Antiquities Chief Quits Post, Flees Country, Citing Lack of Safeguards
for Historic Treasures
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 27, 2006; A14
BAGHDAD, Aug. 26 -- Before he quit as head of Iraq's antiquities board,
Donny George made a final desperate attempt this summer to safeguard the
relics of 5,000 years of history: He ordered the doors of the National
Museum plugged with concrete against the near-unbridled looting of
ancient artifacts.
The longtime guardian of Iraqi antiquities under Saddam Hussein and
later under a government led by Shiite Muslim religious parties then
left the country and sent notice of his resignation in early August,
Culture Ministry officials confirmed Saturday.
George, who alerted the world to the looting of Iraq's irreplaceable
ancient works of art and writings in the days after U.S. troops moved
into Baghdad in 2003, told the Art Newspaper that he found "intolerable"
the ongoing failure of Iraqi leaders and U.S. military forces to protect
the sites. The London-based monthly reported George's departure on Saturday.
George, an Iraqi Christian, cited what he said was growing pressure by
officials of Iraq's ruling Shiite parties to emphasize Iraq's Islamic
heritage and ignore the earlier civilizations that stretched back to
Babylon and beyond. "A lot of people have been sent to our
institutions," the Art Newspaper quoted him as saying. "They are only
interested in Islamic sites and not Iraq's earlier heritage."
He also complained of a lack of funding to protect archaeological sites
around Iraq. Funding runs out in September for 1,400 specially trained
patrolmen who guard the sites, he told the art publication, and no more
money has been budgeted to protect places that date to the Sumerian
civilization in 3000 B.C.
"I can tell you the situation regarding antiquities is horrible,"
McGuire Gibson, an authority on Mesopotamian archaeology at the Oriental
Institute at the University of Chicago, said by telephone from Chicago.
"There was a lot of attention paid to the looting of the museum the very
same days the war started," Gibson said. "It hasn't stopped. There has
been looting of sites on an industrial scale. Some of the greatest
Sumerian sites have gone."
In the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion, Gibson worked to alert the
U.S. military to the thousands of ancient sites across Iraq. The work
helped save Iraq's heritage from U.S. bombs, but not from the looting --
unforeseen by U.S. military and civilian war planners -- that broke out
after the collapse of Hussein's government.
Mobs ransacked government buildings down to the light switch plates and
set fire to many of them during the ensuing days of anarchy in Baghdad
and other cities. U.S. troops, with no orders to stop the looters,
watched for several days before moving against the thieves.
At the time of the invasion, the National Museum contained at least
170,000 items, some of which were moved elsewhere for safekeeping before
the outbreak of hostilities. At least 13,000 pieces from the museum were
believed to be stolen in the days after U.S. troops entered Baghdad on
April 9.
"It was the leading collection . . . of a continuous history of
mankind," a desolate George said April 13, 2003, as he crunched through
glass from shattered display cases and ransacked museum offices. "And
it's gone, and it's lost."
The Culture Ministry ordered the museum closed and has not announced
plans to reopen it. Surrounded by weeds, it now sits behind metal gates,
piled sandbags and concertina wire. Wary guards holding pistols and
Kalashnikov assault rifles came to a front gate Saturday and confirmed
that the museum's front entrance had been sealed.
George said he acted on his own when he ordered the doors sealed this
summer, after government officials did not immediately respond to his
request for permission. "It was the only way to guarantee the museum's
safety," George told the Art Newspaper. Colleagues say he has moved with
his family to Syria.
George did not immediately respond to an e-mail request late Saturday
for comment. The culture minister, a Sunni Muslim, could not be reached
for comment Saturday, which is not a government workday in Iraq.
Culture Ministry officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because
they said they were not authorized to comment, confirmed that Haider
Farhan, a member of a Shiite religious party, has become the acting head
of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage since George's departure.
George told the Art Newspaper that Farhan had no relevant experience for
the job. A Culture Ministry official questioned that judgment, saying
Harhan was a young official in the department with a master's degree in
Islamic manuscripts.
"If they are now going to be projecting an Islamic line, let them do
it," Gibson said from Chicago. "They shouldn't be damaging pre-Islamic
ones in that effort."
"The destruction that's already gone on in looting since 2003 is
irrevocable," he said. "We've lost whole sites. We've lost whole cities."
Meanwhile Saturday, hundreds of Iraqi tribal leaders endorsed a national
reconciliation plan that Iraqi and U.S. leaders hope will help restore
stability and security after 3 1/2 years of war and growing sectarian
and ethnic conflict.
"Realizing the gravity of the situation our country is undergoing, we
pledge in front of God and the Iraqi people to be sincere and serious in
preserving the unity of our country," declared the pact signed by the
tribal chiefs and read aloud by one of them in a live television broadcast.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government is
struggling to control sectarian violence that has become rampant in
recent months and a Sunni Arab insurgency that has raged since the
U.S.-led ouster of Hussein. According to an Associated Press tally,
about 10,000 people have been killed since Maliki's government took
office in May.
At least 26 people were killed in attacks Saturday, including three boys
who died when a bomb planted on a soccer field exploded as they were
playing. The bombing occurred in Balad Ruz, 50 miles northeast of Baghdad.
Kidnappers on Saturday freed a female Sunni lawmaker, Tayseer
al-Mashadani, who was abducted July 1. Maliki's spokesman, Ali Debagh,
said she was released as a result of mediation by a third party, but he
gave no other details.
In Basra, gunmen in a speeding car opened fire Saturday on two sisters
working as translators for the British Consulate, killing one and
seriously wounding the other, police told the Associated Press.
Special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and another Washington
Post employee in Iraq contributed to this report.
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