CHAPTER 2 Preparations at the Iraq Museum in the Lead-Up to War Donny GEORGE YOUKHANNA AND McGurRE GIBSON "Tue PROTECTION OF A MUSEUM'S HOLDINGS IN TIMES OF WARFARE OR CIVIL UNREST isa multifaceted and complicated issue. Because museums present themselves and are routinely projected by the media as storehouses and venues forthe dis- play of treasure, they become targets of looting for organized gangs and even ordinary citizens, Because invading armies see all armed personnel as poten- tial enemies, guards at museums and other cultural establishments tend to be attacked orto slip away as fighting nears. If the invading army does not take responsibility for guarding cultural institutions that have lost their guards, looters quickly take advantage of the vacuum in civil order. This was the case inthe looting at the Iraq Museum from April 10-12, 2003, It was also the case at universities in Baghdad and elsewhere, as wel as dozens of other cultural in- tutions (the National Library and Archives, the National Academy of Arts, and institutes of musi, dance, and art, among others). Likewise, the organized looting of archaeological sites, which began in the mid-1990s in southern Iraq, resumed at a greatly increased rate asthe invasion was taking place, As of this, ‘writing, it continues unabated. ‘The Iraq Museum was a prominent potential target of looting, and in the United States before the war, several attempts were made in meetings with Pentagon and State Department officals to call attention to its significance and the threat to its holdings, Officials were warned that in the uprisings that ‘occurred in the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, nine of the thirteen regional museums in the south and north of the country had been damaged and looted, resulting in the loss of about five thousand artifacts, of which less 27than 10 percent have been recovered. Asa result of those losses the antiquities service no longer put on dsplay atthe regional museums (except for the Mo- sul Museum) any genuine objects, but instead used casts and photographic displays. Some of the museums at prominent archaeological sites, such as Babylon and Hatra, did stil have some real objects, but these were well- guarded sites and were thought not to be as vulnerable as small museums in the centers of provincial towns. ‘In the months leading up to the 2003 war, interviews with U.S. and Euro- pean academics and Iraqi officials drew media attention tothe Iraq Museum, ‘The first author of this ckapter, who was then Iraq's director general for re- search but who was not ye in a postion of responsibilty for the museum, was ‘quoted in one news report assaying that the objects from Hatra and the Mo- sul Museum were being transferred tothe Iraq Museum, where it was thought that they would be safer. Fe was aware that, as in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the museum itself would be put on a no-strike lst. William R, Polk, a Middle East expert, visited Baghdad before the invasion and tried 1 convince Iraq) authorities to send the museum's coletions out of the country for safekeeping. Given the fact that just the dismantling ofthe mu- seum’s publi galleries and the storing of most of the displayed items ina se- ‘ret storeroom took morethan two weeks to complete, itis highly unlikely that ‘museum staff could have emptied the galleries and the storerooms in time to send the collections abroad. How anyone would have kept the hundreds of thousands of items intact and accounted for during the move was not ad- dressed, Itis unlikely thatany museum anywhere is capable of dismantling its collections and shipping them off with any hope of maintaining the integrity of the artifacts and their identifications. Given the reduced staff numbers and the loss of trained museum professionals as a result of thirteen years of UN sanctions it would have been unthinkable to consider such a course of action {in Baghdad. One of the major problems with the Iraq Museum, as with most museums, ‘was the lack ofa complete catalog with photographs of each item. Although a very fine master catalog i large ledgers recorded in English and Arabic has ex- isted since the museum was founded in the early 1920s, and although this record could be correlated with excavators’ find catalogs so that it was poss ble to determine the present location ofan item from notations on this record and in museum display case and shelf logs, the maintenance of such records ‘was seriously compromised due to layofis of personnel during the sanctions regime in the 1990s, Adding to the difficulty was the massive influx of newly excavated objects derived from salvage digs carried out from the late 1990s un- 1il 2003 by the State Bosrd of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), the parent body ofthe museum. These salvage operations were mounted to stop the loot- 2B DONNY GEORGE TOUKHANNA AND McGUIRE Cl oN ing of major sites in the south of the country. Prior to 1991, stretching back ‘more than forty years, antiquities looting had been almost nonexistent in Iraq, but the lack of government control of the southem countryside under UN sanctions allowed industrial scale pillaging of many sites. The salvage opera tions, carried out by the already overworked personnel of the SBAH and the ‘museum, including the director general of museums, did impede looting to a certain degree and resulted in the exposure of important buildings and the re- covery of thousands of artifacts. However, these finds represented a major