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Journalism of Courage
Well-organised professional thieves stole most of the priceless artifacts looted from Baghdad8217;s National Museum of Antiquities last week, and they may have had inside help from low-level museum employees, the head of UNESCO said on Thursday.
Thousands of objects were lost at the museum, both to the sophisticated burglars and to mob looting, Koichiro Matsuura, Director General of the UNESCO, said in an interview. 8216;8216;Most of it was well-planned looting by professionals,8217;8217; he said.
Matsuura said top museum officials tried to protect the institution, but the thieves may have succeeded in paying off guards or other low-ranking personnel. He said he doesn8217;t blame the US military, even though UNESCO had urged the US government before the war to safeguard it and other cultural sites.
Some of the stolen artifacts are so well known that no collector would dare let it be known that he or she had them. One is the alabaster Uruk Vase, with pictures of grain, sheep, goats and priests dating from about 3500 BC. It is pictured in many introductory art history books. It8217;s not clear whether the Uruk Mask, a priceless alabaster face of a goddess from the same era, was stolen. A statue of a seated king from about 2000 BC was another major loss.
Some of Iraq8217;s most valuable artifacts were placed in a vault in the national bank after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. It isn8217;t yet known if that vault is secure, or which items were placed there.
Interpol has been told to look out for stolen Iraqi artifacts, and initial lists of missing items have been sent to checkpoints on Iraq8217;s border. There is not yet any active investigation of the thefts because of restrictions on entering Iraq.
8216;8216;At the moment, absolutely nobody is allowed in,8217;8217; said Salma El Radi, an archaeologist from New York.
UNESCO has established a Special Fund for the Iraqi Cultural Heritage to help pay for the emergency measures. The Italian government has donated 400,000 and offered up to 600,000 more. Qatar, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Egypt have also pledged to contribute.
More than two dozen FBI agents in Iraq will help conduct criminal investigations into the looting of the museum and other cultural sites, US Law Enforcement officials said on Thursday. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said the teams would aim to capture thieves, recover stolen artifacts and cooperate with Interpol, the international law enforcement organisation, to track sales 8216;8216;on both the open and black markets.8217;8217;
8216;8216;We recognise the importance of these treasures to the Iraqi people and 8230; to the world as a whole,8217;8217; Mueller said. 8216;8216;We are firmly committed to doing whatever we can in order to secure the return of these treasures to the people of Iraq.8217;8217;
Meanwhile, two cultural advisers to the White House resigned in protest over the failure of US forces to prevent the wholesale looting of priceless treasures.
Martin Sullivan, chairman of the President8217;s Advisory Committee on Cultural Property for eight years, and panel member Gary Vikan said they resigned because the US military should have planned to prevent the danger to Iraq8217;s historical treasures, as it did Iraq8217;s oil fields. 8216;8216;We certainly know the value of oil, but we certainly don8217;t know the value of historical artifacts,8217;8217; Vikan, Director of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, said.
