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Looting required fork lift Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/04/17/do1702.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/04/17/ixopinion.htmlhttp://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/04/17/do1702.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/04/17/ixopinion.html
Why are we allowing the rape of Iraq?
By Boris Johnson
(Filed: 17/04/2003)
Suppose the government of your country had just sustained a cataclysmic reverse. It might have been an evil government, but it was yours. Suppose that your army had just been cut to ribbons by a force so overwhelmingly superior that comparisons had been drawn with the massacres of the Zulus, or the Aztecs. You might think that your country's army had been fighting for a bad man. But it was your army.
Suppose you were asked to agree with the victors that the past 25 years of your nation's history had been an appalling aberration. You might be among the huge numbers of Iraqis who rejoice to see the downfall of Saddam. But it is your country's history that is being anathematised. You would be only human if, at the same time, you yearned for something you could cling to; some symbol of an Iraq that predated Saddam.
You would want some evidence that there was still something about you and your country that was great, and admirable, and unique. And then imagine that, under the eyes of the incoming army, the most splendid treasures of your national museum were carted off. Not the usual melange: the Impressionist donated by a supermarket tycoon's wife; the ho-hum sculpture by Degas.
No, imagine that your country has suddenly been pillaged of its most emblematic works, the equivalent of the Crown Jewels, things that were meant eternally to incarnate the culture of your land.
Think how you would feel if you knew that, even now, these things were being secretly crated up, given false bills of sale and deprived of their museum code numbers. How would it strike you, when you reflect that these things are about to be flogged to the tiny minority who can afford to buy them, principally in the conquering country?
I supported this war, and I support it. But it fills me with rage to think that at least some of the spoils of Iraq's National Museum will, in all likelihood, end up as the bibelots in the brownstone of some banker in New York.
No one knows what has happened to the limestone Warqa Vase of 3,500 bc, or the bull's head harp of Ur, or the squatting Akkadian king of 2,300 bc.
According to Irving Finkle, of the Ancient Near East department of the British Museum, at least four of the looted objects were so vast - such as a larger-than-life sculpture of an Assyrian king - that it would have taken a fork-lift truck to move them.
As Dr Finkle points out, all it required was a couple of determined American troops to stand outside, with or without a tank. Now 170,000 items are missing, and all because America was unwilling to expend the necessary resources. Why? If you launched a military operation against Athens, wouldn't you take steps to prevent the destruction of the Parthenon?
In this week's Spectator, Rod Liddle talks to an archaeologist who attended a meeting on January 24 at the US Defence Department, of a newly formed group called the American Council for Cultural Policy. The chairman, William Pearlstein, represents about 60 leading American lawyers and collectors. According to Pearlstein, Iraq's policy towards cultural artefacts has been excessively "retentionist". The group apparently told American defence chiefs that, under the new regime, it would like "more objects to be certified for export". Well, whatever you say about the post-war Iraqi order, its policy towards historic artefacts is about as retentionist as a burst paper bag.
If I were an Iraqi, joyful at the removal of Saddam, but struggling to come to terms with the crushing of my country by America, I would want to know how this has happened. I would be instinctively "retentionist", because in a dirt-poor country, fallen on very hard times, these objects remind me that Mesopotamia, not America, was once the greatest country on Earth.
In fact, it was a mere 4,000 years ago that Iraq was a bit of a superpower, the Assyrian having such a big technological advantage over his enemies that he came down like the wolf on the fold. The ringleted beards, the winged lions, the chariots made of electrum - all that beautiful stuff was made when Europeans were thudding each other with lumps of wood.
The treasures stolen from the Baghdad museum should not only have been a source of tourist income to future generations, but also a visible testimony to the point made by Lt Col Tim Collins at the outset of the war: that this was a country worthy of respect. And now those objects will turn up - if they turn up at all - in Tokyo salerooms and the guest washrooms of Floridian real estate kings. If I were a "retentionist" Iraqi, I would want to know how and why this group gained such access to the US Defence Department. I would like to know whether it is true that some of them have been in contact with President Bush. I would like to know how the Americans could let this happen, when 4,000 objects were looted after the 1991 Gulf war, and only a fraction of them recovered.
What steps are the coalition forces taking to stop this happening again? As I write, there is still apparently no adequate protection for the National Museum, to say nothing of the provincial museums. Why, finally, did Geoff Hoon seem last week to condone the looting of official buildings? I can think of no explanation, except perhaps that the Government may wish to use the chaos to explain away another embarrassment.
Perhaps we will shortly be told that the looters have snaffled the weapons of mass destruction. Whatever our motives, we have allowed Iraq's heritage to be badly damaged. We must do what we can to make it good, and in an ideal world not so much as a broken potsherd will pass into the hands of anyone connected with the American Council for Cultural Policy.
Boris Johnson is MP for Henley and editor of The Spectator
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