Looting, museums, and archeology in Iraq: a recap

I've long intended to put together some sort of summary of the Baghdad museum looting story, but now it seems Alexander Joffe has done much of the work already in the form of an unsparing article in Middle East Quarterly. This is a must-read; these excerpts from the introduction give some idea of where Joffe is going:

From April 10 to 12, 2003, during the mayhem that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, looters entered the Iraq National Museum in Baghdad. They stole and destroyed artifacts and caused damage to the museum. But as the confusion also enveloped the museum, no one outside Iraq knew exactly what was taken or the identity of the thieves. Seizing upon tiny bits of available information, Western archaeologists created their own narrative of events and aggressively promoted it through the world media. That narrative revealed nothing about what had happened at the museum. It told everything about the prejudices and biases of its authors. . .

The public expressions of outrage on the part of the archaeological profession subsequently have almost completely evaporated. But questions remain: What was the nature of the relations between archaeologists and the Baath regime? What sorts of compromises did they involve? And did the conduct of the archaeologists prior to and during the war reflect more than a professional concern for the fate of artifacts? Did it constitute a continuation of complicity with the regime, or perhaps for some even a strategy to conceal it, in order to secure a privileged place on the ground in the war's aftermath?

And here are a few extracts from the conclusion:

Working in a wretched totalitarian country was a conscious choice for archaeologists as it was for businessmen . . . archaeologists submitted paperwork to the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, knowing full well that staff lists would be vetted by Iraqi intelligence. European and American Jews, among the pioneers of Mesopotamian archaeology during the first half of the twentieth century, were systematically excluded from participation, as they still are in Syria and Saudi Arabia. No one protested.

The teams did their fieldwork under the watchful eye of government minders, came back, kept their mouths shut about whatever they might have seen or heard, and not infrequently sang the praises of Hussein, at least his treatment of archaeology. Access was everything. The situation is uncannily similar to that finally admitted by the president of CNN, Eason Jordan. Even the regime's torture of CNN employees was hushed up, lest it jeopardize CNN's access to reporting from Baghdad. John Burns of The New York Times has expanded this indictment, graphically pointing out the mutual lies, collusion, and bribery that kept the Western press working in Iraq.

No such admissions have been forthcoming from archaeologists. Even today, the profession disguises its pursuit of self-interest beneath the language of service to the heritage of humankind or the Iraqi people. Only a small group of German professionals, Archaeologists for Human Rights, have taken the courageous stand of putting the archaeological focus on the calamity of Baathist rule. Their efforts to organize the excavations of mass graves have met with strong support from Kurdish authorities but clumsy indecision from the CPA. Nonetheless, they have touched a nerve, and nearly 300 archaeologists and forensic specialists have volunteered to undertake this mournful research, the only ethical type of archaeology that should be conducted in Iraq at the present time.

Posted by David on June 29, 2004 9:50 PM