- R. Atwood, "Inside
Iraq’s National Museum. A Reporter on the Scene in Baghdad Describes
How and Why the Looting Happened," in ARTnews, 102, 7
(Summer [= July-August] 2003): this is one of the better and more
comprehensive articles of late so I'm including a lot of it: "A white
marble statue
of Poseidon had been chopped up, its torso and upper legs thrown to the
floor and its head gone. A life-size stone statue from Hatra, brought
to the museum three weeks before for safekeeping, had lost its head and
its left arm to the looters’ saw." "During a week in May in Baghdad, I
interviewed about 30 people concerning the looting: Iraqi museum
officials, the U.S. troops accused of failing to protect the museum,
members of the U.S. team investigating the thefts, foreign
archeologists who led international protests against the U.S. role, and
more than a dozen people who lived in the neighborhood and who
witnessed the looting and the combat that preceded it. The most
striking fact to emerge from dicussions with those living or working
around the museum is that, in the days before and during the looting,
they saw the museum being turned into a major military defensive
position
by Iraqi forces ... used it as a combat position for at least three
days
after museum staff had fled. Neighborhood residents ... said that
Saddam
Hussein’s forces had turned the museum into a small arsenal. 'The
Ba’athists
were in there, shooting at the Americans. Many people saw it,' said
Jabar
al-Azawi, ... An elderly man wearing a gray robe, he offered me a
cold
drink in his garden on a quiet street around the corner from the
museum.
He said that the fighting was so intense that everyone on the block
except
him fled. 'I loved the museum, and I blame the Americans and the
British
forces because they didn’t stop the looting,' he said. U.S. forces have
cited armed resistance from inside the complex as the main reason they
could not seal off the museum and prevent the looting. In the end, they
protected it only after they had defeated the last remnants of Saddam’s
forces in the area. The looting began on Thursday, April 10, and lasted
two days, as the battle between U.S. and Iraqi forces raged through the
city. Ibrahim Taha and his colleague were guarding the office of the
bus
company where they worked when they saw people rushing into the museum,
a few doors down. Taha followed them in and came to a small concrete
building
at the back of the museum, where he saw something that surprised him:
weapons.
Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were propped
against the wall, more guns were hanging from hooks, and there were
boxes
of ammunition on the floor. The Iraqi fighters who had brought this
arsenal
had fled, and looters were busily helping themselves to the weapons. 'I
didn’t take one because I already had a Kalashnikov,' said Taha, a
compact,
solidly built man. Speaking through an interpreter, he told me that a
few
yards from the weapons cache was a smashed window in the back wall of
the
museum’s main building, through which looters had entered. Taha saw
looters
rushing out of the building, some holding clay pots and heavy boxes. 'I
heard
people saying to them, 'Stop, you are destroying our heritage, you are
stealing
what belongs to the Iraqi people.' But no one listened to them. You
would
have had to shoot them to stop them,' said Taha. ... About a week
before
American tanks rolled into Baghdad, Iraqi forces dug three trenches in
the
museum’s front lawn and covered them with corrugated metal and earth.
Partly
camouflaged by the overgrown lawn, these trenches—underground bunkers,
the Americans called them—were later used to store weapons and launch
attacks
on U.S. tanks on the avenue in front of the museum. Identical to combat
pits
dug in parks, vacant lots, and soccer fields all over Baghdad, the
trenches
in front of the museum are about five feet deep and seven feet
long—large
enough to accommodate three or four people lying down with weapons.
American
forces found an unexploded grenade in one of the trenches. There were
at
least five sandbag emplacements on the museum grounds and on the
sidewalk
in front. I asked museum director Nawala al-Mutawili [sic] what the
trenches
were for. 'They were dug long ago,' she said, declining to elaborate.
Elsewhere
in the museum complex, snipers fired at American forces from at least
three
locations: a storage room in the main building and the roofs of two
other
museum buildings. Weapons or ammunition were found later at all three
spots.
