[casi] News, 26/03-02/04/03 (15)

[Peter Brooke <pbrooke@DELETETHISukonline.co.uk>]

News, 26/03-02/04/03 (15)

HUMANITARIAN AID

*  Convoy hijacked in aid 'disaster'
*   Iraqi refugee camps stand empty
*  The first casualty: A look at the way the war is being spun and reported
*  Aid groups say military see aid as propaganda tool
*  Wanted: 32 Galahads a day
*   We cannot organise relief beyond Umm Qasr, insist aid agencies
*  Water, food trickle into Iraq

HISTORY AND HERITAGE

*  'City of peace' remains a victim of suffering
*  Dogged by destiny
*  Ancient Iraqi swamp culture drained but not dead
*  The end of civilisation


HUMANITARIAN AID

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2891069.stm

*  CONVOY HIJACKED IN AID 'DISASTER'
 by Ryan Dilley
BBC, 27th March

The much heralded operation to distribute humanitarian aid to the people of
the Iraqi border town of Safwan on Wednesday has been a "disaster",
according to the vice chairman of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent - the
organisation which despatched the lorry convoy of food parcels.

Dr Hilal Al-Sayer told BBC News Online that the tens of thousands of
prepared meals and ration kits of rice, oil, sugar and cereals destined for
farms just north of the Iraqi border, had instead been hijacked soon after
leaving Kuwait.

"That aid didn't get to the farms where the women and children are, our
people lost control and young Iraqi men began emptying the trucks," he said.

"It went to the well, young and healthy."

Mr Al-Sayer says British troops advised staff from the Red Crescent (the
local equivalent of the Red Cross) to abandon almost all their lorries to
the crowd, since it was considered too dangerous to intervene to save the
estimated 45,000 meal packs.

"We didn't expect this sort of aggression. One of our workers phoned me to
say that he had been hit on the head as these people threw the boxes from
the trucks.

"This desperation shows the poverty in which these people have lived," said
Mr Al-Sayer.

Kuwaiti Red Crescent convoys have been trying to cross over into the areas
of Iraq occupied by US-led forces for several days, but have been delayed
because of security fears.

The arrival of aid in Safwan was heralded by some as a sign that Washington
and London were making good on promises to feed the Iraqi people.

However, only two lorry loads of aid reached the farms as intended, where Mr
Al-Sayer says it was handed out "very nicely" to families.

Mr Al-Sayer says he hopes the chaotic scenes of Wednesday will not be
repeated again.

"The aid was there, but not the organisation. We will do better next time."

The border area around Safwan and Umm Qasr - where the arrival of a British
army water tanker on Wednesday also prompted ugly scenes - is only very
sparsely populated.

If aid proves difficult to deliver in this region, it raises questions about
how easy it will be to feed the populations of larger towns and cities.

"We will get it right in Safwan, but Basra will be a different kettle of
fish for us," said Mr Al Sayer.

Other aid agencies ready in the region say Wednesday's Safwan convoy has
"raised some concerns".

Eileen Burke from Save The Children says her organisation carefully assesses
local needs and sets up a distribution network before sending in any aid.

"We identify the families most in need, so that we can target them with the
aid.

"We then make sure it goes to the right people and that they do take it home
to their families," she told BBC News Online.

The fighting in southern Iraq has seen most aid workers flee the country,
meaning there is little reliable information about the needs of the Iraqi
people and what supplies will be needed to help them, says Mercy Corp's
Cassandra Nelson.

"We're relying on second-hand reports."

Iraqis are reliant on aid. Before the war, the UN was bringing 3,500 tonnes
of aid into Umm Qasr's port every day.

The fighting has seen this UN operation shut down and the port is yet to
reopen. Reports also suggest Safwan is no longer secure enough for aid to be
sent there.

"Security is our biggest concern. Securing the area for our aid should be
the military's number one priority," said Ms Nelson.

Several aid agencies say they are unwilling to send in lorries escorted by
US-led forces, for fear this will destroy their impartiality and neutrality
in the conflict.

However, it is still too dangerous to send unarmed convoys over the border.

"There are reports of looting and lawlessness," says Ms Nelson.

"If it is this bad just over the border, I can't imagine what it is like
heading deeper into Iraq."


http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2459462

*   IRAQI REFUGEE CAMPS STAND EMPTY
by Edmund Blair and Richard Waddington
Reuters, 27th March

RUWEISHED/GENEVA: Rows of near empty tents stand in the barren Jordanian
desert, ready for a flood of Iraqi refugees that has not yet come.

For aid workers, the biggest problem is keeping the tents standing in the
fierce winds that whip across the featureless plain, pulling at ropes and
tearing material.

Jordan feared hundreds of thousands of people would flee to the kingdom with
the onset of a U.S.-led war in neighbouring Iraq, but over one week into the
fighting, no Iraqi refugees have appeared.

It is the same story in Iran and Turkey, two other neighbouring states where
local officials, aid workers and the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNCHR) have been racing to prepare for a possible exodus.

Mindful of the massive outflow of refugees after the end of the 1991 Gulf
War, when over two million fled, the UNHCR has been stockpiling tents,
cooking equipment and other materials for up to 600,000 people.

Despite the intense preparations, UNHCR officials in Geneva say that they
are not surprised that there has been no quick rush for the borders and warn
that it is still early days.

"We are only eight days into the war, which is not a very long time. It is
way too early to say we can relax now," said Kris Janowski, a UNHCR
spokesman.

Janowski noted that military campaigns alone rarely trigger big refugee
flows which were more associated with political persecution or the special
targeting of individual groups.

This was the case in the 1991 war, when only some 60,000 Iraqis fled during
the U.S.-led military campaign to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's
invasion forces from Kuwait.

"In 1991, there was no exodus of people because of the bombing or because of
the military intervention. It only happened when the (later) uprisings were
put down by Iraqi forces," he said.

Over one million Iraqis fled to Iran from northern and southern Iraq, while
some 500,000 camped out in freezing conditions on either side of the border
with Turkey after Saddam's forces crushed revolts. Others went to Jordan.

So far there have also been reports of movements within Kurdish-held
northern Iraq, mainly people fleeing cities for the mountains. But the
figures have not matched warnings by the United Nations ahead of the
conflict that war could create 1.5 million internally displaced people.

Over 20,000 Iraqi Kurds had taken refuge in north-east Iraq, close to the
frontier with Iran, but they had shown no signs at the moment of wanting to
cross over, Janowski said.

But he said that aid agencies were largely in the dark about what was going
on inside Iraq where U.S. and British forces are attempting to overthrow
Saddam Hussein, whom they accuse of having banned weapons of mass
destruction.

