May 17, 2003
Journalists among worst looters in Iraq.
Counterpunch article. Walter Sommerfeld, a Professor of Oriental Philology, and one of the first German scientists to visit Iraq since the war, describes the looting and its aftereffects. Sadly he reports that journalists were among the worst looters.
Stolen antiquities were particularly sought-after by journalists, so that armed gangs specialized in robbing them along the 500-kilometre long highway from Baghdad to the Jordanian border. One of those robbed reported that after he was robbed of his car, the first thing the bandits wanted to know was: "Where are the antiquities?" In one journalist's car, twelve boxes of antiquities were turned up.
He also reports on the devastating effects on the universities.
The 15 universities of Iraq have been totally looted and burned. Only the University of Baghdad in Djadaria remained untouched. There, Americans had made their headquarters. Of the infrastructure of the Mustansanja University, along with that of Bologna the oldest in the world, nothing has been left -- even fixed installations were dismantled -- including the electrical wall-sockets, and the campus burned down. On the campus of the Arts Faculty of the University of Baghdad in Wazinja almost everything has been destroyed, also its Department of Archaeology, which as extension of the Iraqi Museum delineates the sources of the more than 5'000 year-old period of high culture. The fires have caused several buildings to collapse. Of the Library of the Germanistic Section, which contained over 15'000 volumes, only solidified slagheaps of ash remain.
This is horrible of course, and academics throughout the world will decry such waste. But it seems to me that the folks at the universities who have been hiding their head in the sand for the last few decades bear as much responsibility for these wars as anyone. Virtually every one running things was trained there. That's where they learned their values and practices. Here's a an article I stumbled on a few days ago, discussing the roots of fascism, wherein a German professor of the 1930s and 40s describes how it happened there.
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