"Go ahead, Ali Baba! It's all yours."
Eye-witnesses report that American soldiers opened door and gate - meant verbatim - to the looters of the Baghdad museum. The loot was often sold the same day on the street.
On April 16th, nearly one week after the looting in the Iraq museum, one US tank appeared - days before it, however, two tanks rolled in: but not to protect the cultural property.
Source: AP
By Walter Sommerfeld
(sp v. 08,05,2003) - since the fall of Baghdad anarchy has been prevailing in the 5-Million capital. Everyone is armed up to his teeth, you can hear shooting around the clock, above all at night. People shoot to warn, they shoot out of fear or for joy, that surprisingly the power is back in into the neighborhood for a couple of hours a day. The biggest concern is thus security. All former government employees - hundreds of thousands of teachers, physicians, professors or officials - have not gotten any pay for nearly two months. Theft, armed robberies, also murders connected with robbery are happening. Under open daylights armed robbers force drivers to give up their vehicle. On the other hand the neighborhood watches are on the rise. Many parts of the town have organized citizen groups, normal men from the street with hand-made signs regulate traffic. Iraqis are artists in improvisation..
The Iraqis are particularly shocked over the furor, with which the infrastructure and cultural properties have been destroyed. The reports of many independent witnesses resemble in detail. Evidently the institutions of the old state have been systematically robbed clean in a number of parts of the town. Whatever was not worth stealing, was smashed: In museums, libraries, cultural centers, in the 15 universities of the country, in all Ministries excluding the oil Ministry, hospitals, state-owned storage lockers, hotels, banks, palaces of government representatives, but also in the German embassy, French cultural center and in UN buildings. As late as the beginning of of May one could still see looting go on for days.
These raids were instigated or tolerated. Many Iraqis report of futile attempts to induce soldiers to intervene. Even interventions with the command center in the Palestine hotel remained unheard. The looters were simple people from the arm quarters, but also well-to-do inhabitants from around the corner. People plundered out of poverty, rage, revenge and greed, and the loot was sold often still on the same day on the street.
The most surprising detail in all these stories however were reports that it was often the American soldiers who made looting possible by breaking in or shooting up well secured gates and then inviting the bystanders to plunder: "Go ahead, Ali Baba, it's all yours!" - that's what the Americans shouted to them, so Iraqi eye-witnesses. "Ali Baba" became an almost all-inclusive term for looting Iraqis among Americans. A coworker of the UN development program observed that Americans broke and entered into the technical university, opened up computers and took out the hard disks, before the looters got going.
Many Iraqis talk openly about these incidents, however they want to remain anonymous, because they are afraid of repressions and because they must co-operate with the Americans. This applies also to the coworkers and the residents of the Iraq museum neighborhood, all the more, as their observations are highly explosive. Since the building lies in the middle in the city center and is surrounded by strategically important points, violent fights took place close to the museum on Tuesday, 8 April 8th. . The armed civilian guard troop, which should protect the building from attacks, left the area in fear for their lives, and the building then fell into the hands of the Americans.
A high-ranking museum employee reported, that the next day two tanks drove in, that American soldiers broke in the door of the main building and that they stayed unobserved for about two hours in the exhibition halls. They brought out articles and took them away. He and other observers could not identify what the objects were. It is sure however that most of the large and visible exhibits still remained on the premises, because their transport would be more difficult, and that only small objects from the showcases had been taken away.
A person living nearby reports, that US soldiers instigated Iraqis, who were by accident in the neighborhood, to dip in in the museum: "It is your treasure, go ahead!" For three days the looters plundered unhindered and were carrying away objects in front of running cameras. The few museum coworkers, who returned, tried desperately to convince American troops to protect the place. A handful of soldiers appeared for only a short time, had a look at the premises and disappeared again saying: "This is not our orders".