problem for museum staff who had to process them in the normal system. Some of the more significant objects were given full recording, while others were set aside for later work, Steel trunks holding these finds from the field were pilfered during the looting ofthe aboveground storerooms in April 2003. ‘The necessity to dismantle the public galleries several times since 1980 led to an acceleration of problems. At the beginning ofthe Iran-Iraq War, when rockets often rained down on Baghdad, including a particularly deadly one that fell within 200 meters of the museum, the public galleries were disman- tted, except for very large, permanently fixed objects, such as Assyrian reliefs, Islamic building facades, and massive wooden doors. Movable objects were pt into storage, both above and below ground, with subsequent damage to some artifacts due to humidity. At the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, the exhibits were remounted, but by then three halls were devoted to astonishing finds from the Neo-Assyrian Queens’ Tombs, which Iragis had found at Nim- rud in 1988-1989. In late 1990, with the Persian Gulf War about to begin, dis- plays were once again dismantled and put into storage. Many iconic and valuable objects, such as the Ur Cemetery gold and most ofthe finds from the Neo-Assyrian Queens’ Tombs, were then transferred to a deep vault at the Central Bank. During the 1990s, because of sanctions and the possible renewal of warfare, the museum remained closed, except for occasional short-lived and small exhibitions. The objects in the Central Bank stayed there, and even when the museum was reopened in 2000 and most of the exhibits were arranged as they had been, there was no longer a display of the Queens’ Tombs, with the exception of photos of some objects, The same was the case for some of the ‘mos famous items from the Ur tombs, shown in photographs in the cases that used to hold the objects. In anticipation of the 2003 war, the SBAH, led by its chairman Dr. Jabber Khali, after consultation with the Ministry of Culture, made several decisions that were meant to safeguard objects: + All portable objects in Mosul, Rabylon, and Hatr, including some life-size statues from Hatra and some objects from other provincial museums, were transferred to the Iraq Museum, Preparations atthe Iraq Museum in the Lead-Up to War 29+ A-small group of five persons was given the responsibilty of dismantling and ‘hiding ina secret storage location, known only to those five, the portable ob- jects from the museum's public galleries—they even swore on the Qur'an not to reveal the secret. + Sandbags and foam were placed infront of or upon some ofthe lt able objects, such as the Assyrian reliefs + "The basic object records and many of the most important reference books from the Antiquities Library were hidden off-site in abomb shelter, along with almost forty thousand manuscripts from the Manuscript House. + The movable shelving of the Antiquities Library was putin the cased position and welded te make the remaining books and journals ls acessibe to looters. + Windows and doors were blocked with concrete blocks, and the steel doors of storerooms and doors, meant to segregate specific areas, were closed and locked. Dr. Donny George Youkhanna wanted to seal all outer doors to the mu- seum and the administrative offices of the SBAH, but the chairman of SBAH did not want to go that far. As such, only a partial barrier was erected at the front entrance tothe museum. ‘The ultimate protection for any museum is its guards, but asthe war ap- proached the museum, the staff of more than forty guards disappeared. Had they stayed in position, especially in their uniforms, they would most proba- bly have been fired upon. Wisely as they left, they discarded :heir uniforms and left some weapons in their quarters at the rear ofthe museum. Their dis- carded uniforms, which were very similar to Tragi army issue, might have been ‘mistaken later for Republican Guard uniforms. We have no evidence of any Republican Guard troops in the museum grounds. The onl fighters museum staff reported sering were a few Fedayeen irregulars, whose black clothing did not look like Republican Guard uniforms. (On April 8, as U.S. forces were arriving in the vicinity, Fedayeen came over the front fence and into the museum yard. By this time, there were only five per- sons left in the museum: Dr. Jabber Khalil, the president of SBAHS Dr. Donny George Youkharna, the director of research; Muhsin, an employee who lived in 1 small house atthe rear ofthe museum grounds; his son; and one guard, Dr. Jabber decided that rather than going into the basements and waiting for the fighting to end, as they had intended, everyone should leave the museum be- cause there was. great likelihood that there would be great danger in remaining. ‘They thought they could come back in a few hours, after the fighting had sub- sided, The group lft by the back gate, except for Muhsin and his:on, who locked. themselves in their house behind the museum. There was no ane of authority ‘and no one with fluent English left to surrender the museurn/SBAH complex, ‘even if US. troops had been wiling to take responsibility. 