Back when the war was just beginning, back when we hoped to be greeted as liberators, we first heard the reports of widespread looting throughout Baghdad.
Libraries, public offices, museums were all raided by groups suddenly free of any accountability as they desperately scrambled to seize whatever they could of value.
CNN showed us blurry images of floors strewn with debris where the cultural heritage of a nation was once on display. This was the inevitable fog of war. This was the "stuff" that "happens," as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said. Today, after three years of reflection, a lot that we think we know about the war has changed. But one thing certainly remains the same.
The looting of the Baghdad Archaeological Museum could have been one of the worst cultural disasters of our age were it not for the heroic efforts of the museum's staff and the assistance of a few members of the United States Marine Corps. The immediate institution of amnesty programs coupled with aggressive policing has returned much of the cultural patrimony of Iraq to the public's hands.
Indeed, given the laundry list of troubles that now dominates the headlines from the war, the restoration of the Iraq National Museum is one of the very few points of light in an often bleak landscape.
But given everything we now think we know about the war, it is fair to ask if this even matters. Certainly water, food, electricity and security are issues of far greater concern to modern day Iraqis than esoteric artifacts of long extinct peoples. This much is undeniable. But there are reasons to celebrate the resurrection of the Iraq National Museum that reach far beyond any insular satisfaction an American archaeologist such as myself might gain from knowing that an object like the Warka vase or the Uruk Head is back in public hands.
For one thing, as a nation we can now be honest with ourselves. The Iraq war has placed us squarely at the center of a nation-building project. We must concern ourselves not only with the infrastructure of that new polity, but also with the symbolic and metaphorical language of unified nationhood. Consider our own national iconography: a French statue in New York Harbor, a broken bell in Philadelphia, a wooden warship in Boston Harbor. Regardless of the particular history of these things, each has evolved into a totem of our national unity.
For a country such as Iraq, where tribal and sectarian instincts are quickly replacing Baathist fascism as the political order of the day, we will find no better reservoir of potentially unifying imagery than that supplied by the region's archaeological record. Iraqis must first want a unified country. Those who do want this need not only compelling political arguments and evidence of civic services, but also an iconographic language that transcends Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. There is great power in such images. When used properly, they offer much to the good of the state.
However, there are far more tangible and immediate reasons to be concerned with Iraq's archaeological heritage. Illegally looted antiquities from Iraq and elsewhere form the second largest illicit market in the world. Only narcotics remain more lucrative. This is due to lax international standards regarding traffic in looted antiquities and absurdly lenient penalties for those apprehended in the trade.
To be caught smuggling $1,000,000 worth of heroin, an amount that might fit into a single backpack, can result in decades behind bars. To be caught smuggling $1,000,000 worth of cylinder seals looted from Babylon - an amount that can easily fit into a single backpack - might result in a monetary fine and perhaps six months behind bars at most. And with so little at risk, there remains a great demand for such items. The market in Europe, Asia and America for antiquities appears insatiable. Perhaps the greatest irony of America's nation building project in Iraq is that a large percentage of the financing for the insurgency comes from profits derived from trade in narcotics and antiquities. Without the western hemisphere's hunger for these two commodities, much of the financial support for Iraq's insurgency would falter. In a very real sense, America and its western allies are paying for those weapons that kill and injure our troops in the field.
So while the story of the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad remains one of great success, numerous archaeological sites throughout Iraq have been looted beyond recognition. When insurgent strongholds are discovered, they invariably contain caches of weaponry, money, narcotics and antiquities. The relationship between a looter's pit at Nippur and an improvised explosive device in Baghdad may not be direct, but it is certainly not causal either.
This evening, Col. Matthew Bagdanos, USMC, will speak in Braker 001 at 5:00 pm. Col. Bagdanos was in Baghdad in 2003 and arrived at the Iraq National Museum shortly after it was looted. Col. Bagdanos' efforts to assist the staff of the museum in recovering looted materials helped to avert a potentially catastrophic cultural disaster. He will speak not only on his experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also address the issue of the antiquities trade and terrorist financing. Bagdanos' book, "The Thieves of Baghdad," will be available for sale. Proceeds from the book go to the restoration of the Iraq National Museum. All are welcome.
Anthony Tuck is a lecturer in the Classics Department.
