The Tara Foundation

“And truly, the very view itself was a melancholy thing; for those places which were adorned with trees and pleasant gardens, were now become desolate country every way, and its trees were all cut down. Nor could any foreigner that had formerly seen Judaea and the most beautiful suburbs of the city, and now saw it as a desert, but lament and mourn sadly at so great a change. For the war had laid all signs of beauty quite waste. Nor had anyone who had known the place before, had come on a sudden to it now, would he have known it again. But though he [a foreigner] were at the city itself, yet would he have inquired for it.”

(Josephus, writing after the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman Imperial forces in A.D. 70). [1]

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See I am making all things new.” - Revelation 21:5 [NRSV] [2]

Introduction: 2003 – Iraq’s Year Zero.

There have been many acts of cultural destruction carried out throughout human history. These include the sacking and burning of Athens by the Roman general Sulla in 86 B.C., the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in A.D. 70, the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, the Nazi bombing of Guernica in 1937, the destruction of the cultural heritage of Eastern European countries during WWII by Nazi forces, the Allied bombing of Dresden, to the near-destruction of Cambodian civilization during “Year Zero,” the destruction of a large part of China’s heritage during the “Cultural Revolution” from 1966 to 1976, the destruction of Romania’s capital and villages by Nicolae Ceausescu, and recently, the demolition of the Hutongs of Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

However, the year 2003 has surpassed these events, and in so doing has brought one of the greatest cultural disasters that humankind has ever known to total fruition. The World Monuments Fund has now placed Iraq on its list of the Earth's 100 most endangered sites. "Widespread looting, military occupation, artillery and artillery fire, vandalism, and other acts of violence are devastating Iraq, long considered the cradle of human civilization." This is the first time that the Fund has ever put an entire nation on its list. [3]

In archaeological circles, Iraq is known as "the cradle of civilization," with a record of culture going back more than 7,000 years. William R. Polk, the founder of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago, says, "It was there, in what the Greeks called Mesopotamia, that life as we know it today began: there people first began to speculate on philosophy and religion, developed concepts of international trade, made ideas of beauty into tangible forms, and, above all developed the skill of writing." No other places in the Bible except for Israel have more history and prophecy associated with them than Babylonia, Shinar (Sumer), and Mesopotamia -- different names for the territory that the British around the time of World War I began to call "Iraq," using the old Arab term for the lands of the former Turkish enclave of Mesopotamia (in Greek: "between the [Tigris and Eurphrates] rivers").[3] Many of the early books of the Old Testament are set in Iraq (see, for instance, Genesis 10:10, 11:31; also Daniel 1-4; II Kings 24). [4]

The best-known of the civilizations that make up Iraq's cultural heritage are the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids, and Muslims. On April 10, 2003, in a television address, President Bush acknowledged that the Iraqi people are "the heirs of a great civilization that contributes to all humanity." On April 12, 2003, under the eyes of the U.S. Army, the Iraqis would begin to lose that heritage in a orgy of looting and burning. [5]

Destruction by Theft:

“2,000-year-old Sumerian cities torn apart and plundered by robbers. The very walls of the mighty Ur of the Chaldees cracking under the strain of massive troop movements, the privatisation of looting as landlords buy up the remaining sites of ancient Mesopotamia to strip them of their artefacts and wealth. The near total destruction of Iraq's historic past – regarded as the very cradle of human civilisation – has emerged as one of the most enduring symbols of the United States occupation.” [6]

In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, looters moved in on the desert cities of southern Iraq leading to the plunder of at least 13 Iraqi museums . After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, almost every archaeological site in southern Iraq is under the control of professional thiefs who act as contractors for the international antiquities trade.

Lebanese Archaeologist Joanne Farchakh stated that armies of looters have not spared "one metre of these Sumerian capitals that have been buried under the sand for thousands of years.

"They systematically destroyed the remains of this civilisation in their tireless search for sellable artefacts: ancient cities, covering an estimated surface area of 20 square kilometres, which – if properly excavated – could have provided extensive new information concerning the development of the human race.

"Humankind is losing its past for a cuneiform tablet or a sculpture or piece of jewellery that the dealer buys and pays for in cash in a country devastated by war. Humankind is losing its history for the pleasure of private collectors living safely in their luxurious houses and ordering specific objects for their collection." [7]

Ms. Farchakh, who helped with the original investigation into stolen treasures from the Baghdad Archaeological Museum in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, stated that Iraq may very well end up with no history.

"There are 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. In the Nassariyah area alone, there are about 840 Sumerian sites; they have all been systematically looted. Even when Alexander the Great destroyed a city, he would always build another. But now the robbers are destroying everything because they are going down to bedrock. What's new is that the looters are becoming more and more organised with, apparently, lots of money.

