How do we ensure that the antiquities missing from the Baghdad Museum and the even larger number of items looted from sites all over Iraq will be lost forever? Ask the United States Senate and the Archaeological Institute of America (which supports crazy legislation passed by the Senate). They know.
While it is true that the initial estimate of 170,000 items that had been looted from the museum proved to be a wild exaggeration, at the present writing the number is still significant: about 30 important pieces from the displays and about 12,000 from storage, including more than 5,000 seals.
But that may not be the worst of it. Iraq has as many as 10,000 ancient sites, many of which are being looted. Estimates of the items looted from ancient sites run as high as 175,000, most of them cuneiform tablets.
But help is at hand. In March 2004 the Senate passed the Iraqi Antiquities Bill, as part of a miscellaneous trade and tariffs package (S.671). Under the terms of this bill, the President would be authorized to bar the importation of looted Iraqi antiquities into the United States. (The corresponding House trade and tariffs package [H.R.1047] does not have an Iraqi Antiquities Bill, so this discrepancy will have to be worked out in conference before the unified legislation is sent to the President.) If the Iraqi Antiquities Bill is passed, and if the President does indeed bar the importation of looted Iraqi antiquities into the United States, none of the looted items could legally reach American shores. Any such objects would be contraband, subject to seizure, and the importer could face criminal charges.
This doesn’t mean there would be any significant enforcement. It only means that any deliberate importation into the United States would be by people willing to risk trading in contraband. Knowing that the articles are contraband, these smugglers would keep the very existence of the items secret. Neither scholars nor the public would ever hear of them.
But that isn’t the worst of it. Why send the stuff to the United States, where there could be trouble? The bad guys would simply send the stuff elsewhere—to London or Geneva or Tokyo, or God knows where else. And we would never hear of it.
In short, this legislation would have precisely the opposite effect from that intended by its proponents in Congress, who are being misled by the Archaeological Institute of America.
If you really want to save looted Iraqi antiquities for posterity, you would welcome their importation into the United States so that you could buy them and save them for return to Iraq at the appropriate time. Better yet, buy them in Iraq where the price will be cheaper, involving fewer middlemen.
Admittedly, this is not a nice solution, but it’s the best of bad alternatives. It is a question of whether you treasure these antiquities more than moral posturing.
Last May, a New York Times article datelined Baghdad began this way:
“In the year since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, American-led troops have used a wide range of force to combat insurgents opposed to the military occupation. This week the army tried a new approach to silence Iraqi guns: Buy them.”
If you want to get looted antiquities back, the only practical way is to buy them. What a wonderful gift for the Iraqi people it would be if the United States were to buy these antiquities and then present them to Iraq as a gift.
Of course, if sending out the cops were a better way, we would be all for it. But if the past is any guide, only a negligible amount will be recovered by the antiquities cops. It is estimated that during the decade after the first Gulf War, 4,000 pieces were stolen from Iraqi museums. International police authorities were alerted and the war against the looters commenced. Depending on who is doing the counting, somewhere between 4 and 13 pieces were recovered.
If the Senate and House pass the Iraqi Antiquities Bill, banning all importation of Iraqi antiquities, no one could say that we Americans are not morally pure.
How do we ensure that the antiquities missing from the Baghdad Museum and the even larger number of items looted from sites all over Iraq will be lost forever? Ask the United States Senate and the Archaeological Institute of America (which supports crazy legislation passed by the Senate). They know. While it is true that the initial estimate of 170,000 items that had been looted from the museum proved to be a wild exaggeration, at the present writing the number is still significant: about 30 important pieces from the displays and about 12,000 from storage, including more than 5,000 […]
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