Some aid workers say that they have heard reports of Iraqi officials
threatening would-be refugees that if they fled they would lose all their
possessions.

Others cite the huge cost of flight, with a four-wheel drive vehicle for
about four people travelling from Baghdad to Jordan now costing about
$2,000, or roughly $500 a head.

After almost 13 years of debilitating international sanctions, which have
virtually wiped out Iraq's middle class and pushed many into dire poverty,
few have that kind of money.

"Frankly, I think the reason is that they have been through so much that
they don't want to leave. They don't think anything worse could happen to
them," said one aid worker in Ruweished.

Many may just be hoping that the war will be over quickly. And with several
people reported killed on the western desert highway since the start of the
conflict, travelling was not necessarily safer than staying put.

"If the conflict drags on, one might speculate, people might decide to leave
after all," said Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the International
Organisation for Migration.

In the desert near Ruweished, UNHCR has helped set up a camp with street
lighting on makeshift roads, sanitation, water wells and neat rows of tents
capable of holding about 10,000 people. It could be quickly expanded,
officials say.

A few kilometres (miles) closer to the border, a second camp has been set up
by Jordan's Red Crescent. It can hold 5,000 people with room to expand, but
only a few hundred third country nationals, mainly African workers, have
passed through. About 200 remain.

Iran has begun building four of the 10 refugee camps it plans, each with a
capacity for 15,000 people, but so far there has been no movement across
Iraq's eastern frontier.

"We are ready now to receive any refugees if there is going to be any," said
Anis Tarabey, programme manager of CARE International, which is helping set
up the Ruweished camp.

"We are waiting," he said.


http://media.guardian.co.uk/iraqandthemedia/story/0,12823,924594,00.html

*  THE FIRST CASUALTY: A LOOK AT THE WAY THE WAR IS BEING SPUN AND REPORTED
by Steven Morris
The Guardian, 28th March

Making sure the world witnesses aid reaching the people of southern Iraq has
become an essential part of the public relations battle.

At briefings yesterday British military chiefs said it was crucial that
supplies reached needy civilians quickly. "Our desire is to start aid
operations as soon as possible," said the chief of the defence staff,
Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, before explaining that the Royal Fleet Auxiliary
ship Sir Galahad, which is loaded with 200 tonnes of aid, had been unable to
dock because more mines had been found near the port of Umm Qasr.

But the Today programme's foreign affairs correspondent, Mike Williams,
claimed that the docking had been postponed earlier this week because
helicopters had not been able to ferry journalists into position so they
could watch coalition forces handing out supplies to - hopefully - grateful
civilians.

An Ministry of Defence spokesman insisted the Galahad would move in as soon
as the waters around the port were declared clear.

[.....]


http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/9ca65951ee22658ec125663300408599/58e48e8f
396f0c34c1256cf8004de0f0?OpenDocument

*  AID GROUPS SAY MILITARY SEE AID AS PROPAGANDA TOOL
by Kate Holton
Reuters, 28th March

LONDON: Relief agencies accused British and U.S. forces on Friday of being
more concerned with food aid as a propaganda tool than feeding hungry
Iraqis.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like Save the Children said chaotic
scenes shown on televisions on Wednesday, in which Iraqis scrambled for food
thrown from a truck at Safwan near the border with Kuwait, was an example of
how the provision of aid has become just another tactic in the U.S.-led war
against Iraq.

"What they are doing is not humanitarian aid but a 'hearts and mind'
operation and that is quite different," Save the Children's Director of
Emergencies Lewis Sida told Reuters.

He said humanitarian missions would seek to avoid such high profile
incidents, saying it illustrated that the military did not have the
competence to do aid work and said such operations did not serve the best
interests of the people most in need.

Wednesday's pictures of young men fighting it out with each other to grab
meagre supplies off the backs of trucks also raised concerns at Care
International UK over the plight of those not strong enough to do battle for
food.

"Inevitably the people who need that assistance most are least able to
physically collect it," Care's emergencies advisor Adrian Denyer told
Reuters.

"The most vulnerable and the weakest, the women and children, are a long way
from that truck and it will be the young men who grab the aid and will most
likely sell it rather than distribute it."

Another concern is the amount of food aid that can get through to a country
where 60 percent of the population had been relying on an oil-for-food
programme, which was suspended when the U.S.-led war against Iraq began.

The first ship to bring humanitarian aid since the start of the U.S.-led
invasion was British ship Sir Galahad, which docked at the port of Umm Qasr
on Friday. But its cargo is a drop in the sea of aid which the oil-for-food
programme had provided. "To put it in context, we have been waiting for the
Sir Galahad for days with its 200 tons of food. Under the oil for food
programme ... 16,000 tons a day were supplied, so you are looking at 80 Sir
Galahads a day just to restore the normal supply," Christian Aid spokesman
John Davison told Reuters.

He said aid agencies and the military have had many discussions over several
years about how best to distribute aid.

The agencies said their experience has taught them that the distribution of
food and supplies must be held at secure warehouses if those most in need
can hope to be fed.

Almost all aid agencies have said southern Iraq is still too dangerous for
civilian relief teams, but they are demanding the U.N. take control of
humanitarian work when the fighting ends.

They say they refuse to work alongside the military because being seen
alongside troops would put their own workers in danger and erode the
confidence of the Iraqi people in them.

On Wednesday, another convoy of Kuwait Red Crescent trucks heading for
Safwan was surrounded by Iraqis fighting for the food packages inside. The
troops accompanying the convoy ordered the aid released for safety reasons.

"The fact that it was chaotic and badly planned and off the back of a truck
illustrates that they (military) do not have the competence to do that,"
Sida said.

A British defence source told Reuters that the military should not accept
blame for Wednesday's chaos and said aid agencies should plan the
distribution.

"Ships are standing by all over the world to bring aid in but we must be
sure we can effectively distribute it. It needs some planning - but that's
for the aid agencies," said the source on condition of anonymity.


http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=391980

*  WANTED: 32 GALAHADS A DAY
by Nick Guttmann
The Independent, 30th March

Coverage of the looming humanitarian crisis in Iraq has been dominated over
the past few days by two images. The first is of battle-trained British
troops struggling, almost panicking, over the task of distributing food and
water to populations that are unwilling to form an orderly queue. The second
is of the supply ship Sir Galahad, after many delays, finally docking at the
port Umm Qasr with its eagerly awaited aid cargo. Both give an equally
distorted picture of what is needed now by the people of Iraq.

