Museum's reopening marks milestone in Baghdad
Looters stole thousands of artifacts after the U.S. invasion. A global effort recovered more than half.
BAGHDAD - Iraq's restored National Museum reopened yesterday with a red-carpet gala in the heart of Baghdad nearly six years after looters carried away priceless antiquities as American troops largely stood by in the chaos of the city's fall to U.S. forces.
The ransacking of the museum became a symbol for critics of Washington's post-invasion strategy and its inability to maintain order as Saddam Hussein's police and military unraveled.
Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, chose yesterday to look ahead. He called the reopening another milestone in Baghdad's slow return to stability.
"It was a dark age that Iraq passed through," he said at a dedication ceremony after walking down a red carpet into the museum. "This spot of civilization has had its share of destruction."
The museum - which holds artifacts from the Stone Age through the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Islamic periods - will be open to the public starting today but only for organized tours at first, officials said.
"We have ended the black wind [of violence] and have started the reconstruction process," Maliki told hundreds of officials and guardians of Iraq's rich cultural heritage as Iraqi soldiers in red berets stood guard.
Once the home of one of the world's leading collections of artifacts, the museum fell victim to bands of armed thieves who rampaged through the capital after the Americans captured Baghdad in April 2003.
It was among many institutions looted across Iraq, including universities, hospitals, and cultural offices. But the richness of the museum's collection - and its importance as caretaker of Iraq's historical identity - led to an outcry around the world.
U.S. troops, the sole power in the city at the time, were intensely criticized for not protecting the treasures at the museum and other cultural institutions such as the national library and the Saddam Art Center, a museum of modern Iraqi art.
When asked at the time why U.S. troops did not actively seek to stop the lawlessness, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld famously said: "Stuff happens ... and it's untidy and freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
Others contended that U.S. troops lacked a mandate from Washington to act.
About 15,000 artifacts were stolen from the museum. The lead U.S. investigator said last year that trafficking in those items helped finance al-Qaeda in Iraq as well as Shiite militias.
Eventually, about 8,500 items were recovered in an international effort that included culture ministries across the region, Interpol, museum curators, and auction houses. Jordan, Syria, and Egypt were among countries that returned stolen objects to Baghdad, the scientific and literary hub of the Arab world in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Of the roughly 7,000 pieces still missing, 40 to 50 are considered of great historical importance, according to the U.N. cultural body UNESCO.
It could have been worse. Iraqi officials closed the museum several weeks before the U.S.-led invasion and hid some particularly important artifacts at secret locations to prevent their theft.
The most valuable and unusual pieces in the collection, including two small winged bulls and statues from the Assyrian and Babylonian periods more than 2,000 years ago, were displayed yesterday. Others stayed locked away.
Abdul-Zahra al-Talqani, the media director of Iraq's office of tourism and archaeology affairs, said it was more a matter of space than security; only eight of the museum's 23 halls have been renovated.
Museum officials are awaiting more government funding, he said, and more artifacts will be displayed as other halls are opened.
