A rescue mission for Iraqi antiquities
The recent vandalism in Baghdad took me back to an auction at Christie's in London where the champagne flowed as people bid for gifts from the glitterati to raise funds for the London Library. Amid urgings and applause, poet Stephen Spender laughingly draped about his shoulders a magnificent quilted mandarin robe in deep blue satin that was Graham Greene's contribution to the sale.
The robe had been looted from the Summer Palace in Beijing in October 1860. A witness wrote that when he entered the emperor's throne room, he found 'the floor covered with the choicest curios' and France's General de Montauban piling up treasures for Napoleon III and Queen Victoria. Lord Elgin then had the Summer Palace burned down.
Fifty-nine years earlier, his father, the seventh earl, had removed 51 Greek panels from the Parthenon in Athens. No wonder Britain, which is also home to monumental Assyrian sculptures from Nineveh and Calah (in Iraq), has not signed the 1953 Hague Convention, which obliges belligerent powers to protect cultural objects in war zones. Neither has the US, now the centre of the global trade - legal and illegal - in antiquities.
Reporters noted that while US troops jealously guarded Iraq's oil installations and records, they made no attempt to stop the ransacking. Perhaps not all 170,000 exhibits in Baghdad's National Museum were plundered, but, apparently, the looting was anything but haphazard. Gil Stein, a professor of archaeology at the University of Chicago, which has conducted digs in Iraq for 80 years, thinks international antique dealers ordered the most important items - Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian relics of the ancient civilisations of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys - in advance. 'They were looking for very specific artefacts,' he said.
Armed with glass-cutters and equipment for lifting heavy objects, the thieves knew where to look. Donny George, the museum's research director, said they ignored reproductions. Their booty included a life-size royal statue, dated 2430 BC, a Sumerian lyre from 2400 BC, a 5,000-year-old golden vessel from Ur, priceless ivories and marbles, ancient illuminated manuscript Korans and Ottoman records.
They had keys to the safes and vaults where some exhibits were stored after the 1991 Gulf war. Having taken what they wanted, they destroyed the museum's card catalogue and computer records. The stolen goods may already have been absorbed into highly organised underworld rings with suspected links to drug trafficking.
While American, European and Japanese art collectors may be gleefully rubbing their hands, Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco), wants the UN to take steps to ensure the return of stolen items, set up a heritage police to guard cultural sites and institutions, oblige governments to ban Iraqi art imports and forbid museums and art dealers from trading in such goods.
His proposal may seem like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, especially as Iraqi antiquities have flooded the market since 1991. Some were looted from museums; others from 10,000-year-old sites that were attacked with bulldozers.
Mr Matsuura also faces opposition from the American Council for Cultural Policy, which criticises as retentionist any government that legislates to save its treasures. It lobbies against the Cultural Property Implementation Act, which attempts to stop the flow of stolen goods into the US. A leading council member, John Merryman of Stanford Law School, writes: 'The existence of a market preserves cultural objects that might otherwise be destroyed or neglected, by providing them with a market value. In an open, legitimate trade, cultural objects can move to the people and institutions that value them most and are, therefore, most likely to care for them.'
In short, price alone determines value.
If the US is serious about Operation Iraqi Heritage, it must support Unesco's initiative. These artefacts do not only define a nation's soul; robbed from the cradle of civilisation, they are also the heritage of mankind.
Sunanda Kisor Datta-Ray is a senior fellow at the School of Communication and Information of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
