Where we forgot our history

The following article is published at the request of its author, Mehiyar Kathem, who has recently completed a MSc in Development Management at the London School of Economics (LSE) and is currently fundraising for the Cultural Heritage Awareness Initiative (CHAI) - a project of the Baghdad based education focused NGO, the Culture For All (CFA) - www.cultureforall.org

One of the greatest tragedies of history has been the systematic looting of most of the 10,000 registered archaeological sites and monuments in Iraq. Our knowledge of Iraq is largely punctuated by events of the past twenty five years - that of the first Gulf War, the sanctions, and now nearly five years into the West's disastrous escapade, the US led invasion of 2003. But what we do not get to see on the news is a tragedy much larger than the war. Armed and organised gangs, many of them contracted by wealthy Western clients, are systematically looting Iraq's cultural and archaeological heritage. In the past five years, we forgot that the war has ransacked the house of the first civilisations known to exist - Sumaria, Assyria and Babylon.

Billions of dollars have poured into making Iraq secure and democratic but only a small portion of funds has gone to preserving and protecting its archaeological heritage. Democracy is necessarily about rights - and the rights of civilisations past and present have to be respected, including our human right to understand the past. It is ironic that while human rights promotion has been high on the agenda of so many international NGOs focusing on Iraq so little focus has been on asserting Iraqi's right to their country's cultural heritage. Unfortunately for history much is at loss. While the past 100 years has uncovered only a small fraction of the country's archaeological riches, some of which looted at the Baghdad museum in the ensuing chaos of 2003, much remains to be discovered and understood of a history spanning 8,000 years. We may never know how many Gilgamesh like epics have been lost. As March 2008 marks the five-year anniversary of the war, we are forgetting that it also marks five years of one of the greatest catastrophes to befall humanity. In another five years, we will be marking the ten-year anniversary, and yet again our arrogance for understanding the meaning of life through past civilisations that gave us the wheel and the written word, will continue to blind us from the actions we need to take to protect the cultural heritage of what rightfully belongs to all civilisations and peoples of the world.

Protecting Iraq's archaeological heritage is essentially about civic engagement and public education rather than only the capacity building workshops in four-star hotels. For protection is not only equipping Iraqi academics with best practices, but about implementing public education programmes and engaging communities within the country. Any action necessarily requires over the next few years support to the credible, legitimate and sufficiently grounded community based organisations to spur people into building local protection schemes. Local strategic communication is essential in this process but so is creating the incentives so that tribal and community leaders understand that safeguarding the sites is a tool by which to rebuild Iraq and preserve its rich history. While this may need the help of a government Ministry, relying on the Iraqi Ministry of Culture to help may actually end up delaying what is urgently needed - Iraq would be left with just broken fragments of looted artefacts before any assistance or national protection programme is tabled. Since it is quite obvious that the Ministry's priorities lie elsewhere grass-root campaigning is the surest way to pressure the government into devising a national protection strategy, educating and raising awareness amongst the general public.

Iraq is said to be a dangerous country to work in. But one should not forget that it is still home to more than twenty six million Iraqis and to effective grass-root NGOs, academics and functioning universities. In a new initiative to be announced in May, the British Army in the South of the country in co-operation with the British Museum will focus on what Western experts can do to help reduce the systematic looting in the sector. All good, but again the same mistakes are being repeated. It is just another effort concentrated within academic circles between the West and Iraq. Unless efforts address the deficiency of civic engagement initiatives with the general public, we should not be surprised to see the continuation of the monumental looting taking place in the country.