"Quite apart from this, military operations are damaging these sites forever. There's been a US base in Ur for five years and the walls are cracking because of the weight of military vehicles. It's like putting an archaeological site under a continuous earthquake."
Of all the ancient cities of present-day Iraq, Ur is regarded as the most important in historical terms. It is mentioned in the Old Testament, believed by many to be the home of the Prophet Abraham. It also features in the works of Arab historians and geographers where its name is Qamirnah, The City of the Moon. [8]

It was founded in about 4,000 BC. Its Sumerian people established the principles of irrigation and developed agriculture and metal-working. Fifteen hundred years later – in what has become known as "the age of the deluge" – Ur produced some of the first examples of writing, seal inscriptions and construction. In neighbouring Larsa, baked clay bricks were used as money orders – the world's first cheques – the depth of finger indentations in the clay marking the amount of money to be transferred. The royal tombs of Ur contained jewellery, daggers, gold, azurite cylindrical seals and sometimes the remains of slaves.

The aerial bombing of 2003 left historical monuments mostly undamaged, but Professor Bahrani has stated: "The occupation has resulted in a tremendous destruction of history well beyond the museums and libraries looted and destroyed at the fall of Baghdad. At least seven historical sites have been used in this way by US and coalition forces since April 2003, one of them being the historical heart of Samarra, where the Askari shrine built by Nasr al Din Shah was bombed in 2006."

This use of heritage sites as military bases is a clear breach of the Hague Convention and Protocol of 1954 (chapter 1, article 5) which covers periods of occupation; although the US did not ratify the Convention, Italy, Poland, Australia and Holland, all of whom sent forces to Iraq, are contracting parties. [9]

Destruction by Fire: The destruction of written history began immediately after Baghdad fell to coalition forces in April 2003. The National Museum was systemically looted. Among the artifacts destroyed were some of the earliest clay tablet writings, including, it is speculated, cuneiform tablets with missing parts of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Soon after, the great libraries and archives of Baghdad went up in flames and books, letters, government documents, ancient Korans, religious manuscripts dating back, centuries, the recorded history of Iraq as a nation, vanished in an instant. [10]

All of this has been, in the words of the US military, "collateral damage.”
However, the looting of antiquity, words and objects, has not only ended since the formal end of the 2003 invasion but has actively accelerated. According to Reuters, more than 1,000 Iraqi objects of antiquity have been confiscated at American airports; priceless cylinder seals are selling on-line at eBay for a few hundred dollars apiece; and this represents just the tiniest fraction of the missing artifacts. This continuing process is beyond counting or assessing accurately.

In the months before he ordered the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and his senior officials spoke of preserving Iraq's "patrimony" for the Iraqi people. At a time when talking about Iraqi oil was taboo, what he meant by patrimony was exactly that -- Iraqi oil. In their "joint statement on Iraq's future" of April 8, 2003, George Bush and Tony Blair declared, "We reaffirm our commitment to protect Iraq's natural resources, as the patrimony of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for their benefit." In this they were true to their word. Among the few places American soldiers actually did guard during and in the wake of their invasion were oil fields and the Oil Ministry in Baghdad. With Iraqi oil resources safely in American hands, Iraqi cultural resources could be eliminated or sacrificed. [11]

Paying the Price:

The Baghdad archaeological museum has long been regarded as the greatest and most extensive of all such institutions in the Middle East. The 28 galleries of this enormous museum were cleared by looters who made off with more than 50,000 irreplaceable artifacts, relics of past civilisations dating back 5,000 years. The looters were thorough, The museum's entire card catalog was destroyed, making it impossible to identify what was lost, and greatly facilitating the international antiquities trade in the process. [12]

It is difficult to say with precision what was lost there in those catastrophic April days in 2003, as up-to-date inventories of its holdings, many never even described in archaeological journals, were also destroyed by the looters or were incomplete thanks to conditions in Baghdad after the Gulf War of 1991. One of the best records, however partial, of its holdings is the catalog of items the museum lent in 1988 to an exhibition held in Japan's ancient capital of Nara entitled Silk Road Civilizations. But, as one museum official said to John Burns of the New York Times after the looting, "All gone, all gone. All gone in two days." [13]

One of the defining images of the Iraq war has been the indifference – not to mention outright exultation - displayed by former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his generals toward the looting on April 11 and 12, 2003, of the National Museum in Baghdad and the burning on April 14, 2003, of the National Library and Archives as well as the Library of Korans at the Ministry of Religious Endowments. Rumsfeld asserted that the looting was not as bad as some television and newspaper reports indicated. The looting, Rumsfeld suggested, was "part of the price" * for what the United States and Britain have called the liberation of Iraq.
[14]

Looting, he added, was not uncommon for countries that experience significant social upheaval. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld said. The looting was, according to Paul Zimansky, a Boston University archaeologist, "the greatest cultural disaster of the last 500 years." Eleanor Robson of All Souls College, Oxford, said, "You'd have to go back centuries, to the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258, to find looting on this scale."[6] In contrast, Secretary Rumsfeld compared the looting to the aftermath of a soccer game and shrugged it off with the comment that "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Rumsfeld said. "They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here." [15]

Part 2 of The End of History in Iraq will be in the January Edition.

• An interesting echo of President Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famous reply to a question by a reporter as to whether the US / UK sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War and which were directly responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Iraqi children: Leslie Stahl: “We have heard that a half million Iraqi children have died. I mean that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?”
• Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.” http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00169.html