Humberto Márquez
"
The expert on the
destruction of libraries has helped document the devastation of cultural and
religious objects in Iraq, where the ancient Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon
emerged, giving it a reputation as the birthplace of civilisation.
His inventory
of the destruction and his denunciations that the coalition forces are
violating the Hague Convention of 1954 on the protection of cultural heritage
in times of war have earned him the enmity of
Báez said he was refused a
visa to enter the
In addition, he has been
barred from returning to
IPS: What do you accuse the
FB: In first place, of
violating
That is a criminally
punishable offense, which is why
But it is not only the
IPS: But according to the
reports, it was Iraqi civilians and not
FB: But the U.S. Army was
criminally negligent, failing to protect libraries, museums, and archaeological
sites despite clear warnings from UNESCO [the UN Educational, Scientific and
Cultural Organization], the UN, the
The Iraqis who went out to
loot interpreted the negligence as a green light to act without restraint.
IPS: So the sin committed by
the
FB: Not only that. There was
also direct destruction and looting. In Nasiriya in
May 2004, a year after the formal end of hostilities, during fighting with (Shi'ite cleric) Moqtada el-Sadr's militants, 40,000 religious manuscripts were
destroyed in a fire [set by the coalition forces].
And when soldiers found
out that the Sumerian city of
IPS: You also accuse soldiers
from other countries, besides
FB: That's right. In late
May 2004, Italian Carabinieri were caught trying to
smuggle looted cultural artifacts over the border into
IPS: Can we suppose that
these events are part of phases of the conflict that have already been left
behind?
FB: No. More recently it was
found that Polish troops drove heavy vehicles near the
To that is added the
collapse of ancient walls due to the continuous passage of
IPS: Can we expect the
situation to improve with time?
FB: Another accusation that
can be made against the United States is that it has created a less safe
country overall, by generating the conditions for cultural destruction, which
will be even worse in future years, due to the situation of legal insecurity.
In the days of the looting
of Baghdad, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
went so far as to say that looting "isn't something that someone allows or
doesn't allow. It's something
that happens."
Today
IPS: What impact has there
been on the
FB: One of its reactions was
to rejoin UNESCO, which the
Experts at the U.S. State
and Defense Departments are trying to mitigate the damages.
IPS: How significant are the
losses?
FB: The Lady of Warka may be worth $100-$150 million. A Sumerian cuneiform
tablet or an Assyrian stela can fetch $57,000 at the
border.
Some Iraqis have been
purchasing books at used-book markets in
But the damage is incalculable.
In the Baghdad National Library, around one million books were burnt, including
early editions of Arabian Nights, mathematical treatises by Omar Khayyam, and tracts by philosophers Avicena
and Averroes.
IPS: Thousands of relics were
also lost from the
FB: The initial reports
spoke of 170,000 objects, but 25 major artifacts as well as 14,000 less
important ones actually disappeared. An amnesty for the looters led to the
recovery of around 3,500, according to the
But besides the national
museum and library, the al-Awqaf library, which held
over 5,000 Islamic manuscripts, university libraries, and the library of Bayt al-Hikma also suffered. At
least 10 million documents have been lost in
[Báez
has said his research into the destruction of libraries and archives was first
motivated by his painful childhood memories of a flash flood that wiped away
the library in his hometown, San Félix in southeastern
His research culminated in
A Universal History of the Destruction of Books,
which documents the
catastrophic loss of books during wars, like the Library of Alexandria, which
burnt down in 48 BC, or the burning of millions of books by the Nazis.]
IPS: Do you believe military
forces have been the worst enemy of books?
FB: No, actually I don't. I
believe intellectuals are the worst enemies. Intellectuals have burnt books in
the name of the Bible or the Koran. Vladimir Nabokov
[1899-1977] burnt El Quixote in front of his students. Destroyers like
Adolph Hitler or Slobodan Milosevic were bibliophiles. Saddam Hussein himself,
an archaeologist and philologist, published three novels. Joseph Goebbels, the genius of Nazi propaganda, was a philologist.
And many of those who have
led the
(Inter Press Service)