A fourth building in the rear of the museum was used as an arsenal and
reloading
station, with easy access to an avenue that saw some of the heaviest
fighting
in Baghdad. The door that connected that building to the avenue was, in
fact,
the door through which most of the looters entered the museum. The use
of
the museum as a military position by Iraqi forces literally opened the
door
to its looting. 'It was that side door,' said Khalil Ibrahim, who lives
nearby.
'All the fighting was over there, and that’s where the thieves were
carrying
out things from the museum.' On Tuesday, April 8, as American tanks
pushed
into central Baghdad, people living in the bustling Al Alawi
neighborhood
around the museum found themselves for the first time in the middle of
war.
American tanks occupied a long intersection on the south side of the
neighborhood,
while paramilitary fedayeen and Republican Guards blasted them with
rocket-propelled grenades and submachine-gun fire from alleys,
balconies, and behind buildings. From the roofs, Iraqis fired
anti-aircraft guns at American tanks, which fired back. On the west
side of this key intersection is Baghdad’s central train station. The
museum is on the north side. Controlling access routes to two bridges
over the Tigris and points north of Baghdad, this junction was crucial
for the Americans to capture and just as crucial for the remnants of
Saddam’s forces to hold. The museum was in the middle of one of the
city’s main military objectives. Mohsun Abbas, an archeologist, was the
only staff member who stayed on the museum grounds during all the
combat and looting that followed. 'I have never seen a battle like
this, and I was in the war with Iran,' he said. With his two sons and a
family friend, Abbas stayed
in their cottage behind the museum while the bombs fell. Fearing for
their
lives, they ventured out rarely. The two highest-ranking officials
inside
the museum as the battle began were National Organization of Iraqi
Antiquities
director Jaber Khalil and research director George. They had been in
the
museum for three days. But now the battle was upon them. Before noon,
they
told me later, Khalil came to George and told him that Iraqi fighters
were
climbing over the fences into the museum grounds. They left at once,
along
with the few other remaining employees in the museum except Abbas. ...
Three
U.S. Army platoons, with four tanks and 16 soldiers each, rolled into
the
immediate vicinity of the museum that day under heavy fire. It was a
big
force, attesting to the importance of the junction and the strength of
Iraqi
resistance. The commander of the operation was Captain Jason Conroy. I
asked
Conroy why his troops didn’t make more of an effort to guard what he
must
have known would be a tempting target for looters. 'That building was
being
used as a defensive position. They were fighting out of it. It wasn’t
like
you came here and there was no enemy. The area was completely saturated
by
enemy positions, and they weren’t abiding by the rules we were abiding
by,'
he said. An engaging, articulate man, Conroy seemed more bewildered
than
angry at the charges that his troops could have stopped the plunder. 'I
mean, you’re talking about one little building. Yes, it’s an important
building,
but you have to think back to what point we were at. We were just
moving
into Baghdad, and just to get to this area was a major undertaking.'
According
to Conroy, U.S. forces came under rocket-propelled grenade fire from
the
roof of the Children’s Museum, which is inside the antiquities museum
complex,
and from the roof of the museum’s library annex. A gaping hole in the
Children’s
Museum shows where a U.S. tank projectile hit, and there were
bloodstains
on a ladder where a wounded Iraqi sniper had climbed down. Boxes of
live
grenades were later found on the roof of the Children’s Museum and on
the
library roof. Behind the battle lines, looting was well under way by
Thursday,
April 10. According to Abbas, a group of seven men smashed open the
museum’s
glass front door and went inside. Most of the shelves were empty, but
there
were still some choice works, like the Warka Vase, a copper bull from
the
Tell Ubaid site, and a 4,400-year-old diorite statue of an early
Babylonian
king. Abbas told me that he had taken a white cloth and walked out to
an
American tank to ask for help guarding the museum. His request was made
to
the American troops’ Arabic translator. Neither Conroy nor any of his
men
I interviewed remembered hearing anything about it. When Abbas walked
back
to the museum, he said, he realized that looters had swept in through a
back
entrance, near the weapons cache that Taha saw. Armed with assault
rifles
and knives, this mob directed its fury at the administrative offices
before
hitting the galleries. They ransacked desks, opened safes with
crowbars,
and emptied file cabinets. One of them found money. A month’s payroll
of
about $14,000 was inside a looted safe, according to someone close to
the
investigation. By Saturday, April 12, other employees began returning
to
the museum and chased out some of the looters. Abbas put up a large
sign
in the entrance saying in Arabic: 'The American army is in control of
the
museum. Those who enter will be killed.' It was a lie, of course, but
it
helped. They were able to block the doors and hold looters at bay.
