A rare Sumerian votive wall plaque dating to about 2400 BC which
appeared on an online sales platform in 2019 after being looted and
smuggled out of Iraq [photo credit: The British Museum]
The minister described the destruction of the Library of Islamic Endowment in Baghdad in 2003 and of the University of Mosul library
- the largest in the country - by ISIS in 2017 as a catastrophe. Many
original ancient manuscripts were lost, although some survive in digital
copies. Other manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts are in the US,
the UK “and other countries in the East and the West.” “We are,” he said
“quite confident our friends will help to bring these manuscripts back
to their home.”
On the artefacts front, a staggering 15000 were looted from the
National Museum in 2003 with US occupation forces doing little or
nothing to intervene. Other sites of enormous antiquity were vandalised,
among them Babylon’s Ishtar Gate south of Baghdad, built in 575 BC. A
2018 Atlantic article describes what happened to the site when US troops seized it:
About 300,000 square meters were covered with gravel,
contaminating the site. Several dragon figures on the Ishtar Gate were
damaged. Trenches were cut into ancient deposits, dispersing brick
fragments bearing cuneiform inscriptions. One area was flattened to make
a landing pad for helicopters; another made way for a parking lot; yet
another, portable toilets.
Belatedly realising the damage the war and occupation had done, the
US has in recent years led an effort to return looted antiquities. In
2017 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and ICE (Immigration and
Customs Enforcement) brought a successful prosecution against a
Washington museum, Museum of the Bible, established by a family of
wealthy evangelicals. It came to be known as the Hobby Lobby scandal,
so-named after the chain of arts and crafts stores the family owns in
America.
5500 artefacts were returned and a fine of US$3 million paid with the American authorities congratulating themselves for a job well done. Thousands more were turned over by the Museum of the Bible in 2021.
The UK, too has done some restorative work,
though Minister al-Badrani did make reference to 6000 antiquities
looted from Iraq at the end of the First World War while it was under
the British Mandate, antiquities that he wants to see returned: “They
were taken from Iraq 100 years ago for research purposes.” Among those
excavating, the minister noted, were “Miss Bell and the husband of
Agatha Christie” (Gertrude Bell and Christie’s first husband Archibald
Christie.)
While those negotiations are ongoing and clearly important to the
minister’s vision to link Iraq’s rich cultural heritage to the tourism
sector, he faces a daunting task. In order to build the museums in which
he hopes to place restored antiquities he will inevitably come up
against not just muhasasa but Hashd al-Sha’bi, the PMU militias
deeply involved in smuggling and in the construction sector. (For more
on the PMU see Renad Mansour’s February 2021 Chatham House paper Networks of power)
The Chatham House researcher Hisham al-Hashemi
who was assassinated in Baghdad in July 2020 had uncovered evidence of
the PMU controlling tenders, gravel and sand quarries as well as using
border posts they command to both smuggle goods out and extort bribes
for incoming goods. The minister wouldn’t be drawn on the extent to
which the PMU may be involved in smuggling looted artefacts out of Iraq.
The other challenge Dr al-Badrani faces is that though he may secure
the return of many artefacts as Western museum guilt takes hold and
though he may build the museums will the tourists come? The issue now,
as it has been for the past twenty years, is security. An attendee when
asked, after the meeting, about visiting Iraq as a tourist to experience
its undoubtedly rich and gloriously long heritage said “I would go to
KRI (Kurdish region of Iraq) but the rest of Iraq no. It is too
dangerous.”