Book review: Record of destruction By David Tresilian The destruction of the cultural heritage of Iraq first hit the international headlines in April 2003 shortly after the entry of US forces into Baghdad. In the chaos that followed the collapse of the Saddam regime, the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was looted and a wave of destruction swept the country, with everything from government buildings to cultural institutions, universities, schools and even hospitals being targeted. The Iraqi National Library and Archives in Baghdad was destroyed, the Museum of Modern Art looted, and outside Baghdad archaeological sites, heritage buildings, university libraries and provincial museums were attacked, looted and destroyed. An early eyewitness report of events in Baghdad following the entry of US forces into the city that appeared in the New York Times spoke of "at least 170,000 items" being looted from the Iraq Museum, which "had been regarded as perhaps the richest of all such institutions in the Middle East." Though this figure was later revised downwards, with around 10,000 items estimated to be missing, many of which have since been recovered, scholars across the world spoke of a "cultural catastrophe" having hit Iraq during the US-led invasion. Five years on, as the present book reveals, that cultural catastrophe is continuing. Edited by British academic Peter Stone and Lebanese journalist Joanne Farchakh Bajjaly, The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq brings together contributions from 28 authors writing on the destruction of Iraq's heritage that has taken place since the 2003 US-led invasion and the wider problems of protecting heritage sites and antiquities in the country. Three main themes can be detected in the shape of the background to the 2003 destruction, the continuing threats to the country's heritage, and what is being done on the national and international levels to protect Iraqi heritage sites and institutions. The contributions by McGuire Gibson of the University of Chicago and Neil Brodie of Stanford University are particularly useful in understanding the background to the 2003 looting. Until 1991, Gibson writes, Iraq had "the best antiquities service in the Middle East and [it was] one of the best countries in terms of protecting its cultural heritage" However, in the chaos following the 1991 Gulf War this situation radically changed. International sanctions against Iraq led to widespread poverty, and the no-fly zones imposed by the sanctions regime meant that it was impossible for the Iraqi authorities effectively to police archaeological sites. A rash of illicit excavations broke out across Iraq, with a flood of illegally exported Iraqi antiquities reaching western markets. Brodie's article gives the market background to this situation, showing how western dealers were able to circumvent rules on provenance and take advantage of the public apathy that allowed an illegal trade in Iraqi antiquities to develop from the 1990s onwards. He gives details of Sin- Iddinam inscribed cuneiform barrels from Iraq offered for sale at auction houses in New York and London with what is believed to be inadequate provenance and of Iraqi Aramaic incantation bowls for sale on the Internet. The ease with which such material left Iraq after 2003 suggests that routes out by then had been well established, and it was only after the public outcry against the looting of the Iraq Museum in 2003, Brodie writes, that the British Government took effective action against the trade. Elsewhere in the book, Donny George, the former director of the Iraq Museum, and Peter Stone give further background on the 2003 events, George from the perspective of someone working to protect the Iraq Museum from looters and Stone from that of a consultant to the British Ministry of Defence on its obligations regarding heritage protection. However, possibly more valuable than this historical material, already well represented elsewhere, are the articles on the situation of Iraqi heritage sites five years after the US-led invasion, notably the contributions on the sites of Babel, Babylon and Ur. In her article on the site of the ancient city of Babel in southern Iraq, for example, Iraqi archaeologist Mariam Umran Moussa writes on damage to the site as a result of its occupation by Coalition forces in 2003-2004. Trenches were dug across archaeologically sensitive areas and roads were built and areas leveled for heavy vehicle parking within the ancient city. Similar damage has been sustained at the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, among Iraq's best-known archaeological sites as a result of excavations there in the 1920s by British archaeologist Leonard Woolley and the presence at the site of the famous 'ziggurat'. According to Iraqi archaeologist Abdulamir Hamdani's contribution to the present volume, the Saddam regime's construction of a military base close to the archaeological site made it vulnerable to attack, and the subsequent use and enlargement of this base by US forces has led to further damage. Attacks on the air base located behind the ziggurat intensified from one a month to one a week in 2007, for example, with shells hitting excavated zones and damaging the temple area. However, probably the most controversial of all such damage came about as a result of the decision by US forces to use the site of Babylon as a military base, bitterly criticised by Zainab Bahrani of Columbia University in her contribution to the book. Damage done to the site was "extensive and irreparable," Bahrani writes, and she points out that the use of heritage sites as military bases is a breach of the Hague Convention and Protocol of 1954 as well as of Iraqi law. "The idea that the military occupation of Babylon was for its own protection simply beggars belief," Bahrani comments. The question arises of what can be done to protect Iraq's cultural heritage from the continuing threats against it, whether from looters or from military action. One answer may lie in enhanced legal provisions to discourage the smuggling and illegal trade in Iraqi antiquities and another in better policing of the international antiquities market. A key article in the present book by Patty Gerstenblith of DePaul University looks at these aspects of the problem, showing how various European countries, including Germany, the UK and Switzerland, have strengthened their national legislation while also ratifying pre-existing international conventions on the trade in cultural property. Neither the US nor the UK, however, has ratified the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, one of the main international agreements governing the issue. According to an earlier article in the book by Vernon Rapley, head of the Art and Antiques Unit of New Scotland Yard in London and member of the Interpol Tracking Task Force for Iraq, policing of the antiquities market in the UK may even have been weakened in recent years by the decision of Cambridge University to close its Illicit Antiquities Research Centre and of the London Metropolitan Police to scale back its Art and Antiques Unit, the only one in the country. The UK, Rapley writes, far from "putting more effort into this area of crime... [is doing] exactly the opposite." Later articles in The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq explain activities undertaken by various international institutions and organisations to protect the country's cultural heritage, from the British Museum, represented here by an article by John Curtis, Keeper of the Middle East Department, to the German, French, Italian and Polish organisations that have worked in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, often under very difficult conditions. A final article by Jeff Spurr of Harvard University describes the present state of the Iraqi National Library and Archives following the catastrophic destruction that took place in 2003. The story then was one of almost unremitting destruction, with 25% of the book collections destroyed, along with 60% of the archival collections containing materials from the Ottoman, Hashemite and Republican periods. It seems almost incredible, given the amount apparently being spent on reconstruction in Iraq, to read in Spurr's article that the Iraqi National Library last year had to make do with a total acquisitions budget of US$7,000, and that Iraqi universities, having applied for US$1.2 billion worth of funds, were awarded only US$9 million. As Spurr comments, "any viable Iraqi state of the future will be reliant upon a thriving and effective system of higher education," which will entail adequate libraries. "In the light of the overwhelming needs, and the wanton squandering of funds elsewhere, meagre budget allocations have made the achievement of reasonable and necessary targets impossible." While The Destruction of Cultural Heritage in Iraq seems not to be intended for the general reader, the book's key articles nevertheless usefully summarise the destruction that has taken place and the various actions that have been undertaken to try to stop it. The editors have brought together an unusually wide range of contributors from Europe, the Middle East and the United States to discuss the destruction of Iraq's heritage and the issues this raises. Most of these have been involved in Iraqi archaeology or heritage management for many years, and many are authorities in their fields. Reviewed by David Tresilian
