-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 18, 2007 3:53:07 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: Pulverizing the Cradle of Civilization
Iraq may soon end up with no history.
"There are 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. In the
Nassariyah area alone, there are about 840 Sumerian sites; they
have all been systematically looted [under the U.S. occupation].
Even when Alexander the Great destroyed a city, he would always
build another. But now the robbers are destroying everything down
to bedrock. What's new is that the looters are becoming more and
more organised with, apparently, lots of money.
"Military operations are damaging these sites forever. There's
been a U.S. base in Ur for five years and already its 5000-year-old
walls are crumbling because of the weight of military vehicles."
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From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: September 18, 2007 2:14:12 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: It Is the Death of History
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18408.htm
NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN
It Is the Death of History
Special investigation by Robert Fisk
09/17/07
"The Independent" -- 2,000-year-old Sumerian cities torn apart and
plundered by
robbers. The very walls of the mighty Ur of the Chaldees cracking
under the
strain of massive troop movements, the privatisation of looting as
landlords buy
up the remaining sites of ancient Mesopotamia to strip them of
their artefacts
and wealth. The near total destruction of Iraq's historic past --
the very
cradle of human civilisation -- has emerged as one of the most
shameful symbols
of our disastrous occupation.
Evidence amassed by archaeologists shows that even those Iraqis who
trained as
archaeological workers in Saddam Hussein's regime are now using
their knowledge
to join the looters in digging through the ancient cities,
destroying thousands
of priceless jars, bottles, and other artefacts in their search for
gold and
other treasures.
In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, armies of looters moved in
on the desert
cities of southern Iraq and at least 13 Iraqi museums were
plundered. Today,
almost every archaeological site in southern Iraq is under the
control of looters.
In a long and devastating appraisal to be published in December,
Lebanese
archaeologist Joanne Farchakh says that armies of looters have not
spared "one
metre of these Sumerian capitals that have been buried under the
sand for
thousands of years.
"They systematically destroyed the remains of this civilisation in
their tireless
search for sellable artefacts: ancient cities, covering an
estimated surface area
of 20 square kilometres, which -- if properly excavated -- could
have provided
extensive new information concerning the development of the human
race.
"Humankind is losing its past for a cuneiform tablet or a sculpture
or piece of
jewellery that the dealer buys and pays for in cash in a country
devastated by
war. Humankind is losing its history for the pleasure of private
collectors
living safely in their luxurious houses and ordering specific
objects for their
collection."
Ms. Farchakh, who helped with the original investigation into
stolen treasures
from the Baghdad Archaeological Museum in the immediate aftermath
of the invasion
of Iraq, says Iraq may soon end up with no history.
"There are 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. In the
Nassariyah area
alone, there are about 840 Sumerian sites; they have all been
systematically
looted. Even when Alexander the Great destroyed a city, he would
always build
another. But now the robbers are destroying everything because
they are going
down to bedrock. What's new is that the looters are becoming more
and more
organised with, apparently, lots of money.
"Quite apart from this, military operations are damaging these
sites forever.
There's been a U.S. base in Ur for five years and the walls are
cracking because
of the weight of military vehicles. It's like putting an
archaeological site
under a continuous earthquake."
Of all the ancient cities of present-day Iraq, Ur is regarded as
the most
important in the history of man-kind. Mentioned in the Old
Testament -- and
believed by many to be the home of the Prophet Abraham -- it also
features in the
works of Arab historians and geographers where its name is
Qamirnah, The City of
the Moon.
Founded in about 4,000 B.C., its Sumerian people established the
principles of
irrigation, developed agriculture and metal-working. Fifteen
hundred years later
-- in what has become known as "the age of the deluge" -- Ur
produced some of the
first examples of writing, seal inscriptions and construction. In
neighbouring
Larsa, baked clay bricks were used as money orders -- the world's
first cheques
-- the depth of finger indentations in the clay marking the amount
of money to be
transferred. The royal tombs of Ur contained jewellery, daggers,
gold, azurite
cylindrical seals, and sometimes the remains of slaves.
U.S. officers have repeatedly said a large American base built at
Babylon was to
protect the site but Iraqi archaeologist Zainab Bah-rani, a
professor of art
history and archaeology at Columbia University, says this "beggars
belief." In
an analysis of the city, she says: "The damage done to Babylon is
both extensive
and irreparable, and even if U.S. forces had wanted to protect it,
placing guards
round the site would have been far more sensible than bulldozing it
and setting
up the largest coalition military headquarters in the region."
Air strikes in 2003 left historical monuments undamaged, but
Professor Bahrani,
says: "The occupation has resulted in a tremendous destruction of
history well
beyond the museums and libraries looted and destroyed at the fall
of Baghdad. At
least seven historical sites have been used in this way by U.S. and
coalition
forces since April 2003, one of them being the historical heart of
Samarra, where
the Askari shrine built by Nasr al Din Shah was bombed in 2006."
