[CPProt.net] A heritage under siege

[Paula Kotakis]

My apologies to those who received error messages when they 
tried to access the URL provided last hour. Here is the article in full.

--Paula Kotakis

Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/633/hr2.htm

A heritage under siege

    Countless Iraqi historical monuments have already been
    destroyed and we continue to hear more reports of damage.
    Nevine El-Aref traces the steps taken, and not taken, to
    preserve the country's heritage 

The United States, Great Britain and Iraq are signatories of The 
Hague Convention of 1954 for the protection of cultural property in 
the event of armed conflict. This stipulates that mankind should 
prevent, make impossible, and sanction any state or group of 
states from destroying, damaging, and desecrating the monuments 
of culture in the territory of another state. They should also ensure 
that national agencies should, as far as possible, exercise 
continued protection and maintenance of such property. 

Despite this, and the promise of the US military to be "as gentle as 
possible" concerning the some 4,000 specific sites of historical 
interest in Iraq, during the first week of the Third Gulf War American 
and British forces bombarded Iraq and news came of the complete 
destruction by missiles of the National Museum of Takrit on the 
outskirt of Baghdad. 

The aggressors justify their attack by claiming the Iraqis are using 
archaeological sites for their own military advantage. The Boston 
Globe reported that the Iraqi minister of antiquities was "helping 
them to do it". And, in a White House letter on the Internet, 
circulated on 2 January, Peter Grieve wrote: "War is serious 
business, more serious than Mesopotamian archaeology, I'm 
afraid. If some sites are given a protected status, guess where the 
Iraqis will set up bases? The radar installation near the palace of 
Sennacherib was probably put there on purpose." 

Three appeals were made before the commencement of the war. 
The first was by international scholars, the second by 18 Iraqi 
archaeologists, and the third by 15 of the world's leading museums 
and most prominent universities, including American. The first 
appeal was for the troops engaged in the war to spare Iraq's 
priceless antiquities and to remind them they were committed to 
respecting Iraq's cultural heritage. The second was to draw world 
attention to the richness of that heritage (see neighbouring story) 
and to fears that it could be plundered as a result of the war, as 
occurred during the 1991 Second Gulf War. The third appeal was to 
urge scholars to take steps to prevent the destruction of relics from 
one of the cradles of civilisation. These appeals, accompanied by a 
detailed report on the dangers facing Iraqi heritage written by 
MacGuire Gibson -- president of the American Association for 
Research in Baghdad -- which raised grave fears about the impact 
of sustained fighting on Iraqi's patrimony, were circulated on the 
Internet. The signatories called also on the international community 
to take on a post-war role in assisting in the protection of 
antiquities from looting, and themselves pledged to help the Iraqi 
Department of Antiquities to do its job. 

On Friday 28 March a declaration signed by more than 100 
distinguished American and European academics entitled "The 
grave danger to the priceless heritage of Iraq by military action" 
was published in the Science and Technology News Service. It 
called on all governments to respect the international protocol 
regarding the protection of cultural property in armed conflict. The 
signatories expressed their concern not only about the impact of 
bombs and artillery on historic buildings and archaeological sites, 
but also the looting that would inevitably follow any breakdown of 
law and order in the aftermath of war. A similar plea went out from 
the Blue Shield Organisation, which represents four international 
bodies for libraries, museums, archives and monuments. 

The Arab Archaeologists Union, headed by Ali Radwan, former 
dean of the faculty of archaeology at Cairo University, sent an 
official letter to the secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr 
Moussa, appealing to him and to all Arab and foreign countries to 
stop the Anglo-American aggression which would result in the 
destruction of the birthplace of ancient civilisation. 

Last Sunday, in an open letter to UNESCO's Head Koichiro 
Matsuura, the head of ALESCO, the Tunis-based Arab League's 
body for education, culture and science, Mongi Bousnina, 
expressed concern at "the scale of the damage done to Iraq's 
cultural heritage since the start of the aggression". He urged the 
UNESCO chief to "remind the invading powers of the utmost 
urgency of their duties and obligations to conform to international 
conventions" on the protection of cultural assets in the event of 
war. He also urged the UN Security Council and the Council of 
Europe to "act in order to end this aggression on one of the richest 
and most ancient parts of humanity's cultural heritage". 

