[CPProt.net] Iraqi looting of cultural heritage -

[Reed Van Horth]

Hello,
    I have watched the debates over the past few weeks in this journalistic forum in silence. Any views that I disagree with, I simply pass over, and understand that biases exist in journalism. I was under the impression that this was a journalistic forum, where we were able to help each other with information on how to better run our businesses and lives. 
    This has devolved into a column, better suited for the op-ed page than the arts page. I no longer wish to receive emails of opinions. Only facts. 
    You may make the argument that you have presented facts in this email; and I would counter that with the inflammatory tone of the opinion, the facts have been biased by the writer, and those who support the view. 
    My opinion is of no relevance here. Neither is yours. This is a fact page that should not involve anything but. 
    If it is your choice to send further emails with opinions as such, please remove my name from your list. I read enough to have developed my own picture of what is going on in the world, that I do not need to get it in my "In-Box" as well. 
    Thank you, Reed Van Horth
Historian- Collection Privee de Peinture et de Sculpture
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Denny 
  To: Artnose Editor ; list at cpprot.net 
  Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2003 3:50 PM
  Subject: Re: [CPProt.net] Iraqi looting of cultural heritage - Blame Bush andBlair

  Remove me from this list. I not only disagree with what was said, I NEVER want to hear from the sender or anybody with that view again.
  REMOVE ME NOW!
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Artnose Editor 
    To: list at cpprot.net 
    Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2003 3:28 AM
    Subject: [CPProt.net] Iraqi looting of cultural heritage - Blame Bush and Blair


    Iraq's ancient cultural heritage has been ransacked - blame Bush and Blair
     
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    This Gulf War was entirely unnecessary. It has caused inestimable human misery to the people of Iraq and has wrecked an irreplaceable goldmine of cultural heritage. The looting of hospitals and other public buildings is serious enough, particularly when hundreds of women and children are suffering from the effects of bombing and artillery fire, but at least that medical infrastructure can be rebuilt. Not so the country's priceless material culture. 

    This war has revealed more than any conflict since the Second World War, the essentially philistine nature of Western capitalist economies, as the US barges into a country of unparalleled historical significance in order to further its own strategic aims. Clearly the coalition forces made no proper contingency plans for the immediate aftermath. 

    Of course, scores of extra troops were standing by to quash an intransigent Republican Guard had it decided to fight to the bitter end, but when peacekeeping personnel were needed to defend public buildings and the cultural treasures in Iraq's museums, there was suddenly a paucity of 'men on the ground'. 

    "We haven't targeted anything, nor are we firing at these precious sites," US Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, told ABC News. What neither he nor his military superiors had taken into account is that cultural heritage is not only destroyed by bombing and artillery fire, but by a lawless people after the conflict ends. Any sophisticated military planner would have made allowance for this, particularly in a country such as Iraq, and particularly given what happened after the last Gulf War. 

    Owens went on to say that he was unaware of any damage to museums, but he had only to tune into networked radio broadcasts to hear that Mosul museum had been ransacked by a mob, two men seen carrying off an ancient portal, while gangs burst into the museum storeroom and targeted ancient Assyrian and Babylonian stone tablets. 

    Meanwhile, Baghdad's archaeological museum was also looted, according to an AFP reporter, with dozens of opportunists on the ground floor helping themselves to ancient pottery artefacts and statues. After seeing hundreds of computers looted from offices in recent days, it is perhaps only a matter of time before Iraq's ancient material culture starts appearing on eBay, that pernicious paradise for traffickers in stolen goods and looted antiquities. 

    While this tragic destruction was taking place in what archaeologists call "the cradle of civilisation", a sinister-sounding organisation calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP) - a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers (now there's a venal concatenation of interests) - was lobbying for a relaxation of Iraq's export legislation. 

    It is antiquities collectors who provide the incentive for looters in the first place. No modern museum worth its reputation would even consider purchasing antiquities without documented provenance, but auction houses and dealers continue to offer objects of uncertain origin, while wealthy collectors remain the end users, fuelling the supply chain. Websites such as eBay unwittingly provide cover for the traffic in illicitly-acquired artefacts, but the entire process, from tomb-robber and museum-looter to dealer and collector, needs policing. Failing to do so will result in the dispersal of the world's cultural heritage. 

    No matter how we dress this up, Bush and Blair are directly to blame. There was no proper legal or human justification for this war. Saddam's régime was toothless in the face of international political and diplomatic containment in recent years. The region will never be cleaned of weapons of mass destruction while Israel is allowed to intimidate its neighbours with its privileged nuclear stockpile.

    No 'smoking gun' has been found in Iraq. It would only have been necessary to relax sanctions and attach specific conditions to that relaxation, to re-empower the Iraqi people. Political change in the modern world needs to occur organically. Attempts to impose it through the military industrial complex is fraught with danger and invariably leads to the uncontainable humanitarian crisis we now see unfolding across Iraq today. And it will not end here. The blunt weapon of American neo-colonialism will grind forwards, creating new cells of informal opposition around the world. America bleats about why it is so despised and then promptly sends a reckless and unwieldy military machine into a region where it has no business to be. The British government should be ashamed of itself for collaborating and exposing British forces to 'blue-on-blue' - that hideous euphemism which disguises the fatal flaws in America's computerised command structure - which has killed so many young soldiers and airmen in this conflict.

    The built and moveable heritage of Iraq may seem a small part of all this, but a country's ancient material culture is crucial to a people seeking to heal themselves after a terrible war. Now that point of reference, that umbilicus joining the Iraqi people to their ancient ancestors, has been severed, or at any rate dispersed beyond retrieval. 

    It will be interesting to see how the international art market associations respond to this crisis. Now is a time for collaboration and visionary thinking. So don't hold your breath. 

    Editor,
    Artknows 
    editor at artknows.com
    http://www.artknows.com/AK2IraqComment1.htm





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