The use of heritage sites as military bases is a breach of the
Hague Convention
and Protocol of 1954 (chapter 1, article 5) which covers periods of
occupation;
although the U.S. did not ratify the Convention, Italy, Poland,
Australia, and
Holland, all of whom sent forces to Iraq, are contracting parties.
Ms. Farchakh notes that as religious parties gain influence in all
the Iraqi
pro-vinces, archaeological sites are also falling under their
control. She tells
of Abdulamir Hamdani, the director of antiquities for Di Qar
province in the
south who desperately -- but vainly -- tried to prevent the
destruction of the
buried cities during the occupation. Dr Hamdani himself wrote that
he can do
little to prevent "the disaster we are all witnessing and observing."
In 2006, he says: "We recruited 200 police officers because we were
trying to
stop the looting by patrolling the sites as often as possible. Our
equipment was
not enough for this mission because we only had eight cars, some
guns and other
weapons, and a few radio transmitters for the entire province where
800
archaeological sites have been inventoried.
"Of course, this is not enough but we were trying to establish some
order until
money restrictions within the government meant that we could no
longer pay for
the fuel to patrol the sites. So, we ended up in our offices
trying to fight the
looting, but that was also before the religious parties took over
southern Iraq."
Last year, Dr. Hamdani's antiquities department received notice
from the local
authorities, approving the creation of mud-brick factories in areas
surrounding
Sumerian archaeological sites. But it quickly became apparent that
the factory
owners intended to buy the land from the Iraqi government because
it covered
several Sumerian capitals and other archaeological sites. The new
landlord would
"dig" the archaeological site, dissolve the "old mud brick" to form
the new one
for the market and sell the unearthed finds to antiquity traders.
Dr. Hamdani bravely refused to sign the dossier. Ms. Farchakh
says: "His
rejection had rapid consequences. The religious parties
controlling Nassariyah
sent the police to see him with orders to jail him on corruption
charges. He was
imprisoned for three months, awaiting trial. The State Board of
Antiquities and
Heritage defended him during his trial, as did his powerful tribe.
He was
released and regained his position. The mud-brick factories are
'frozen
projects', but reports have surfaced of a similar strategy being
employed in
other cities and in nearby archaeological sites such as the
Aqarakouf Ziggarat
near Baghdad. For how long can Iraqi archaeologists maintain
order? This is a
question only Iraqi politicians affiliated to the different
religious parties can
answer, since they approve these projects."
Police efforts to break the power of the looters, now with a well-
organised
support structure helped by tribal leaders, have proved lethal. In
2005, the
Iraqi customs arrested -- with the help of Western troops --
several antiquities
dealers in the town of Al Fajr, near Nasseriyah. They seized
hundreds of
artefacts and decided to take them to the museum in Baghdad. It
was a fatal mistake.
The convoy was stopped a few miles from Baghdad, eight of the
customs agents were
murdered, and their bodies burnt and left to rot in the desert.
The artefacts
disappeared. "It was a clear message from the antiquities dealers
to the world,"
Ms. Farchakh says.
The legions of antiquities looters work within a smooth mass-smuggling
organisation. Trucks, cars, planes, and boats take Iraq's
historical plunder to
Europe, the U.S., to the United Arab Emirates and to Japan. The
archaeologists
say an ever-growing number of internet websites offer Mesopotamian
artefacts,
objects anywhere up to 7,000 years old.
The farmers of southern Iraq are now professional looters, knowing
how to outline
the walls of buried buildings and able to break directly into rooms
and tombs.
The archaeologists' report says: "They have been trained in how to
rob the world
of its past and they have been making significant profit from it.
They know the
value of each object and it is difficult to see why they would stop
looting."
After the 1991 Gulf War, archaeologists hired the previous looters
as workers and
promised them government salaries. This system worked as long as the
archaeologists remained on the sites, but it was one of the main
reasons for the
later destruction; people now knew how to excavate and what they
could find.
Ms. Farchakh adds: "The longer Iraq finds itself in a state of war,
the more the
cradle of civilisation is threatened. It may not even last for our
grandchildren
to learn from."
A Land With Fields of Ancient Pottery
By Joanne Farchakh, archaeologist
Iraq's rural societies are very different to our own. Their
concept of ancient
civilisations and heritage does not match the standards set by our
own scholars.
History is limited to the stories and glories of your direct
ancestors and your
tribe. So, for them, the "cradle of civilisation" is nothing more
than desert
land with "fields" of pottery that they have the right to take
advantage of
because, after all, they are the lords of the land and, as a
result, the owners
of its possessions. In the same way, if they had been able, these
people would
not have hesitated to take control of the oil fields, because this
is "their
land." Because life in the desert is hard and because they have
been "forgotten"
by all the governments, their "revenge" for this reality is to
monitor, and take,
every single money-making opportunity. A cylinder seal, a
sculpture or a
cuneiform tablet earns $50 (£25) and that's half the monthly salary
of an average
government employee in Iraq. The looters have been told by the
traders that if
an object is worth anything at all, it must have an inscription on
it. In Iraq,
the farmers consider their "looting" activities to be part of a
normal working day.
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited.
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