lies of course which (in some grand conspiracy) are allegedly aimed at the collectors and dealers, rather than the occupying forces.

These allegations of a conservation-motivated conspiracy to deceive are still being bandied about in the collecting world. Collector of ancient Greek coins Peter Tompa, president of the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild, has a blog called “Cultural Property Observer”, and in it he posted something he claimed was ‘breaking news’ about a forthcoming BBC report disproving exaggerated looting claims. He writes that this news item suggests "that the story of the looting of the museum was exaggerated. Just recently (and as reported on this blog), the Art Newspaper also suggested that stories about looting of archaeological sites were also exaggerated. Does anyone see a pattern here?”

This prompted a rather crushing reply from David Gill. Gill pointed out that by the time he posted this Tompa had been informed that the ‘news item’ was a trailer for a forthcoming TV programme …. from 2003 and not fresh news from 2008!!

The “un-looted sites” discussion prompted by a 1st June 2008 Arts Newspaper (guess whose side they are on) article by Martin Bailey is rather weird. Basically it concerns a mission by a group of specialists (Dr John Curtis, Professor Elizabeth Stone, Dr Margarete van Ess, Dr Paul Collins , Qais Hussein Raheed, Mehsin Ali and Abdulamir al-Hamdani) accompanied by high ranking army officers who were invited by the Cultural Heritage Initiative (organised by the British Museum and the British Army), to examine eight selected sites: Ur, Ubaid, Eridu, Warka, Larsa, Tell el-Ouelli, Lagash and Tell el-Lahm in the former British-administered zone of Iraq. Its not entirely clear from the report who selected the sites and to what ends. The report goes on to stress that the sites they were shown had little evidence of damage from looting after 2003. Can anyone see a pattern HERE? The occupying coalition has come under much criticism in the British press and public opinion because of not, it was alleged, halting this destruction. It seems reasonable to assume that one possible motive for this series of site visits could have been the desire of the British Army to deflect such criticism by showing with the aid of assorted credible specialists that at least eight of the sites under their care in the region of Basra were relatively undamaged. Undamaged that is apart from the machine-dug looter holes at Larsa and smaller holes in Tell el-Ouelli, Tell el-Lahm and Lagash (so, four out of eight) which had probably been dug in 2003 as the US-led coalition swept north to Baghdad.

The story was picked up on June 15th by Melik Kaylan writing for the Wall Street Journal (in the past a carrier of articles on the investment opportunities offered by the antiquities trade) who offers the opinion “So Much for the 'Looted Sites'” based on these eight sites. This post too was duly reported by “Cultural Property Observer” the author pre-emptively claiming victimisation (“Ad hominem attacks meant to divert attention from this central issue will hopefully fail in the long run”).

What will, hopefully, fail in the long run is this type of uncritical “newsfeed trawling” with the sole aim of mounting a defence of “bazaar archaeoloqy”, collecting and dealing from scrutiny.

I really think we should wait for the final report of the Cultural heritage Initiative to appear rather than building too much on the isolated pieces of information gathered by Martin Bailey of the Arts Newspaper, and trust that the CHI will not be tardy in releasing it, together with a full presentation of why those eight sites were chosen and what the aims of the mission were in each case.

I also think that collectors of coins, cylinder seals, cuneiform tablet fragments and the suchlike should note that when the looting took place (whether 2003, 2004, 2005 or later) is more or less immaterial, the evidence is indisputable, many hundreds of cubic metres of archaeological deposits have certainly been disrupted and destroyed, archaeological artefacts were ripped out of context and left lying scattered around the site or carted off to one dealer's storeroom or other. Whether they were dug up in 2003 or 2008 should make absolutely no difference to the US' policies about their import to a market which in any case the same collectors deny exists in the US.

Just a few weeks ago the journal Antiquity published an analysis by Elizabeth Stone (the same one as in the Cultural Heritage Initiative’s borrowed Merlin helicopter) about patterns of looting in southern Iraq (the same southern Iraq that Kaylan, Tompa and all the rest claim were “not looted”). The photos look pretty realistic, the dots on the maps of looted sites suggestive, the analysis of the distribution patterns and chronology seem perfectly sound to me. But the collectors claim these are all lies, because the Arts Newspaper and Wall Street Journal say so. The collectors and dealers (especially in the US) argue for their own obvious reasons that looting did not take place on any scale in Iraq's museums and sites as a result of the Coalition's policies towards that country, I wonder if Cultural Property Observer has taken the trouble to read the “Antiquity” article (it is available online) before making his pronunciations about a “credibility gap”. It seems to me clear where the real credibility gap lies, and it is gaping wide open.