Throwing boxes of food off the backs of lorries into a sea of eager arms is
simply not how you do these things. It is potentially dangerous for all
involved and, more importantly, it virtually guarantees that the wrong
people will get whatever is on offer. The most successful arms in this kind
of situation belong to the strongest, fittest young men. While the old, the
weak and the women with children ­ those who need the aid most ­ have either
to stand by and watch or run the risk of being trampled underfoot.

Yes, there will be further sharing of these supplies within communities. And
yes, some of the aid will trickle down to those in need. But random,
disorganised distributions, like those we have seen on our televisions,
offer no way of guaranteeing this and no way of monitoring what effect the
distribution will have had. It is not unknown, for instance, for such aid to
end up in the hands of traders who sell it on at inflated prices.

No one is questioning the sincerity of the troops who are trying to fulfil
this role. But it is not their job and, demonstrably, they don't know how to
do it. Furthermore it is impossible for a force fighting on one side of a
war either to be impartial over who gets the aid, or to be seen to be
impartial. Yet this very impartiality lies at the heart of the "humanitarian
imperative" which governs the actions of all humanitarian agencies and
non-governmental organisations. It is enshrined in the Red Cross/Red
Crescent Code of Conduct to which Christian Aid is a signatory. Quite
simply, this states that aid must be delivered at the point of greatest
need, without fear or favour or with any political purpose.

To do this requires a lot of planning and organisation. First to establish
who are those in greatest need by careful, prior assessment. Then to make
sure, through existing local community leaders, that people understand and
accept that this is what is going on. Communication is essential.

It can, and does, work well all over the world. Not following these rules,
as we have seen, can lead to a riot. Much has been made of the expertise of
the Humanitarian Operations Centre (HOC), part of the US central command in
Kuwait, which has been placed in charge of the initial relief operation.
There is even a representative there from Britain's Department for
International Development (DfID). This expertise must be put to better use
before any more damage is done.

That, though, is only the short-term option, while the security enabling
those qualified to do the job is missing. The whole humanitarian effort must
be taken out of military hands and handed to the United Nations, with which
aid agencies can co-operate.

For as well as the question of method, there is also the question of scale.
The figures are stark. Before the war, virtually the entire Iraqi population
was in receipt of food aid through the UN's Oil For Food programme (OFF).
Some 60 per cent of this population, about 16 million people, were dependent
on the programme, which covered medical supplies and other essentials as
well as food. This means that 16,000 tonnes of aid will need to be shipped
into the country every day, once the stocks that are thought to exist in the
country run out in around three weeks' time.

But in the northern Kurdish area, where Christian Aid funds most of its
Iraqi programmes, we are told that food could start to run out in as little
as two weeks. Already there are shortages of kerosene, meaning that some of
the large bakeries which operate on the fuel, have suspended production. The
Sir Galahad brought in 500 tonnes of aid on Friday. But it would take an
average of 32 such shipments every day just to reactivate the pre-war
programme. No one is pretending that the situation in the country will not
be a lot worse when the war is finally over. Water and sanitation will be
the first priority. There are likely to be more Basras in the coming weeks,
or months.

The opening of Umm Qasr has been presented as an opportunity for the
coalition forces to ship humanitarian supplies. That it will also be a vital
conduit for the supply of growing ground forces is unquestionable. So what
will be the priority in the minds of generals faced with the need to deploy
a new armoured division or land dozens of aid shipments? We've all answered
harder ones than that.

Again, the aid is welcome in these terrible circumstances. But for the US or
UK governments to paint this as anything other than a sticking plaster on
the needs of the Iraqi people is to risk being accused of the worst kind of
public relations stunt.

The new UN Security Council resolution to establish a successor to OFF,
passed on Friday, is something that aid agencies have been calling for since
the original programme was suspended on the eve of hostilities. It is a
start. But it presupposes that there will be safe access for aid workers and
a stable political situation in which the UN can operate. That is unlikely
for some time ­ and that means that it will be quite some while before the
300 relief workers who monitor the distribution of supplies return. In the
meantime donor governments must match this with contributions to the $1.3bn
(£800m) appeal which the UN has now launched.

Last week, the British government, through DfID, announced a further £30m
for humanitarian work. Two days later, the Treasury announced new money for
military expenditure ­ bringing the running total to £3bn. This does not
sound like Tony Blair's pre war promise to give equal importance to the
humanitarian effort as to the military. This screaming discrepancy must be
addressed ­ now.

Nick Guttmann is head of emergencies for Christian Aid. To make a donation
to Christian Aid's work in Iraq, go to the website: www.christian-aid.org.uk


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=392433

*   WE CANNOT ORGANISE RELIEF BEYOND UMM QASR, INSIST AID AGENCIES
by Patrick McDowell in Kuwait City
The Independent, 31st March

The security situation in Iraq remains too dangerous for aid agencies to
move beyond the port city of Umm Qasr and fan out deeper into the country,
aid co-ordinators said yesterday.

"We are not trained, equipped, or organised to move in a combat
environment," said Michael Marx, head of the US Government's relief team for
Iraq.

Fighting is raging further north in the city of Basra and beyond, and two
Kuwait Red Crescent aid shipments to the border town of Safwan last week
were mobbed by people tearing food boxes off trucks.

A British relief ship, RFA Sir Galahad, docked at Umm Qasr on Friday with
food, medicine and other supplies, but apart from short-term relief that is
distributed by soldiers on the move, little is reaching Iraqis. Coalition
forces are hoping to pacify battle areas quickly so that agencies can come
in behind them and distribute aid through the suspended U.N. oil for-food
programme.

Maj-Gen Albert Whitley, the British officer trying to co- ordinate military
efforts with humanitarian relief operations, said the biggest problem
throughout Iraq was dangerous water quality.

Water treatment has degraded over the past 15 years and virtually no sewage
plant in the country works, Maj-Gen Whitley said. Nor are there chemicals to
purify water.

"That means that the Tigris in particular is a floating sewer," Maj-Gen
Whitley said. "That provides most of the water to the water treatment plants
in Basra. It's no good digging a well, because you get the same stuff."

Cholera, typhoid and hepatitis are a real threat, especially in Baghdad,
Maj-Gen Whitley said. A pipeline laid from Kuwait to Umm Qasr will open
today, bringing 600,000 gallons a day of water that can be trucked into
other areas by military vehicles, he said.

The Iraqi government claimed before the war started that people had a
six-month supply. But the World Food Programme has estimated that the true
figure is about one to two months.

Iraq needs about 200,000 tons of food a month, and about 140,000 of that
would pass through Umm Qasr, Maj-Gen Whitley said. The U.S. government has
earmarked 600,000 tons worth US$300m.

