U.S. soldiers “liberating” Iraqi treasures

WASHINGTON, April 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – After looters swept Baghdad's national museum under the watchful eye of U.S. troops, Head of U.S. President George W. Bush's Cultural Advisory Committee Martin Sullivan stepped down protesting the looting of the time-honored museum.

In a letter to Bush dated Monday, April 14,  Sullivan said he was resigning as chairman of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property, a position he had held since 1995, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Thursday, April 17.

"The reports in recent days about the looting of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities and the destruction of countless artifacts that document the cradle of Western civilization have troubled me deeply, a feeling that is shared by many other Americans," he wrote.

Calling the looting a "tragedy," Sullivan charged it was not prevented "due to our nation's inaction."

The 11-member committee is made up of experts and professionals in the art world who are appointed to three-year terms.

A source close to the committee told AFP on condition of anonymity that another committee member, Gary Vikan, was also stepping down.

Sullivan serves as executive director of the Historic Saint Mary's City Commission, dedicated to one of the first British colonies, in the state of Maryland.

Vikan is director of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland.

Baghdad's museum, which housed one of the world's great collections of artifacts from early Mesopotamian civilizations, was ransacked by looters on Friday, April 11, in the upheaval following U.S. troops' entry into the city.

Critics have faulted U.S. forces for failing to intervene in the extensive pillaging of the capital and other Iraqi cities after President Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed.

Organized Looting

In a related development, experts at a UNESCO conference called on Thursday to examine the damage done to Iraq's cultural heritage.

They charged that much of the looting of treasures at Iraq's national museum was carried out by organized gangs who traffic in works of ancient art.

"It looks as if at least part of the theft was a very deliberate, planned action," said McGuire Gibson, of Chicago University's Oriental Institute, who is president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad.

"Probably (it was done) by the same sorts of gangs that have been paying for the destruction of sites in Iraq over the last 12 years and the smuggling out of these objects into the international market.

"Some very important pieces which you would find in any introductory art book have been lost," said Gibson.

The meeting of 30 international experts at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO recommended ways of safeguarding that remains and act to stop pillaged items reaching the world's art market.

In an address to the meeting, UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura urged U.S. and British forces to set up a "heritage police" to protect Iraq's cultural sites and called on states to adopt legislation to prevent the import of any "cultural, archaeological or bibliographical object having recently left Iraq."

He also announced the creation of a Special Fund for Iraqi Cultural Heritage, to which Italy has already contributed $400,000.

The meeting ended with agreement to send a fact-finding mission to Iraq as soon as possible to assess the losses.

looters destroyed the National Archives Centre in Baghdad and burned the National Library burned. A museum in the northern city of Mosul was also looted.

A library of Glorious Qur'an in the religious endowments ministry was set on fire and a collection of 20th century Iraqi figurative art collected by the Gulbenkian museum was destroyed.

Eye-witnesses have described some of the looters as being directed by well-dressed men who knew what they wanted to take.

Gibson said those organizers had keys to the vaults where they believed the most valued items were kept.

According to Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum in London, some of the most important treasures were relocated in the Iraqi National Bank before the U.S.-British invasion on March 20.

"You could have 300 or 400 people working on just one site," according to Gibson, who said the gang leaders were based abroad and passed orders back to agents in Iraq. These then directed the illegal diggings and smuggled the artifacts out.

Three days after the looting in Baghdad, there were reports that art dealers in Paris and other European cities had already been contacted with offers of stolen items, Gibson said.

The British Museum on Tuesday, April 15, urged a swift action to rescue the Arab country's ancient treasures and expressed readiness to send a team of conservation experts to Iraq.