Afterwards the coworkers were anxious that, as everywhere else, the arsonists would get going and burn the irreplaceable documentation, excavation documents and the library. Two managers from the archeology department appeared on Sunday in the American control center in the Palestine hotel, and after waiting for four hours to be received asked urgently for protection. The command center promised they would send immediately tanks and soldiers - nevertheless for two days nothing happened. Tanks, which have been guarding the museum since, appeared only after the director by means of a borrowed satellite telephone succeeded to reach a colleague in the British museum, who out of London mobilized British and American authorities.
Burnt down campus
Today the Iraq museum is the best guarded museum in the world. Its employees and even the directors, who clear up without pay are clearing up the rubble and assessing the damage, are allowed the entrance only after a painstaking personal and luggage check - and they are very indignant about it. "we decide, who comes in when" let me know the guard at the entrance. The recovered objects are kept in the side tract. When the general manager took me there, hardly more than 100 found pieces were spread on the tables - guarded by about a dozen soldiers, who put up their sleeping quarters there.
It is clear that some of the most well-known exhibits of the museum, which used to be in the exhibition halls, have disappeared. The looters also broke unhindered into the stores with the inventory of over 170000 entries. The power is back now since just a few days and the employees have begun to record the damage. The library is unscathed, also many excavation documents and probably most of the inventory books. A total loss has not occurred, but the collections must have been looted out more or less completely.
The robbed antiques are obviously particularly favored by journalists, so that the armed gangs on the over 500 kilometers long highway from Baghdad to the Jordanian border have now been concentrating on press vehicles. A victim reported, that the bandits, after they had stopped his car, they wanted to know first: "Where are the antiques?" In one journalist car twelve crates with antiques have been found.
The most valuable, no longer insurable pieces - among them the famous gold find from Assyrian queen graves in Nimrud - were kept in the safes of the central bank. Looters had their way there too for a long time, in the meantime the soldiers are watching the place. Even the management of the archeological department has no information, what remained of these treasures and where they are now.
However, devastation is still tolerated in other places, in spite of the international indignation over the cultural destruction in the Iraq. An European colleague and an Iraqi archaeologist report that in Babylon, perhaps the most famous town of the old world, plundering and arson was still going on a few days ago. Among other things the documentation about the Iraqi excavations there was burned. As in Baghdad the representatives of the archeology department in Babylon called the US troops , who have their quarters in the Saddam's palace. In vain. "This is not our order".
The 15 universities of Iraq have been completely plundered and put to fire. Only the University of Baghdad in Dschadirija remained intact. The Americans have their quarters there.
From the equipment and installations at the Mustansarija university, the oldest in the world after Bologna, nothing remained - even built-in equipment has been stolen - even plug sockets have been torn out, and the Campus has been burnt down. On the Campus of the faculty arts and literature of the University of Baghdad in Wazirija nearly everything is destroyed; there too the department for archaeology, which as a counterpart to the Iraq museum is restoring the sources of the more than 5000 years old advanced culture, has been destroyed. Some buildings fell in themselves due to fire. In front of the library of the germanistics department, which encompassed 15000 books, you can just see heaps of burnt out ashes.
Professors and students are back to clean up the mess. But even this is not easy: the gas stocks in Baghdad are running out, a gas station after gas station is closing, you have to wait for four to five hours to fill up, the gas price went up tenfold, people just can't afford anymore to drive to the university. Few rooms have been set up halfway, they buy locks out of their own pocket, so that their work can not be set back again.
The universities should open up again on May 17th, without furniture, libraries, paper, documents. The most important support are not clipboards and computers anymore, it's brooms and spades, and the teachers must lecture out of their heads. Many want to do that as favour to students, so that they would not lose the whole year.
„It was bad under Saddam, but now it's even worse. Why doing this to us?" said the director of the department of archeology of Baghdad university: „ The future looks dark to us. We have no confidence, in nothing. We just want to survive."
The author is the professor of ancient orientalistics in Marburg and has been visiting Iraq for 20 years. As one of the first German scientists he visited Iraq after the war.
from Süddeutsche (thursday 8th p 13)
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