Maj-Gen Whitley said the country was not facing a humanitarian disaster, but
that a crisis "could be precipitated tomorrow" if, for example, pro-Saddam
death squads forced people to flee the cities.

‹ The United Nations said yesterday that it had sent its first shipment of
aid across the Turkish border into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq since
the start of the US-led war against Baghdad.

Two trucks carrying water purification equipment, medicine and educational
material for the UN children's relief agency Unicef passed through the Habur
border gate in south-eastern Turkey.

UN officials said $4m worth of further supplies would follow in the coming
days.

The shipment marked the resumption of aid to northern Iraq under the
oil-for-food programme, although oil shipments from Iraq have not been
restarted.


http://www.dailystarnews.com/200304/02/n3040213.htm

*  WATER, FOOD TRICKLE INTO IRAQ
Daily Star, Bangladesh, 2nd April

AP, Amman: The first wartime UN humanitarian aid, a few truckloads of food
and water, trickled across Iraq's borders from Turkey and Kuwait, UN
agencies reported Monday.

But officials said aid organisations and the US military remain wary of
working together on relief operations for Iraq.

Three trucks carrying 84.7 tons of dried milk crossed from Turkey and were
unloaded in the northern Iraqi city of Dohuk on Saturday, the UN World Food
Program said in a delayed report.

Next, "we're preparing to move badly needed wheat flour later this week into
the north," said Khaled Mansour, regional spokesman for the UN agency in
Amman.

He said people in three autonomous Kurdish provinces of the north are
believed to need food more urgently than people in the central
government-controlled remainder of Iraq because they received only a month's
rations before the 12-day-old war began, while Iraqis elsewhere got two
months' rations.

Under UN economic sanctions against Iraq, the World Food Program itself ran
a food rationing program in the north, while the Baghdad government operated
it for the rest of the country.

In far southern Iraq on Monday, the first three vehicles carrying UN water -
commissioned by the UN Children's Fund - managed to make deliveries from
Kuwait to the captured city of Umm Qasr, UNICEF spokesman Geoff Keele
reported.

But 10 other water vehicles did not cross from Kuwait, either because they
had incorrect Kuwaiti paperwork or their privately contracted drivers
decided it wasn't safe to travel into war-torn southern Iraq, Keele said.

Keele also said two UNICEF trucks carrying medical and other goods have been
waiting at the northern border for Turkish permission to cross into Iraq.
Mansour said Saturday's dried-milk delivery also had been held up for some
days, pending Turkish permission.

The greatest obstacle, however, remained the danger of travelling war-torn
Iraq's roads.

Few private aid convoys have ventured into Iraq, but on Monday a two-truck
shipment from private Greek donors - carrying 33 tons of medicine, food,
milk and blankets - headed for Baghdad from Amman, the Jordanian capital.

Convoy chief Dr. Demetrius Mognie, an Athens physiologist, said by mobile
phone from the road that he hopes to remain in the Iraqi capital as the
casualty toll mounts. "My speciality is an important one, and they may need
my help there," said Mognie, a member of the aid group Doctors of the World.

A Jordanian government truck convoy and a private Algerian convoy crossed
into Iraq on Sunday carrying 130 tons of medical supplies.

Yet another relief arm - the US and British military - also continued
deliveries on Monday as they sought to "win hearts and minds" for their
invasion force. British troops delivered water from a tanker to the people
of Zubayr, south of besieged Basra.

Although UN aid agencies are in contact with the military commands in
Kuwait, no major progress has been reported toward a UN takeover of relief
operations.

"The international people don't want to be associated with the American
invasion, and the military people want to be seen as the ones helping the
Iraqis," one well-placed UN official said privately, reflecting what others
also have reported.

The professional aid community has openly disparaged the military's
"back-of-the-truck" aid distribution in southern Iraq, which ended in
televised scenes of chaos and fighting over water and food.

"Lessons have been learned," US Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said at
Monday's daily US Central Command briefing in Qatar. "We certainly know how
to distribute aid. It's going very well right now."


HISTORY AND HERITAGE

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/features/28_03_03_c.asp

*  'CITY OF PEACE' REMAINS A VICTIM OF SUFFERING
Lebanon Daily Star, 28th March

BAGHDAD: A great city dating back to 762, destroyed by invading Mongols in
1258, visited throughout the centuries by plagues, floods and fire, braced
itself this week for new unpleasantness.

Few cities in history have suffered as much as this ancient metropolis,
dreaming on the Tigris River of past glories, of times when it was the hub
of a rich, flourishing Golden Age of Islamic civilization.

Baghdad's roots can be traced as far back as 1,800 BC, to the time of the
Babylonian King Hammurabi. It was officially founded in the eighth century
AD on the banks of the Tigris by the second Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansour.

Some researchers say the name Baghdad comes from the Aramaic "beyt kadad"
meaning "sheep enclosure." Others think it is from two ancient Persian
words: "bag" meaning "God" and "dad" meaning "gift."

Its geographical location is manifestly strategic, on the most used trade
route between Persia and the Mediterranean and Anatolya.

Some even say Baghdad stands on the site of the Garden of Eden. True or not,
it very quickly became the trade and cultural metropolis of the Muslim
world.

Some 100,000 workers and the best architects and artisans of the Islamic
world were put to work in 762 to raise sumptuous palaces, fairy tale gardens
and glorious mosques.

Despite the rivalry of Samarra 100 kilometers to the north, Baghdad
flourished under the rule of enlightened caliphs to became the first great
commercial center of its time. The eighth and ninth centuries were clearly
Baghdad's golden years.

"Baghdad became the richest city of the world," wrote the English travel
writer, Gavin Young.

Science and culture blossomed especially during the Caliphate of Al-Mamun
between 813 and 833. The many accomplishments of that age included a
translation center known as Dar al-Hikma - or House of Wisdom - thanks to
which innumerable lost Greek manuscripts remained preserved in Arabic
versions.

Baghdad's influence spread far beyond the world of Islam. But even as the
population swelled to a million, decline had already set in with the end of
the first millennium.

Rivalries between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, a growing climate of insecurity,
horrific blazes and floods caused by the caprices of the unpredictable and
ungovernable Tigris all did their work.

"Where there is not war, there is pestilence, famine and civil disturbance,"
wrote Richard Coke in a 1927 history of the city.

But the ultimate disaster struck on Feb. 10, 1258, when Mongol invaders gave
the coup de grace to five centuries of epic achievement.

Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, and his hordes systematically
butchered some 100,000 out of a population of nearly 1 million and equally
systematically destroyed their city. By the 14th century the geographers
were coming back with reports of a city fallen into ruin.