George
and Khalil, ... [o]n Sunday, April 13, ... ventured out of their homes
and
went to the Palestine Hotel, where there was a U.S. command post, and
got
what they thought was a commitment from a U.S. Marine colonel to get
troops
to secure the building. None came. By then, the marines had largely
withdrawn
from the west side of the Tigris, where the museum was located, and the
U.S.
Army had taken over all operations in that area. Conroy said his forces
took
sporadic fire for four more days, until Tuesday, April 15, when they
withdrew
to refuel. The next day, with news of looting all over the world’s
media,
he finally received orders to return and 'secure' the museum, but by
then
the battle was over and the pillage had ended. They returned expecting
to
find Iraqi armed defenders and instead found only reporters. Conroy
told
me that he had no idea the museum had been looted. He, George, and
Khalil
inspected the museum for booby traps, finding none but coming across
discarded
Republican Guard uniforms. ... One of [the storage rooms], on the first
floor,
suffered particularly heavy vandalism and the loss of hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of small objects. That room was connected to another room on
the second
floor by a spiral staircase. And in the upstairs room there was
evidence
of an Iraqi sniper position: an AK-47 magazine, an empty ammunition
box,
pieces of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a dud grenade, and a
smashed-out
window facing the intersection. The sniper fired while lying among
ancient
treasures. Holes in the wall showed where American bullets had hit. The
most
obvious explanation for how the looters entered those two connected
storage
rooms was that they followed the sniper in. The door was unforced,
meaning
the sniper either had the key or it had been left unlocked. Looters
also
bashed out the cinder blocks covering the back entrance to a basement
storage
area. There was no electricity, so the looters lit papers to use as a
torch
and went through the area picking out the most valuable and portable
items.
'In the storerooms, it seems the looters had some knowledge about where
to
find the best things. These people were prepared,' said George. He said
there
was no evidence that museum employees were involved, but he couldn’t
explain
why the doors weren’t forced. 'Clearly there was a group of people who
went
through the museum filling in a list of things to steal,' said U.S.
Marine
Corps colonel Matthew Bogdanos, who until late May led the 13-man U.S.
team
investigating the looting. ... Made up mostly of U.S. Customs art-theft
experts,
the American team has been billeted inside the museum complex since
late
April. The team officially has the cooperation of museum staff, though
relations
are occasionally prickly, as when the U.S. team asked to fingerprint
museum
employees. The Americans resent the charge that they could have
prevented
the looting, and museum officials are incensed by insinuations that
their
staff allowed or even profited from it. 'The museum is in armadillo
mode.
They’re paranoid and terrified that they’re going to get blamed for
what
happened,' said McGuire Gibson, ... 'The museum people did exactly what
they
should do. They put all the material they could in storage and locked
it
up. They assumed the Americans wouldn’t bomb it, which they didn’t, but
then
they assumed the Americans would protect it from looters.' 'I think
they
should have guarded it, whatever it took,' said Major Eric Holliday,
who
is in charge of protecting cultural sites in northern Iraq. 'If there
was
a war in Washington, would we have protected the Smithsonian? Yeah, we
would
have, no matter what.' Investigators are now wondering why the looters
did
not make off with more than they did. One neighborhood resident said he
had
heard that the first group of looters kept later groups at bay, at
gunpoint,
while the first group took the choicest objects. Taha suggested that
the
crowds lost interest in the artifacts when they found the weapons. In
lawless
Baghdad, a Kalashnikov is a hotter property than a statuette."
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Photo: "U.S. Army captain Jason Conroy in front of the museum.
©ROGER ATWOOD"
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