The Egyptian Permanent Antiquities Committee has also 
condemned the destruction of the archaeological sites in Iraq. 

Jaber Khalil Ibrahim, president of the National Office of Antiquities 
in Iraq, declared: "We will continue to do all we can to protect the 
archaeological sites of our country. Before the war started we took 
steps to protect our museums and sites by packing the objects 
and placing them in safe underground storage areas, and by 
identifying historical buildings by placing big placards on them 
declaring them to be 'Museums' and 'UNESCO-protected' property."

In an effort to protect the contents of the National Museum of 
Baghdad, which boasts the country's largest archaeological 
collection and is located a few metres from the Ministry of Culture 
and Information, Iraq's Ministry of Antiquities took several 
precautions. They enclosed the building with sand bags and buried 
treasures beneath ground level. However, it has not passed 
unobserved that the bombardment could cause craters as deep as 
30 metres. 

Gibson, who has led archaeological digs in Iraq since 1964 and 
who heads a consortium of about 30 museums and universities in 
the United States, went on an inspection tour last January in order 
to document sites in Iraq. He recorded some 4,000, which include 
mediaeval mosques, madrassas, churches, and other historical 
buildings dating from various eras. Many of these are in central 
Baghdad, including the ninth-century Great Shrine of Al-Mutawakkil 
on the outskirts of the city. Others are in the area lying between 
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Before this tour, the Pentagon had 
listed a mere 150 sites of archaeological importance. 

Since the commencement of the war, and according to the Iraqi 
representative of UNESCO, the Takrit National Museum with its 
collection of Islamic objects which date back to the time of 
Salaheddin is not the only building destroyed. Two governmental 
palaces of historical value, which date from the Abbassid era, as 
well as the Zohour (flower) Palace and its Royal Museum, which 
tells the history of the monarchy in Iraq with a collection of official 
royal wearing apparel, queens' robes, and personal possessions 
and utilitarian objects, have also collapsed under the weight of the 
bombardment and been transformed into mounds of rubble. 

The 13th-century University of Al-Mustansriya, a 16th-century 
revered Shi'ite mosque called Al- Kadhimain, and the Arch of 
Cetesiphon in Baghdad have also been hit. 

On day 14 of the war, Information Minister Mohamed Said Al-
Sahhaf, addressing the Shi'a community on Iraq's satellite TV 
channel, announced that the aggressors (referring to Anglo-
American forces)in Najaf had bombarded an area close to the 
mausoleums of both Imam Ali Ibn Abi Taleb, the cousin and son-in-
law of Prophet Mohamed, and Imam Al-Hussein, his grandson, as 
well asthe shrine of his brother Al-Abbassi. The bombs had shaken 
the ground beneath them and weakened their foundations, and 
threatened the holy buildings with collapse. 

It has been rumoured that the National Museum of Baghdad, which 
houses treasures dating from 700 BC to 1000 AD, has been heavily 
targeted by US bombs. However, as the telephone connection to 
Baghdad is down nothing mire has been heard and the current 
state of the museum is not clear. 

Saleh Lamei, member of ICOMOS (International Council of 
Monuments and Sites) said: "The risk is not only to existing 
monuments and museums, but to thousands of archaeological 
sites, many not yet excavated, which lie buried and could be 
devastated because the armies are fighting on Iraqi territory using 
bulldozers and heavy artillery. The identity of the nation depends on 
its cultural heritage. By destroying such evidence, thousands of 
years of civilisation have been lost." Lamei drew attention to 
another danger: following the destruction, sites would be open to 
the activities of looters and antiquities smugglers. "It would become 
a free market for illegal activities. This was what happened in 
Baghdad in 1991, when priceless items made their way out of the 
country and were put up for sale at Ebay's Auction House in the 
USA." 