Baghdad fell successively under the rule of the Turks and the Persians,
eventually settling down to nearly 300 years of sterile Ottoman domination
between 1638 and 1917, centuries of steady decline during which it never
really experienced any revival.

On March 11, 1917, British troops occupied the city. But their occupation of
Iraq was no romantic colonial endeavor - it took two-and-a-half years of
brutal war to rout the troops of the ruling Turkish Ottoman Empire. And
after two years of relative calm, Britain then faced  national revolt by the
Arabs and Kurds of Mesopotamia.

In an ironic twist, to put down an increasingly heated national uprising
against the occupation, Britain used poison gas against the Kurds, as well
as air power for the first time in history against a local uprising.

In late 1914, after the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of
Germany, British troops occupied Basra and the key southern Shatt al-Arab
waterway.

A premature attempt on Baghdad in 1915 ended in a retreat to the town of
Kut, 200 kilometers to the southeast, which the Ottomans placed under siege
for 140 days.

In April 1916, General Charles Townshend capitulated in Kut along with his
8,000 troops. While Townsend was set up in a comfortable villa in Istanbul,
most of his troops perished in a "death march" across the desert and
subsequent captivity. During the defense of Kut, unsuccessful relief efforts
cost another 21,000 dead or wounded.

In December 1916, some 170,000 British soldiers launched a new offensive
from Basra and finally captured Baghdad in March 1917.

Within months, the rest of Mesopotamia - comprising most of today's Iraq -
was occupied, including the key oil towns of Kirkuk and Mosul in 1918.
Between 1918 and 1920, Iraq came under British military administration, but
despite the modernization that came with the British presence, the new
Christian rulers were distrusted.

When Britain received a mandate for Iraq at an international conference in
April 1920, Iraqi tribes rebelled, spurred by growing nationalist sentiment
as well as dislike of the new foreign ruler.

Britain resorted to increasingly repressive measures to crush the uprising
and succeeded a year later, ending formal military rule.

Iraq gained independence from British rule under the 1930 British-Iraq
treaty. The "City of the Caliphs" became capital of modern Iraq in 1921, and
Iraq joined the League of Nations in October 1932.

Today, Baghdad is a city of some 3.2 million inhabitants. Its industries
include oil refining, food processing, tanneries, textiles, and traditional
handicrafts such as leather and rug making.

In 1991, five weeks of intensive bombing took their toll, hitting 723
targets, including schools, bridges and hospitals. According to one
estimate, five times more explosive was used than landed on Hiroshima, Japan
in 1945.

The caliph who founded Baghdad chose - in an act posterity revealed as
nothing but bitter irony - to baptize it  "Madinat as-Salam" - meaning City
of Peace.


http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,923874,00.html

*  DOGGED BY DESTINY
by Avi Shlaim
The Guardian, 29th March
Review of Arab Nationalism in the 20th Century: From Triumph to Despair by
Adeed Dawisha, 352pp, Princeton, £19.95

Most isms ultimately lead to war, and Arab nationalism is no exception.
Nationalist movements have an in-built tendency towards extremism and
xenophobia, towards self righteousness on the one hand and demonising the
enemy on the other. History is often falsified and even fabricated to serve
a nationalist political agenda. It is interesting to note how frequently the
phrase "forging a nation" is used, because most nations are forgeries.

Indeed, some nations are based on little more than a mythological view of
the past and a hatred of foreigners. Arab nationalism shares some of these
negative traits with other nationalist movements, but there is one basic
difference: it is not the ideology of one nation state, but of the entire
region.

Adeed Dawisha has given us a timely, illuminating and highly readable
overview of the history of the Arab national movement, from its origins in
the 19th century to the present. His book combines an analysis of the ideas
of Arab nationalism and their roots in European thought, with a fast-moving
political narrative, full of dramatic ups and downs.

Dawisha is a professor of political science at Miami University in Oxford,
Ohio. He grew up in Iraq during the heyday of Arab nationalism, and he
brings to his task a rare personal insight, as well as mastery of the
voluminous Arabic sources on the subject. There is a great deal of new
material here which not only brings events alive, but also leads to fresh
assessments and a better-informed understanding of the politics of one of
the world's most volatile and violent regions.

In the debate on the origins of Arab nationalism, Dawisha sides with the
revisionists against the more conventional historians, led by George
Antonius. In The Arab Awakening, Antonius articulated the orthodox view
that, during the 19th century, a national identity took root among the
Arabic-speaking populations of the Ottoman empire, and that during the first
world war this idea developed into a fully fledged revolutionary movement.
Dawisha argues that the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire was
originally proclaimed in the name of Islam, not in the name of Arabism or
the Arab nation. Religious identity was more important than national
identity. The Arab revolt therefore ought to be excised from the chronicles
of Arab nationalism.

It was only in the aftermath of the first world war that the "Arab nation"
emerged as a pertinent concept and Arab nationalism gradually took the form
of a political movement. Education played a vital part in glorifying the
past, in raising political consciousness and in kindling a nationalist
spirit in a generation of young Arabs. Intellectuals rather than politicians
were at the forefront of the movement. They borrowed the nationalist idea
from Europe and they used it to try to chart a new path for the Arab nation.

But the Arab national movement did not sweep all before it. There were
formidable obstacles along its path. First, there were conflicting
identities and competing loyalties to tribe, sect, region, and religion.
Second, there was always tension between Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian and other
regional identities, and the larger, all-encompassing Arab identity. The
third (and perhaps most ironic) obstacle to the concept of a coherent Arab
nation was the linguistic diversity in the land of Araby.

The most powerful competing alternative to the idea of a secular Arab nation
was the concept of a united Muslim umma or community. Islam was the other
great supranational ideology with a claim to the allegiance of the great
majority of Arabs. Islam had a broader catchment area than pan-Arabism,
because it did not differentiate between Arab and non Arab. The Muslim umma
was a unity in which ethnicity played no part.

Iraq in the inter-war era was in the vanguard of the movement towards Arab
unity. Proponents of pan-Arabism, like Sati' al-Husri, hoped to turn Iraq
into the Prussia of the Middle East, into a nationalist prototype for the
rest of the Arab world. Yet Iraq itself was a severely fragmented country.
It was an artificial state, cobbled together by Britain out of three
ex-Ottoman provinces, and bereft of any ethnic or religious rationale.

Iraq lacked the essential underpinnings of a national bond. The Kurds in the
north aspired to political independence in Kurdistan. Being non-semitic and
speaking an Indo-European language, the Kurds had little in common with the
Arabs of Iraq, apart from their Sunni Muslim faith. It was impossible to
bring them under the umbrella of "the Arab nation", because they considered
themselves ethnically distinct from the Arabs.

