The Looting of Iraq's Museum in 2003

Literature Analysis

The essential argument of Chapter 1, “Preserving Iraq’s Heritage from Looting,” is that policy flaws led to the looting of Iraq’s heritage—the loss of many cultural sites, museums, and archeological sites. Iraq had a professional antiquities ministry, but the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 undermined this institution through the creation of no-fly zones. After 9/11, culture was not a thought on the minds of policy-makers. The Future of Iraq Project kept such a low profile in Washington because its members sought “to avoid unwanted attention from congressional backers of the Iraqi National Congress” (p. 7). The outcome of this low-profile is that the US never adopted a cultural policy for Iraq: “responsibility for various aspects of culture is divvied up among a number of uncoordinated offices and institutions with limited mandates, all of which failed to take the initiative in reaching out to war planners, even within the same agency” (pp. 7-8). With the State Department, the military, and the Pentagon tasked with protecting cultural sites, none came through.

The essential argument of Chapter 3, “Thieves of Baghdad,” is that the planners of the War (the invasion of Iraq in 2003) did not anticipate that average Iraqis equated the Museum with Saddam’s gift shop, and that even though the Museum was placed on a no-strike list, the average Iraqi saw the War as an opportunity to steal from Saddam by looting the Museum. Everyone was concerned about bombing; no one thought about looting (pp. 33-34). Moreover, the Iraqi Army turned the museum into a fortress, against the law of armed conflict (p. 34). The Museum provided a strategic location for Saddam’s forces, due to its view of the field. Thus, it became a part of the war, regardless of what the Planners intended. American forces came under attack from the Museum. US forces fired back; however, to prevent destruction to the cultural site, these same US forces pulled back. This opened the road for looters to sack the Museum, and they did almost immediately, as Saddam’s soldiers had departed as well.

The main points of the authors are that policy blunders and tactical mistakes opened the door to the cultural looting of Iraq. The author of Chapter 3 uses information from interviewees who were on the ground at the time of the looting as well as cultural academics who sought to persuade Planners to be more cautious in how they approached these sites. The author of Chapter 1 uses an analysis of the chain of command within CENTCOM and the information from various officials to put together an explanation for why policy makers failed to develop a cohesive plan to protect Iraq’s cultural sites after the invasion. The authors both use strong evidence in this manner to make their cases, using logic and reason in Chapter 1 to explain the big picture problem at the heart of the Planners’ approach, and using first-hand eye-witness accounts to explain what happened at the Museum and why looting took place even though culturally speaking the military avoided destroying the site and backed away from it.