The historian Dan Cruickshank, who specialises in architecture, 
claimed on a BBC double- documentary produced when the Iraqi 
Ministry of Information invited a British film crew to visit the 
country's "lost cities" that the remains of Babylon would be "in the 
firing line". He argued in the programme that "defence" was 
determined to avoid "another Dresden", the mediaeval German city 
destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945. 

A spokesman declined to comment on potential targets, but a well-
placed source said: "During the Gulf War, we went to great lengths 
to avoid hitting important sites, and 'smart' bombs have reduced 
collateral damage." Nevertheless, the fact remains that the ancient 
city of Ur did sustain damage during the 1991 war, which, he 
declared, was a casualty of Saddam's decision to site an air base 
there. 

In his column in the daily Al-Ahram newspaper, Zahi Hawass, the 
first under-secretary of state in the Ministry of Culture and the 
secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), 
commented: "When the Taliban set about destroying the great rock-
hewn statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, the world was up in arms. 
America led the campaign of criticism against them through 
UNESCO and the international media. The Taliban were accused of 
being morons who willfully destroyed monuments. But now," 
Hawass went on, "it is the Americans who are destroying a 
heritage with the use of high-tech military equipment, and where 
are UNESCO, ICOMOS, or the international museums? Where are 
the experts and the defenders of culture while the Iraqi heritage is 
being desecrated?" 

Hawass told Al-Ahram Weekly he was worried that, as the war 
continued, "many of Iraq's archaeological sites will fall into oblivion, 
and how will American professors of archaeology explain to their 
students that the Americans destroyed a rich ancient civilisation in 
the Third Gulf War?" 

An appeal for the preservation of Iraq's heritage was made on behalf 
of scholars before the outbreak of war by Mounir Bushnaqi, head of 
the World Heritage Organisation (WHO) who said that UNESCO 
and WHO had provided the American army with comprehensive 
information regarding the actual location of Iraq's archaeological 
sites and museum, as well as the sites on the World Heritage List, 
so that they would have all the necessary information on what to 
avoid. Bushnaqi added that UNESCO had urged the US to take all 
possible steps "to protect and preserve the outstandingly rich Iraqi 
heritage for the benefit of future generations". 

"We have received many assurances by the US delegation that 
they have taken into account all the information we have provided 
on the museums and sites," he continued. 

"But," Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, an SCA representative in 
UNESCO said angrily, "while there was a call for an urgent meeting 
among UNESCO representatives to stop the Taliban desecration 
and to restore the damaged statue, such a call has not been made 
for Iraq. Are not its monuments as important? Why do they not call 
for an international appeal to save them, or call for an urgent 
meeting to discuss the situation?" 

Abdel-Maqsoud told the Weekly that two weeks ago, when the war 
started, he was in Paris attending a periodical UNESCO meeting. 
"Nobody bothered to mention the destruction of Iraq's heritage, or 
even issue any statement of condemnation," he pointed out. "If 
UNESCO, WHO and the international community keep silent and 
no action is taken the missiles could threaten other archaeological 
sites, in Syria, Jordan, Iran and Turkey. 

"During the third and fourth days of the war, two missiles missed 
their mark and one hit a public bus in Syria where 100 civilians 
died, and the second hit the Iraqi-Iranian border, fortunately without 
causing any casualties. What else could be hit with stray rockets? 
I blame UNESCO and WHO for their unclear policy. Both 
organisations apparently see, hear and speak no evil. UNESCO's 
head must call for a halt to the armed conflict." 

On the brighter side, Lamei said that all the signatories of the 
appeals were willing to help in the restoration of Iraq's destroyed 
monuments after the end of the war, whether by providing 
specialists or helping to raise funds for restoration. 

"As soon as the situation permits, we will evaluate and prepare an 
action plan," Bushnaqi said. "Our feelings are that this heritage 
belongs not only to Iraqis. It is the heritage of all humanity." 

C a p t i o n : Mosque and mausoleum of Al-Abbas in Najaf, the 
foundation of which have been seriously undermined

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 10 -16 April 2003 (Issue No. 633)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/633/hr2.htm