30 DONNY GEORGE YOUKHANNA AND MCGUIRE GIBSON ‘The lack of bullet holes in the walls around the museum garden attests to ‘the fact thatthe fight between Fedayeen and U.S. troops was a minor one, and must have been very brief. Where major fighting took place, such as in the street behind the museum, the hundreds of bullet holes and extensive damage done to the colonnade fronting the shops opposite the museum/SBAH com- plex show what would have happened to the front of the museum had there been extensive shooting there. As it was, there were no more than two or three bullet holes in the walls, and the only notable damage was from one tank round that left large hole inthe front ofthe reconstructed Assyrian Gate that now houses a small children’s museum (see image PI). According to Muhsin and his son, nothing happened to the antiquities complex for more than. 1. When the looting began on April 10, S. troops, who were in a tank guarding the intersection entry to the museum, to come drive off the looters. The tank crew, after conferring with commanders, said they could not do so. On ‘April 12, reporters finally arrived at the museum and the looters took this as sign to Ieave, Staff members who lived in the neighborhood came in and be- gan to secure the building by chaining the doors and putting up a large sign dicating in Arabic that the premises were under the control of U.S troops, ‘which wes not true. The bluff kept more looters from entering the grounds, al- though the mob continued milling around the main gate. Drs. Jabber Khalil ‘and Donny George Youkhanna, who had been trying to return tothe museum, since April 8, but who were prevented from doing so because the bridges were all blocked, finally arrived on April 13. They had met with U.S. commanders atthe Palestine Hotel and had gotten a promise that troops would be sent to secure the museum, Those troops finaly arrived on April 16, ‘The actions ofthe staff of the Iraq Museum and the SBAH, in trying to se- ‘cure the museum by removing the vast majority of items on public display into 1a secret storage place known only toa few staff, was to a great extent success- ful. Because the Ministry of Culture did not give them permission to remove the artifacts from display until about three weeks before the war began, the very limited number of staff involved in the transfer—just five people—were ‘unable to remove all of the objects that were firmly affixed to the walls or that were extremely heavy, and thus the looters were able to take some of them, i cluding the Warka Vase and the Basseti Statue, With more time, staff would have been able to remove even those, leaving in the public galleries only the ‘massive Assyrian bulls and slab reliefs, pls Islamic building facades and giant ‘doors, More than eight thousand artifacts were removed from display and sur- vived intact. The major losses, however, were from the storerooms, whose en- tty doors were blocked and locked (in one case, let unlocked by mistake). Preparations atthe Iraq Museum in the Lead-Up toWar 31With almost three full days of unhindered activity in the antiquities complex, the looters could have taken much more, had the great majority of them not bbeen more interested in the contents of SBAH offices, from which they took furniture, computers, and other equipment, as well as the electrical fixtures and the wiring. ‘In retrospect, it might seem to have been a bad decision to remove much of the holdings of the Mosul Museum and the Hara site to Baghdad, just before the war, But since the Mosul Museum was also looted, with some losses ofim- ‘portant artifacts, on balance it would appear that it was better to consolidate ‘he collections in one complex, which was presumed by its staff to be on a no- strike lst The staff had the experience ofthe 1991 Persian Gulf War, when the ‘museum was not targeted, and they assumed that the complex would be se- ‘cured. They were wise, however, not to trust in that assumption, but to take precautions and hide what they could of the major artifacts that were located in the public galleries 32° DONNY GFORGE YOUKHANNA AND MCGUIRE GIBSON CHAPTER 3 Thieves of Baghdad The Looting of the Iraq Museum MATTHEW Bocpanos ‘AS WORD OF THe [IRAQ] MUSEUM'S FATE SPREAD LIKE WILDFIRE THROUGHOUT THE world, US. forces took a lot of heat. The “Why didn't you prevent the loot- ing?” question had emerged right from the start, during the period that British columnist David Aaronovitch had summed up with “You cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.”" So why had the United States not “done more” to protect the museumt [Af- ter hundreds of interviews, and countless hours of forensic examinations of the entire museum compound—inside and out—here’s what I knew in May 2003 about what actually occurred at the museum, and what U.S. forces could ‘be expected to have done, faced with the situation on the ground]. ‘Two months before the war began, in January 2003... a group of scholars, ‘museum directors, and antiquities dealers met with Pentagon officials to dis- ‘ass their fears about the threat to the museum’s collection. McGuire Gibson ‘of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute went back twice more, and he and his colleagues continued to barrage defense department officals with e- ‘mail reminders, They could not have done more, ++ Gibson and his colleagues were heard. But only partly. The Pentagon or- dered the Iraq Museum placed on the coalition’s no-strike list, and U.S, Cen- tral Command obliged, listing it as #3 fon the list). But the planners had no {dea ofthe extent to which the average Iraqi viewed the museum [not as ho ing the priceless cultural heritage oftheir country, but as Saddam Hussein's sift shop. As a result, planners did not understand that many Iraqis would equate stealing from the museum with stealing from Saddam and not from 33