Archaeological looting in Iraq

Protection of museums under Ba'athist Iraq[edit]

Upon becoming president in 1979, Saddam Hussein treasured his national heritage immensely and acted to defend these sites and the artifacts within them. He believed that the past of Iraq was important to his national campaign and his regime actually doubled the national budget for archaeology and heritage creating museums and protecting sites all over Iraq.^[6] It was not until his Ba'ath Party was under pressure in the 1990s that looting become a large problem once again for Iraq.^[7] By 2000 looting had become so rampant that the workers of the sites were even looting their own workplaces.^[8] With the fall of Saddam's government in 2003, archaeological sites were left completely open and looting became an even greater problem. Some sites, such as Ur and Nippur, were officially protected by US and Coalition forces.


Before the start of the Iraq War, the US government created a post-war plan for Iraq.^[9] According to Lawrence Rothfield, former director of the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago and associate professor of English and comparative literature, this looting of the National Museum of Iraq and of hundreds of archaeological sites around the country was not prevented.^[9] At the time of war planning it was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who decided on a fast invasion with fewer troops, resulting in inadequate protection of buildings and cultural sites.


American troops and commanders did not prioritize security for cultural sites around Iraq.^[10] Peacekeeping was seen as a lesser job than physically fighting in combat and President Bush's suspension of former president Clinton's policies for peacekeeping not only backed up this thought but also made the US's duties to restore public order unclear.^[11] American troops in Iraq did not trust Iraqi power of any kind meaning that instead of using and training Iraqi police, the US military took matters of security and policing into their own hands.^[10] Essentially the US would act as peacekeepers to train a national army and police force. Special Forces teams would work with regional warlords to keep control of their territories.^[11] Allowing warlords to police their own areas has been credited with being a disastrous plan for the archaeological sites in particular.^[12]


Arthur Houghton had an interest and some expertise in cultural heritage and was one of the first to wonder what the pre-war plan was for Iraqi culture. He had worked in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer, as an international policy analyst for the White house and also served at an acting curator for the Getty Museum.^[12] In late spring 2002, Houghton was approached by Ashton Hawkins, former executive vice president and counsel to the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum, and was asked to find out what was being done by officials to secure heritage sites in the upcoming war in Iraq.^[13] Houghton could find no one designated with the task of protection and preservation of culture in Iraq.^[13]


There had been a secret Future of Iraq Project since October 2001, with clearance from the Pentagon. However, even under this Project no specific person had taken up responsibility of culture.^[14] Even archaeological organizations in the US had not noticed the issue until late 2002. Likewise when the US Agency for Cultural Development (USAID) met with estimated 150 NGOs not one brought up protection of cultural heritage.^[15] UNESCO had in fact, after the Gulf War in 1991, attempted to go into Iraq and assess the damage to cultural sites but they were not allowed to enter the country.^[16] UNESCO then focused, for the next decade, on reconstruction after the fact rather than prevention measures.^[17]


Within the US military, Civil Affairs (CA) forces were important to the protection of culture and, as they were mostly reservists, included experts in a variety of areas including archaeology.^[18] The plan was to spread the expertise among fighting forces in order to warn them of cultural sites in the area.^[19] However, CA was left out of pre-war planning until January 2003, when it was too late to be of any real significant help. The CA had to prioritize the small amount of CA troops to what they thought was necessary, which inevitably was – culture.^[19] The CA did, however, pull the only two archaeologists in Civil Affairs to be on a culture team, Maj. Chris Varhola and Capt. William Sumner.^[19] These two men, however, in the end were sent to other places when the conflict began. Varhola was needed to prepare for the refugee crises that never arrived and Sumner was reassigned to guard a zoo after pushing his advisor too hard on antiquities issues.^[19] Any protection of culture, sites or buildings was stopped due to the priorities of other matters. Essentially no one who had archaeological expertise was senior enough to get anything done.^[20]


Another branch of the US government that had interest in culture was the Foreign Area Offices (FAO). Unfortunately though, they were focused on customs and attitudes rather than archaeological sites.^[20] Something that was accomplished was the creation of a no-strike list created by Maj. Varhola just like two archaeologists before him had done during the 1991 Gulf War which had a great outcome of saving antiquities from bombing.^[20]


One piece of international law that is important for this conflict is the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, this Convention states that parties in conflict must "under take to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any act of vandalism directed against, cultural property.^[21]" This provision was constructed for the parties actually in combat within the war and not civilians within their own state. As the upcoming years would prove, there are exceptions to this convention and they would result in Americans firing on the Iraq National Museum.


By fall 2002, post-war planning was sporadic and improvised. The cultural planning aspect needed to have leadership that it never got.^[22] Deputy Assistant under the Security of Defense, Joseph Collins, recalls some forces spent more time working on projects that ended up not being needed like a refugee crises plan. He says he cannot remember if there was even an organizational plans to solve specific issues.^[22]


The first known effort by cultural interests to contact US officials was October 2002. After a meeting of powerful players in culture, Houghton sent a letter asking for departments to tell forces to avoid damaging monuments, soldiers were to respect the integrity of sites, and lastly to work quickly to get the antiquities services in Iraq up and running again.^[23] Following this, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) also sent a similar letter to the Pentagon in December 2002 asking for governments to take action to prevent looting in the aftermath of the war.^[24] As 2002 came to an end the media and government were only broadcasting the good done by the troops in not destroying cultural heritage themselves but not on the looting done by people in Iraq and the Americans duty to protect the antiquities.^[24]