Editorial: Iraq anarchy should have been foreseen

If the United States is going to reserve the right to topple Governments wherever it believes its security might be threatened, it must quickly accept an obligation to restore order in the invaded country. The breakdown of law and order in Iraq over the past few days has been a disgrace to American military planning. The widespread looting from the first moments of freedom last Wednesday plainly took the military by surprise, just as it did the war correspondents who had been travelling with the troops. It was as though the forces of liberation imagined they were marching into a rich, settled economy where people would greet them with gratitude then go about their business.

Yet there are two things the US knew about Iraq before it went in: it knew the people were impoverished by a decade of sanctions; and that Iraq was a ruthless police state. Released from the regime's fearful grip, the population was always likely to go on a destructive rampage. They could be forgiven the trashing of Government buildings, although leaders of the invading army should have foreseen the damage the mob would do to the country's administrative records and institutional knowledge.

The looters could even ransack foreign embassies, the presence of which might have lent some respectability to the detested regime. But the Geneva Convention obliges an occupying power to protect embassies and United Nations offices in seized areas. The American forces appear to have made little effort to do so.

Those targets of wanton destruction, however, pale to insignificance beside the theft of treasures from the National Museum of Iraq. The loss of a reported 170,000 artefacts spells a tragedy not just for Iraq but for the world. It was in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates that recorded history began. The museum contained relics of empires and civilisations dating from 7000 years ago. That is a record of human existence spanning more than three times the period from the birth of Christ to the present.

Down through the centuries the territory now known as Iraq has been conquered and pillaged countless times but those artefacts now missing had somehow survived. Now they appear to have been confiscated by Baghdad residents bent on raiding their own sorry state as it falls to an alien power.

Some hope remains that the gold, silver and copper objects have been secretly locked away for safekeeping, but if that is so, the museum officials seem to know nothing about it. They are telling reporters that thousands of looters descended on the museum after daybreak on Friday and the thefts went on until dusk on Saturday, leaving nothing of value remaining. Officials say American forces intervened only once during those two days, for about half an hour.

The forces are, of course, still fighting a war. They have yet to put down all pockets of resistance in Baghdad and other places. But how many soldiers would it have taken to guard the national museum? A dozen perhaps? For the sake of everyone's heritage, it would seem worth it. The failure to protect the museum is surprising because by all accounts American forces were well-briefed before the war about the ancient sites and monuments they would find in Iraq and the care that must be taken not to damage them.

Perhaps nobody at the Pentagon imagined any of that heritage would be at risk from the Iraqi people, but the possibility should have been considered. If the Pentagon had made proper plans for the policing of the country, the museum would never have been exposed to these ravages. A military power that takes such pride these days in the precision of its methods of war needs now to learn the first rule of conquest: when you remove a country's source of civil order you must quickly fill the vacuum. Anarchy is not freedom.


Herald Feature: Iraq war