In their struggle for independence, however, they were repeatedly frustrated
because they had no friends but the mountains. The Shiites in the south
tended to view Arab nationalism as a Sunni project designed to reduce them
to an insignificant minority in an expanded Sunni Arab domain. Over half the
population was Shiite, yet the politically dominant group were the Sunnis,
who constituted barely a third of the population. Iraq thus provided a
foretaste of the problems that were to dog the Arab national movement
throughout its history.

In the face of such deep and pervasive divisions, it was a well-nigh
impossible task to achieve the two basic objectives of the Arab national
movement: unity and independence. A third objective was added in the
aftermath of the second world war: to keep Palestine in Arab hands. The
first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 was the crucial phase in the struggle for
Palestine. Arab unity, it was hoped, would be forged on the anvil of war
against the common enemy.

It was the great test for the newly independent Arab states, and they failed
it miserably. The inability of these states to coordinate their diplomatic
and military moves was in itself a major factor in the loss of Palestine.
The hopes that shone so brightly when the Arabs embarked on this "battle of
destiny" against the Zionist intruders gave way to disillusion and despair
over the dismal wreckage of Arab Palestine. It was the first time that the
Arab states let down their Palestinian brothers, but it was by no means the
last.

If 1948 was the nadir of Arab nationalism, in 1958 the movement reached its
highest peak. In February of that year, the United Arab Republic was
established by the merger of Syria and Egypt. On July 14, a bloody military
coup destroyed the monarchy in Iraq and transformed the country into a
radical republic. Iraq was expected to join the UAR. The pro western regimes
in Jordan and Lebanon teetered on the brink of collapse. For a brief moment,
the jubilant masses believed that those they considered to be the enemies of
Arab nationalism were about to fall like a row of dominoes. It was a
revolutionary moment in the Middle East, but the revolution did not spread.
With hindsight, 1958 was the great turning point in Middle East history in
which history failed to turn. Since 1958, it has been downhill all the way.

The power generating Arab nationalism was eventually turned off in June
1967. The armies of the confrontation states were roundly defeated in the
six-day war, their territory was occupied, their economies were in ruins and
the bluster of Arab nationalism was completely deflated; 35 years on, the
Arabs have not yet fully recovered from the crushing defeat they suffered in
the second "battle of destiny". Nor have the Israelis recovered from the
spectacular military victory that launched them on a course of territorial
expansion. Hence the impasse on the Arab-Israeli front today.

After tracing the rise and fall of Arab nationalism in the 20th century,
Dawisha passes his final verdict. It is characteristically balanced and
fair-minded. There are lights as well as shadows in the picture he paints.
On the one hand, he recognises the contribution that pan Arabism, in its
heyday, made to the regeneration of Arab self-confidence and sense of
dignity after long years of subjugation to colonial rule. On the other hand,
he notes that by the end of the 20th century little was left of the goal of
Arab unity but the debris of broken promises and shattered hopes.

Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of
Oxford and author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (Penguin)


http://hoovnews.hoovers.com/fp.asp?layout=displaynews&doc_id=NR20030331140.5
_39150050c77bf127

*  ANCIENT IRAQI SWAMP CULTURE DRAINED BUT NOT DEAD
by Mark Fritz
Hoover's (Financial Times), from AP, 31st March

A swath of southern Iraq has been called many things: Land of the swamp
people. Mother of all untapped oil reserves. Scene of the worst
environmental crime in history. Cradle of civilization. Saddam's
slaughterhouse.

At the moment, it is a 21st century battlefield. But the great expanse known
to scientists as the Mesopotamia Marshlands figures to be one of keys to
what will become of postwar Iraq.

Saddam Hussein purportedly drained these wetlands - satellite images show
only 7 percent of the fragile ecosystem still intact - as part of his
campaign to crush Shiite Muslims who rebelled against him in 1991.

Geologists believe fabulous sources of untapped oil percolate beneath
sections of this expanse, which was bigger than the Everglades and half the
size of Switzerland little more than a decade ago.

Yet some environmental engineers advocate reflooding the region to restore
the habitat, the surviving fraction of which still harbors the vestiges of
rare birds, fish and what remains of a 5,000-year-old subculture known as
the Marsh Arabs, people who live on floating islands handmade from enormous
reeds.

In an arid, windblown region where oil means wealth but water means
survival, dueling forces stand ready to shape the fate of the Fertile
Crescent that provided the right ingredients to spawn Mesopotamia, the first
civilization.

"The marshes happen to be on top of the some of the greatest untapped
reserves of oil," said Mark Bartolini, Middle East director for the
International Rescue Committee. "Are we going to flood the marshes for the
people who lived there for millennia?"

The relief organization has targeted for aid the roughly 200,000 Iraqi
Shiites living as refugees in neighboring Iran. Most fled in the wake of
Saddam's defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, after which Shiites in
southern Iraq - along with Kurds in the north - staged uprisings against
what they thought was a brutal ruler vulnerable to overthrow.

Saddam rallied his troops and crushed both rebellions, then waged a
decade-long campaign to slaughter the Shiite usurpers. Since many were from
the marshlands, human rights groups say he accelerated the draining and
seeming destruction of the bogs.

Ramadan Albadran grew up in the swamps around al Amara in a house built from
clay and reeds, a veritable vineyard growing on the roof. As a young man, he
participated in the rebellion, then fled to Saudi Arabia for his life.

"Most of my friends were killed," said Albadran, 39, who was granted refugee
status and now lives in Los Angeles. Yet he'd go back to the swamps if he
could.

There was nothing quite like sitting on the porch in the cool morning
breeze, admiring the view of the Tigris river, eating a peach or pomegranate
plucked from the surrounding forest of fruit.

"You had to use a boat to pick the fruit," he said. "But you could catch any
kind of fish without leaving the house."

Though Saddam gets most of the blame for destroying the marshes, neighboring
Turkey and Syria have played a role by damming rivers upstream to irrigate
farms. Iran is building a huge dam that the U.N. Environment Program
believes will further drain the marsh.

Preserving the remaining 7 percent - down from 10 percent just two years ago
- is crucial because it provides a template for restoring much of the rest
of the marshes, said Hassan Partow, a UN environmentalist in Geneva.

The wetlands are the last redoubt for such rare species as the African
darter fish and the Sacred Ibis bird, and a pit stop for many migratory
birds. Creatures unique to the marshland might even be gone, such as the
smooth-covered otter, the bandicoot rat and the buni fish, he said.

