[MSN] Fighting for Iraq's culture.

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Fighting for Iraq's culture
War on plunder
Matthew Bogdanos Published: March 6, 2007

  
With the situation in Iraq growing seemingly graver by the day, Americans
are increasingly reluctant to risk American blood to save Iraqi lives. So
it's a pretty tough sell to ask people to care about a bunch of old rocks
with funny writing.

But what if they understood that the plunder of Iraq's 10,000 poorly guarded
archaeological sites not only deprives future generations of incomparable
works of art, but also finances the insurgents? Having led the United States
investigation into the looting of the Iraq National Museum in 2003, I know
that millions of dollars' worth of antiquities flow out of the country each
year. And it would be naïve to think the insurgents aren't getting a major
share of the loot.

What if Americans understood that our failure to appreciate the importance
Iraqis place on their history has added to the chaos faced by our troops?

Four years after the initial looting, and despite having recovered almost
6,000 antiquities, we cannot keep pace with the artifacts being stolen every
day. This continued failure to protect an artistic heritage going back to
the dawn of civilization has convinced many in Iraq and the Middle East that
we do not care about any culture other than our own.

It's worth noting that the failure to safeguard Iraqi antiquities does not
rest solely with the United States. While the United Nations and NATO took
the lead in providing security for cultural artifacts in postwar situations
in Bosnia, Cyprus and elsewhere, neither seems much interested in rectifying
the situation in Iraq. NATO opened a training center for security officers
outside Baghdad in 2005, but none of the trained trained have been assigned
to archaeological sites. The United Nations says that it has no mandate to
train guards and that the level of violence does not permit its involvement.

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So who might act? In the past, most archaeological digs in Iraq have had
foreign sponsorship — the Germans at Babylon and Uruk, the British at Ur and
Nimrud, the French at Kish and Lagash, the Italians at Hatra, and the
Americans at Nippur.

Given that background, it would make sense for each of these countries to
"adopt" the sites its scholars have been studying. Each of the foreign
nations would provide guards around the perimeter and around the clock.
(Obviously, this would entail getting permission from the Iraqi government
and help from the American military.)

Ideally, these foreign forces would also be assigned a group of Iraqi
recruits to train. Once the Iraqis were mission-capable — it should take
only six months or so if the Baghdad government supplied the manpower — the
donor nation would recall its forces.

In this way, Mesopotamia's cultural patrimony would be safe, Al Jazeera
would have to find other ways to show TV clips of Western indifference to
Arab culture, and the terrorists would have to find another income source.

One challenge has been convincing European governments that providing
coordinated site security would not be a statement in support of the war.
But surely they could be persuaded that it would be a humanitarian effort to
protect a cultural heritage rich with common ancestry that predates the
splits among Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite.

The lesson for the United States is that we must never again cede the moral
high ground on cultural issues like this one. In advance of any future
military action, we should assign units the task of protecting cultural
property.

All troops scheduled to deploy overseas should receive cultural awareness
training; the Archaeological Institute of America has already conducted some
seminars at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Yes, diverting resources to save cultural artifacts during a war may seem
like cutting funds for the police and firefighters in order to expand the
public library. My decision to expand my team's counterterrorist mission to
investigate the looting of the museum was characterized by many as a
distraction.

But some soldiers before us have seen the wisdom of this approach.
"Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments
and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting
to preserve," said Dwight Eisenhower just before D-Day. "It is the
responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols
whenever possible."

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