The Looting of Mesopotamia: Policy to Prevent Another Tragedy

In the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi people knew that when it happened key cultural and archeological sites would be looted. At some sites, museum employees hid artifacts in storage containers and protected them with weapons. But the majority of artifacts, including many in the National Museum, were left vulnerable. As a result 15,000 artifacts were stolen in 2003, representing some of the world's oldest artworks and irreparably damaging Iraq's culture and tourism industry.

Lawrence Rothfield, co-founder of the University's Cultural Policy Center, told this story during a recent presentation at the Harris School. He has embarked on a multiphase project on the protection of cultural heritage during wartime, focused on identifying the causes of failures in protecting antiquities during the Iraqi invasion and offering policy solutions to prevent similar looting and illicit selling of antiquities. Last year, he published those policy prescriptions in Antiquities Under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection after the Iraq War.

The 15,000 artifacts stolen include many cylinder seals, vases, status, steles, and friezes. "There were some major loses," said Rothfield. "Some pieces that were too big to move were chiseled off. One of the Assyrian lions dating back to 1800 B.C. had its head lopped off." The Warka Vase was also taken; it dates back to 3300-3200 B.C. and is the earliest-known narrative art.

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Unintended Consequences in Iraq Leave U.S. Foreign Policy in Need of New Direction

Ambassador Peter Galbraith, former U.S. diplomat and foreign policymaker, visited the Harris School on Tuesday, November 9 to discuss the Iraq War and other key foreign policy issues. Critical of the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, Galbraith outlined what he saw as the central failures in the Middle East, and he offered his perspective on how the next administration should move forward.

“Global leadership is about more than just the size of your military or the size of your economy,” he advised. “Leadership depends on people being willing to follow your lead; it is essential that you listen to them. You can only lead people in a direction in which they want to go.” He noted that this strategy of incorporating local perspectives was used successfully in the Balkans in 1993.

Read on here.

in bagdad, i am at a house and there are fields around me, and i am visiting to write but the area is not secure. i see the armies march, in form, they are good at this, i think. and i turn around to hear the bombs going off, and the bombs are far away. there is an order given to sleep, and they, in form, lie down in rows and columns, and simultaneously snuggle their knees to their faces, and they sleep. it is mid-day, and i am amazed at their ability to take to order.

they come in and they secure the area for us, and we make our places in this house. we are teachers, writers, and we are new here. we are being tested to see if we can stay, to see if we can stand it. and i am not new; i had been here before they came. i know this place.

they had secured the area but suddenly it is not secure anymore and we are in danger, on this top floor where we are sleeping, and they are coming in and they will surely get us. i do not understand their sounds nor they mine, but i always thing i can reason with them. ‘i think i can reason with them,’ i think. they will kill me.

i see the troop movement outside; they are attempting to regain control, but the house has been stormed, and i thought for a brief second i could hide, but i couldn’t hide. and i thought i could reason with them, but there was no reason here.

this was not a dream not a

this was happening somewhere on earth. this was true to somebody not me

Updated Iraq Dead Count

This was very overlooked in mainstream media, (for some reason-- gee, can't figger out why) but is extremely important.

While Iraq Body Count lists around 50,000 Iraqis dead (garnered from newspapers and other published lists), a recent study sponsored by Johns Hopkins and local Iraqi scholars found more than ten times that number have actually died.

As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The deaths from all causes—violent and non-violent—are over and above the estimated 143,000 deaths per year that occurred from all causes prior to the March 2003 invasion. That's more than the city of Oakland (and about 16 times the size of Normal), and almost the entire population of the city of San Francisco.

And the US dead? Just over 3,000.