The marsh also served a crucial role in protecting the Persian Gulf and its
vibrant fishery, said Tom Crisman, a University of Florida environmental
engineer and director of the school's Center for Wetlands.

Before Saddam used a system of dikes and canals to divert the river waters,
the intricate maze of pools, streams and marshes was a dazzling delta that
sprawled to the horizon. Refugees now describe much of it as an ocean of
fetid mud with polluted groundwater, sprinkled with garbage and land mines.
Other sections are dry and dusty, dotted with the flattened, crinkled
remains of the magnificent stands of reeds that once stood up to 15 feet
tall.

The war is likely to leave a legacy of unexploded ordinance and other,
less-lethal, refuse of combat. Some of the heaviest fighting has taken place
in the marsh areas, particularly around the cities of Nasariyha, Basra and
Um Qasr.

In addition to being a remarkable wildlife habitat, the marshes served a
crucial role in the health and nutrition of the whole Persian Gulf region,
Crisman said.

The marshes were an important source of protein, in the form of fish and
water buffalo, and served as a filter for the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
that flank and feed it. Wetlands act as natural wastewater treatment systems
for waterway contaminants.

Now the two rivers are carrying waste from Iraq directly into the Persian
Gulf, Crisman said, posing a threat to a fishery on which the entire Gulf
region depends.

Though Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia in proven oil reserves, 90
percent of the country is unexplored because of 23 years of wars and global
sanctions, according to the U.S. Energy Intelligence Agency.

"I'm not sure how many untapped reserves lie in the marshes, but it's
certainly a prolific oil bearing region," said Lowell Feld of the Energy
Intelligence Agency. "So, it is fair to say that there's probably a lot more
oil to be found in the area."

With the prospect of the prison-like country opening its doors, oil
companies around the world are hungrily eyeing a postwar Iraq, said Ruba
Husari, London-based researcher for the industry research firm Energy
Intelligence Group.

"Everybody is interested," she said.

The Russian company Lukoil signed a contract for the West Qurna field in
1997, but Iraq voided it last December after the Russian government lobbied
the Bush administration to let the contract stand should the Americans
conquer Iraq and form a new government.

Even in January, as war appeared imminent, Russia was in Iraq, negotiating
for the rights to either the Majnoon or Nah bin Umar fields, she said. Those
fields overlap the marshlands.

Hassan said the oil production could provide the revenue needed to restore
the Mesopotamia Marshlands to some semblance of its past splendor.

Although the oil companies have wealth and power on their side, the
marshlands restoration project is backed by an Iraqi opposition group
lightly funded by the U.S. government. Crisman, a scientist on the project's
advisory committee, said at some point "the oil companies will have to be
engaged."

Project Director Suzie Alwash said the restoration project - called "Eden
Again" - has just hired its first full-time staffer and hasn't had the time
or resources to coordinate yet with the petroleum firms.

"It kind of depends on which oil companies get the deals," she said. "If
it's a Russian oil company, I don't think we're going to get much help. But
if it's an American oil company, we may be able to do something."

But Alwash, a geologist, said there is no hard evidence that there is oil
under all the marshlands, but that the vast region could accommodate both
petroleum and paradise.

There are half a million Marsh Arabs, most of them displaced and many living
in refugee camps, and Eden Again's goal is to make the swamps suitable to
restore their culture - an environmental and anthropological task of perhaps
unprecedented proportions.

"An ecosystem has a memory. The sediments are there from thousands of
years," Crisman said. "But what about the cultural memory? It's much
shorter. Can the people, can their culture rebound? It's a whole new
ballgame."

The future of the marshlands are an example of a larger issue facing the
custodians of postwar Iraq, said J. Brian Atwood, dean of the Humphrey
Institute of Public Affairs and former director of the U.S. Agency for
International Development.

"The one thing that is crucial about the reconstruction is that the Iraqis
play a large part in the process and we pay attention to them and understand
the importance of the culture, such as these marshlands," Atwood said.

"The Iraqi people are not used to being listened to," he said, "and it would
be mistake to continue that attitude."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,927788,00.html

*  THE END OF CIVILISATION
by Fiachra Gibbons
The Guardian, 2nd April

This week, B52s were circling the holy city of Najaf, emptying, we are told,
their payloads on to the Medina division of the Republican guard. They know
all about slaughter in this city of half a million people now surrounded by
the tanks of the US Seventh Cavalry, Custer's old devil-may-care outfit.

Ali, the charismatic son-in-law of the Prophet - who occupies a place in the
Shi'ite pantheon of similar significance to Christ - was murdered at the
gates of Najaf. His tomb has been one of the most sacred Shi'ite shrines
since.

Up the road at Kerbala (pronounced Herbala, despite what the BBC says),
Ali's son Hussein, his family and followers were massacred by the Sunnis in
680AD in a "turkey shoot" of a battle that divides Islam to this day.
Hussein's mausoleum is like the Vatican, Gethsemane and the Wailing Wall
rolled into one. It is at Kerbala where Saddam, like his namesake, seems to
have decided to stand and fight.

In museums and universities across the world, scholars and curators are
fearful of another armageddon. One not perpetrated on the Iraqi people but
on their history and monuments. Iraq, particularly the green heart of
Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent of land between the rivers Tigris and
Euphrates, is the cradle of civilisation, the land of Nineveh, Babylon,
Nimrud and Uruk, the world's first city. This is where the Sumerians
invented writing 5,000 years ago, where the epic of Gilgamesh - the model
for Noah and the flood - was committed to cuneiform a millennium and a half
before Homer. It is the land of the Old Testament, the Tower of Babel and of
Ur, where Abraham, the father of the three great monotheistic religions, was
born.

It may have only a single official Unesco listing but, with 1,000
acknowledged archaeological sites, Iraq is one huge world heritage zone. And
on to this in the past few days have poured 740 Tomahawk cruise missiles,
8,000 smart bombs and an unknown number of stupid ones. One of the first
acts of the war was an attack on the museum in Saddam's home town of Tikrit.
To an Iraqi regime eager for ammunition for propaganda, this was proof of
American and British barbarism. The allies preferred to see it as a symbolic
strike at the personality cult of Saddam.

The museum in Mosul, the northern city that is home to the oldest churches
in the world, is also dedicated to a pernicious personality cult, that of
Sennacherib, a seventh-century BC Assyrian ruler. That, too, has been hit.

The Mosul museum houses some of the most important finds from nearby Nineveh
and Nimrud, like the giant winged Assyrian bulls with human heads that awe
visitors to the British Museum and thousands of cuneiform clay tablets that
have yet to be deciphered. The museum's director, a Christian, like many in
Mosul, has spent the last year blast-proofing the windows and evacuating her
most delicate exhibits. Some, however, were simply too big to move.

