Raiders of the lost art

21.04.2003 [15:25]

It's fast, easy and encouragingly cheap to enter the booming market in Iraqi antiquities. How about an early Sumerian glass-beaded necklace for only $24? A 2,000-year-old bronze arrowhead for $14? Or an ancient cuneiform tablet, moulded from Mesopotamian clay, and bearing the imprint of a barter deal for sheep or wine, for $1.25? They can all be found within a few seconds on ebay and other websites on the internet, and there's plenty more on the way.

The sacking of Iraq's National Museum last week may at first have looked like an act of random vengeance against a convenient emblem of the state. Why else would a people loot their own history? Especially a people so closely connected to a past of incomparable richness.

The more the scale of the losses became apparent - at least 170,000 items are missing or destroyed - the less sense it seemed to make. Who had done it? And what would the plunder be good for in the slums of Saddam City? Impressing the neighbours?

But even as the world of antiquities reeled from a tragedy that Paul Zimansky, the eminent American archaeologist, likened to the burning of the library at Alexandria in classical times, a new and more sinister picture of what happened in Baghdad was emerging. It now appears that the looting of the museum was neither spontaneous nor random. In all probability, it was planned well in advance of the American-led invasion, and the thieves almost certainly benefited from inside help.

Interpol and FBI agents who have been brought in to investigate believe the most valuable pieces were stolen to order, and are already on their way to Europe, America or Japan. "The vaults where the best pieces are kept, were opened with keys," says McGuire Gibson, the president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "Looters coming in off the streets, don't usually have keys, do they? It appears to have been a deliberate, planned action. My feeling is that it was organised abroad."

Witnesses have spoken of seeing well-dressed men with walkie-talkies at the scene, and of artefacts being transported away in orderly convoys of vans rather than over the heads of the crowd. "We already have reports of exhibits being offered for sale in Switzerland and Japan," says Karl-Heinz Kind, Interpol's specialist officer for art and antiquity trafficking. "Even in a war zone, even with the country practically sealed off, these things can move with incredible speed."

Last night Jordanian custom officers reported that they had confiscated some exhibits looted from the Iraqi National Museum, the first stolen items to be recovered. But the rescued artefacts were merely 41 photographs and four oil paintings of Saddam Hussein.

To those familiar with the sophisticated international market in stolen antiquities, the wholesale plundering and rapid dispersal of a great museum's contents is all too credible. "Archaeological and cultural organisations had been warning of attacks like these for months," says Dr Neil Brodie, of the Illicit Antiquities Research Centre in Cambridge. "But it seems nobody was listening."

Long before the latest war began, millions of pounds worth of Iraq's ancient treasures were quietly flooding each year into the hands of Western and Far Eastern collectors. There is a sad irony in this, for if Saddam Hussein could boast of one good thing in the course of his 30-year dictatorship it was his vigorous early programme to protect the nation's cultural heritage.

Soon after Saddam's Ba'athists came to power in 1967, harsh laws were passed to prevent the export of antiquities. "And they worked," says Richard Zetter, of the University of Pennsylvania, a leading authority on Mesopotamian history. "Virtually nothing was allowed out, money was put into museums, and we all applauded and considered it a model for the region."

But after the first Gulf War in 1991, the weakening of Saddam's grip on power - at least beyond his Baghdad and Tikrit strongholds - and the dire economic circumstances in the country began to render the laws far less effective. Regional museums and important archaeological sites around the country became easy prey for thieves, whose booty was spirited out of the country by highly organised gangs, which developed around the trade. "After the Gulf War," says Mr Zetter, "smuggling became a profession." In the West, where Iraqi antiquities had a long-standing cachet, a ready market was waiting.

There was more. Preoccupied by the business of staying in power, Saddam lost interest in history - except for his own place in it. Money for museums dried up, many of the archaeological sites were effectively abandoned, and the scholars and curators at the heart of the nation's conservation programme gave up the struggle. "Their cars were commandeered," says Mr Zetter, "their telephones didn't work, their salaries were frozen. People just drifted away from antiquities."

To make limited resources stretch further, thousands of antiquities were moved from small provincial museums to Baghdad in the unfortunate belief that they would be safer.

In recent years Saddam's own officials appear to have given the stamp of approval to the lucrative business of selling antiquities abroad. Last year a large sculptural frieze, originating from a 3,000-year-old Assyrian palace in north eastern Iraq, weighing more than a tonne and measuring more than six feet square turned up for sale on the British market. Art experts believe it unlikely that such a major piece could have been exported without the acquiescence of someone in authority.

Julian Radcliffe, the chairman of the Art Loss Register, the organisation which indentified the frieze, says: "There may have been theft from Iraqi museums by their own government working with the staff or by criminal elements working with the staff. Curators have often been worried about keeping the roof on the building of the museums they work in and desperately need the money to pay for it."

It is hoped that the frieze will end up back in Iraq in due course. In the meantime, a group of nine archaeologists from the British Museum are being drafted in to help the salvage and recovery operation at the Baghdad museum. "We are uniquely placed to do something to help our Iraqi colleagues," says Neil MacGregor, the British Museum's director. It is clear that a catastrophe has befallen the cultural heritage of Iraq,"
And the devastation continues. The latest target of the looters is the museum at Nebuchadnezzar's palace - home of the hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Thieves smashed their way in through a brick wall, stealing statues, vases, burial masks and relics of the ancient Babylonian kings.

The galleries were completely stripped, and the floors left littered with broken glass and debris. Ahmed Mansour, 37, who lives nearby said: "This is one of the greatest archaeological sites in the world. I cannot believe that people would want to steal from it. They have no respect for our ancient culture and they do not care about the future of Iraq."

Horrified by the scale of the plundering, many Iraqis are blaming the US troops for not mounting an effective guard on the museums - and they are not alone. Last week three advisers on cultural affairs to President George W Bush resigned in protest at the alleged failure of the US forces to protect Iraq's treasures. "This tragedy was not prevented due to our nation's inaction," wrote Martin Sullivan, the chairman of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee, in a resignation letter.

Others are less inclined to blame weary and wary young Marines, freshly arrived in a conquered capital that they had expected might lay on a bloodbath.

Behind the looting of the National Museum lies a triumph of street smartness over military intelligence. The Pentagon may have been unsure how the battle for Baghdad would play out, but the local gangs, flush with orders from wealthy overseas collectors, seem to have anticipated that the city's fall would be swift and made their plans accordingly.

Certainly Koichiro Matsuura, the director general of Unesco, the United Nations educational and cultural agency, knows whom to blame. "It is those bandits who looted their own heritage," he said, at a meeting of 30 Iraqi and world antiquities experts in Paris. "These were conditions of confusion and turmoil, and they took full advantage."

Even as he was speaking, the lost treasures of Iraq - a 5,000-year trove of learning and beauty - were speeding through the channels of the underground art market into the hands of foreign collectors. If the prices seem reasonable it's because there is plenty to go around.