Iraq's looted heritage makes a steady - if slow - comeback

"The best thing would have been to move those collections to nearby mosques," he says, "but there was a reason for choosing that ministry: It was a fortress of support of the Baathist regime and housed officials" from Mr. Hussein's intelligence forces.

Eskander says the move meant the books and archives in that basement survived the burning and looting. But about two months after Baghdad's fall, he says, "someone entered the basement, took what they wanted, and opened the water taps."

The objective, some speculate, was to obliterate the Republican Guards' archives, which were among the documents. But about 40 percent of Iraq's archives from the Ottoman Empire, along with rare books and manuscripts, were also destroyed.

The threatened total loss of documents prompted swift action from the US military, Eskander says. When it was determined that the best response would be to freeze the soaked documents for later restoration, officials quickly came up with $70,000 to purchase special freezers.

Still, Eskander barely hides his disappointment in other US institutions as he tours the library's gutted shell. Reaching a collection of vacuum cleaners, he says, "This is what the Library of Congress came up with to help us out - and then they wanted pictures of them in use, like they thought we were going to steal them for personal benefit."

Eskander says the US has committed to placing several library employees in archival restoration programs in the US - but as yet has refused to issue them visas.

The US official says "fears of terrorism" are holding up the visa process in general and not just for Iraqis. But, he adds, "we will get the library those visas" - if they wait long enough. Meanwhile, Eskander says he is pursuing restoration programs in European countries.

The picture is less mixed at the national museum, in part because the museum safeguarded most of its best pieces - and because the museum's funding picture is brighter than the library's.

"In general there is less support for libraries than the big museums, though we're trying to change that," says a senior cultural consultant for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Organization. "But people like a Rembrandt better than an old manuscript."

The library is slated for a new building in a planned cultural complex across from its present gutted building, but the museum plans to redo its exhibits while keeping its old shell.

"The museum is about 40 years old, and the whole approach to museums has changed in that time," says Abdul Aziz Hameed, chairman of the Board of Antiquities and Heritage that oversees the museum. "When we open again, we want it to be as something Iraqis are proud of and the world is drawn to."

Mr. Hameed's cheeriness derives in part from the fact that losses here were much less than they might have been. "We anticipated things would not go well in the war, so we moved almost everything out," he says. As a result, only 39 pieces of "great value" were stolen - and half of those have been recovered.

In all, about 15,000 objects (from small jewelry pieces to ancient seals) were stolen, but about 4,000 of those were recovered, Hameed says, while another 4,000 are "on their way back" - from places like Amman and Paris and New York's Kennedy Airport, where officials have confiscated more than 600 pieces.

Museum director Donny George, says that while criticism of the Americans' initial indifference to the cultural institutions may be warranted, he'd rather focus on the international cooperation he now sees at work. For example, Japan has committed to providing state-of-the art display cases.

"One of our prized pieces, the base of a bronze statue unearthed in a Kurdish village, was stolen during the looting, but thanks to a group of Iraqi police and US military police working together, we got it back," he says. "We want to be a world-class museum, and that's an example of the kind of cooperation we will need to make that dream happen."

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