The day of the jackals

The Iraqi information minister, Said al-Sahaf, was still telling Western journalists that the treacherous infidel jackals of the US army had, in fact, killed themselves by swallowing poison, at the time the first looting of antiquities in Baghdad took place.

For some Iraqis, clearly, it was not enough to celebrate liberation from Saddam’s cruel and iniquitous yoke simply by throwing garlands of flowers at advancing US marines. Far better, far more impressive, was the idea of heading straight for the Iraqi National Museum in downtown Baghdad with a pick-axe handle and a crowbar and a Kalashnikov or two.

Once there, this well-organised criminal gang reportedly threatened the museum staff with their guns and demanded access to the vaults where the important stuff was being stored for the duration of the war. They then ransacked the place and rapidly made off to God knows where with their fabulous bits of very old rock. Afterwards, the thugs and chancers and kids came in and smashed the museum up a bit more. And then, later – much later – the US soldiers arrived and everybody agreed that it was a terrible thing that had taken place, and Colin Powell swore that all the stuff would be bought back by the US government, somehow, if they can find it, which is dubious, because they’ve found nothing else of interest in Iraq except for Saddam’s cousin.

Everybody should have been well prepared, really. The various Iraqi museums have been looted countless times since the last Gulf war, and an estimated 4,000 objects have gone missing, presumably for good. Nobody, however, seems to have been very well prepared this time around.

According to one of the museum’s archaeologists, Raeed Abdul Reda, who greeted the world’s media in tears, the robbers made off with some 80 per cent of the institution’s most cherished possessions: jewellery and gold and 100,000-year-old stone tools and sculptures and carvings, ivory furniture, tilework, textiles and coins.