But it is the damage that may be happening out of sight of the cameras that
has historians and archaeologists worried. At Trinity College, Cambridge,
Professor Nicholas Postgate is resigned to the worst but angry about the
destruction.

On Iraq's pancake-flat southern plain, archeological sites are the only
raised features, the only cover and, therefore, key military positions.
"Some are 30 metres high and extend over kilometres," Postgate says. "With
modern machinery, an entire 6,000-year-old village can be recycled into a
defensive earthwork in a day or two, and even old-fashioned trenches, which
were much used in the last hostilities, can do irreparable damage."

American bulldozers razed the ruins of Tell al-Lahm, south of Ur, during the
last Gulf war. What might a squadron of B52s be able to do? From the air,
archaeological trenches are easily mistaken for military emplacements, and
therefore fair game for a pummelling. But it's not just the direct hits that
wreck. In 1991, the great arch of Ctesphion, still the widest unsupported
brick arch in the world, was cracked by the rumble of American carpet
bombing.

The Iraqis themselves, of course, are adept at recycling ancient defences.
There is evidence that tanks were parked around ancient sites during the
last war, and the Americans are quick to point to the Iraqi airbase that
sits in the shadow of the great ziggurat of Ur. With an administration
stuffed full of biblical literalists - Christian and Zionist fundamentalists
- it is easy to understand their anger at the Iraqis' use of the city of
Abraham as a shield. But what few in the Pentagon seem to realise is that
the Ur airbase was built by the British in the days of its colonial mandate,
when the RAF first demonstrated the civilising capabilities of bombing
civilians from the air.

John Curtis, the keeper of the department of the ancient near east at the
British Museum, visited Ur last spring and has little doubt the Americans
strafed the ziggurat - a great, stepped pyramid - with heavy machine-gun
fire the last time they passed that way. "Whether this was an accident, I
couldn't say," he says. A fair amount of what he drily calls "bayonet
archaeology" had also gone on, presumably by passing GIs.

Postgate is not so phlegmatic. "This argument that it doesn't matter if
these places are hit because the Iraqis are using the archaeology like human
shields is a non-starter. If you put a machine-gun emplacement anywhere in
Mosul, for instance, it will be next to antiquities. That is the nature of
the country, but that doesn't make Mosul a valid target."

And there is another reason, he argues, why the Iraqis are justified in
putting machine guns outside museums. In the aftermath of the last Gulf war,
when large parts of the country rose up against Saddam, several important
museums and archaeological sites were looted in the chaos. Around 4,000
precious objects went missing and more were destroyed. Most of the stolen
items followed the well-worn route to Israel, Switzerland and, finally, to
London, where many Assyrian pieces, broken up for easier transit, ended up
on the art market or in the back rooms of antiquarian dealers. Having
failed, as a pariah state, to get them back through official channels, the
Iraqis were still trying to buy some back from western collectors when
hostilities started. "I am not trying to make any argument for Saddam, but
any responsible government must protect their cultural heritage," Postgate
says.

But, for all his butchery, torture and repression, Saddam has been mostly a
good thing for archaeology. He has his reasons, of course. Like many a
dictator before him, he promised national rebirth and a repeat of the
glories of the past, comparing himself to Nebuchadnezzar who built the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon. He even rebuilt the old city walls with bricks
embossed with his own name next to that of Nebuchadnezzar. You don't have to
be an expert to see this exercise as a crime against archaeology and
aesthetics. Then there is the presidential palace Saddam built himself on
the site.

But Saddam saw protecting Iraq's heritage as a patriotic duty, even if his
methods were brutal. Five years ago, 10 men from near Mosul who cut the head
off an Assyrian winged bull at Khorsabad were executed. Such was the
desperation of Iraqis that the looting and smuggling continued.

Since the phones went down 12 days ago, nothing has been heard from the
museum in Baghdad. Emails have gone unanswered, too. The culture ministry is
said to have been bombed. The museum sits close to a telephone exchange and
a television transmitter in the Salihyia district. Trenches have been dug
outside.

At the British Museum, Curtis is worried on three fronts. First, for his
friends in Baghdad, seven of whom have recently spent time in London on
scholarships. When he visited last year, Donny George, one of Iraq's
brightest archaeologists, was packing away the smaller exhibits into crates.
He has spent the past few months sandbagging the big bas reliefs, tombs and
statues that cannot be moved. George, an Assyrian Christian, has spent
recent years excavating the city of Umma armed with a trowel and a
semi-automatic. It was the only way he could fend off the looters who came
with lorries, mechanical diggers and AK47s.

George and his colleagues were talking then of the possibility of using bank
vaults and bunkers if the worst came. But having listened to the Americans
boast about their "bunker busting" bombs, Curtis is anxious. "Bunkers are
possibly not safest places in Iraq at the moment." He is also fearful of
what might happen to the exquisite Assyrian sculptures and reliefs still in
situ in Nineveh and Nimrud if Kurds have to take the area trench by trench.

Irritation with Old Europe is clear when you call US Central Command in
Qatar, never mind Extremely Old Mesopotamia. They have more pressing things
on their minds than the fate of sixth-century BC cylinder seals. "We are
doing our darnedest to avoid collateral damage of any type, be it civilians
or buildings," a spokesman says. "However, in cases where military targets
are located by the regime in sites that are dual use, we still see those as
viable sites."

Does that mean they have attacked Babylon and Saddam's palace? "I can't
discuss the procedure used for targeting. If it had command-and-control use
or if any weapons were held there, then yes we would attack it. We
understand how sensitive these areas are. Whether this is taken into
consideration in targeting, I can't say."

Postgate, however, gives the Americans some credit. Unlike the British, who
ignored all the information he and his colleagues sent them, US military
planners took heed. "They contacted us asking what they should do if they
find antiquities, which sites they should try to avoid, and how they could
minimise damage if that was not possible. All we had from the British was a
deafening silence." Riding roughshod over Iraqi sensitivities could prove
fatal, he insists.

Kerbala and Najaf have reportedly come under heavy bombardment. If Imam
Hussein's mausoleum or Ali's tomb and mosque at Najaf are damaged, the
archaeologists agree the allies risk alienating the Shi'ites of the south,
the people who were meant to rise up and greet the Americans as liberators.
The lessons of history are there, but will they be heeded?

A series of lectures on Iraq's cultural heritage continues at the British
Museum, London WC1, today and tomorrow. Details: 020-7323 8000.




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