BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq’s restored National Museum was formally dedicated on Monday, nearly six years after looters carried away priceless antiquities and treasures in the chaos following the U.S.-led invasion.
“It was a dark age that Iraq passed through,” said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at a ceremony inside the museum. “This spot of civilization has had its share of destruction.”
The event came on the eve of the museum’s full public opening Tuesday, which officials have touted as another milestone in Baghdad’s slow return to stability after years of bloodshed.
Abdul-Zahrah al-Talqani, media director of Iraq’s office of tourism and archaeology affairs, said the museum has a hall devoted to antiquities that were looted but later returned or recovered.
“We have ended the black wind (of violence) and have started the reconstruction process,” al-Maliki told hundreds of officials and guardians of Iraq’s rich cultural heritage.
The museum — once one of the world’s leading collections of artifacts spanning the Stone Age, biblical era and the heights of Islamic culture — was nearly gutted in the mayhem after the fall of Saddam Hussein. U.S. troops, the sole power in the city at the time, were intensely criticized for not protecting the museum’s collection.
Up to 7,000 pieces are still missing, including about 40 to 50 considered to be of great historical importance, according to the U.N. cultural body UNESCO.
Although violence in Iraq is sharply down, bombings still strike in Baghdad and elsewhere.
A roadside bombing in central Baghdad on Monday killed at least two civilians and wounded six, said police and hospital officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to release the information.
The attack apparently was aimed at a police patrol, but missed its target on a busy street in central Baghdad.
Around the northern city of Mosul — considered the last urban stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq — more than 100 suspected insurgents and others have been arrested as part of an Iraq-led offensive launched last week, said Brig. Gen. Saeed Ahmed al-Jibouri.
Al-Jibouri described the crackdowns as “more of an intelligence war than a military one” as commandos stage targeted raids seeking suspects on most-wanted lists.
Six months ago it was unthinkable but now curators and historians alike celebrate as most of the Iraqi national museum’s original artefacts go back on displayToday the shelled, looted, bullet scarred and blockaded national museum of Iraq opens its doors again, with most of its greatest treasures safe and on display once more.
It is a remarkable feat. Even six months ago, when the antiquities department began to bring in small groups of specialists and journalists to see what had once been one of the world’s greatest and most famous collections, whole galleries were still wrapped up in plastic sheeting and the security situation was judged too precarious even to speculate on an opening date.
After the invasion of Iraq, the museum’s shuttered facade, punched by a tank shell, became a symbol of the destruction in war to museum curators and archaeologists around the world. .
In the security meltdown that was Baghdad, the building was judged too dangerous even for its own surviving staff, and its outspoken former director, Donny George, fled into exile after he found a paper wrapped bullet lying at the doorstep of his home — a potent death threat against his family.
During the war the building was left defenceless and for three days it was ransacked as an American tank stood by useless because its crew had no orders to intervene.
Today, many galleries are still closed and hundreds of objects are still undergoing delicate conservation work – including some of the exquisitely carved Nimrud ivories, thought safe from the bombs in a bank vault but damaged by sewage-contaminated flooding as water pumps failed. Although visitors are unlikely to notice, thousands of objects are still missing and unlikely ever to be recovered.
In the joyful headlines over the recovery of iconic pieces such as the 5,500-year-old Warka Mask, a serenely enigmatic alabaster head smiling faintly at the absurdities of human folly, it was almost overlooked that thousands of small metal and clay pieces, inscribed tablets and amulets, seal cylinders, easy to smuggle, hard to trace, of little commercial value but priceless to historians, have almost certainly gone for ever.
The Warka Mask was recovered by the Americans after a tip-off, wrapped in rags and buried in farmland outside Baghdad. It is believed to have changed hands several times after it was stolen. The Warka Vase, a magnificently carved tall alabaster vase from the same period, snapped off at the base to steal it from its gallery, came back to the museum in pieces, wrapped in a blanket, in the boot of a car.
Many pieces were voluntarily returned by people who claimed to have held them for safe keeping. That may have been true in some cases but archaeologists believe that many were simply so famous they could neither be sold nor displayed.
That is not true of the little scraps of history, less beautiful but more precious to the experts: the poems and spells, star charts and family histories, shopping lists and tax bills inscribed on scruffy little lozenges of mudbrick or cough drop sized cylinder seals, which seeped out through Iraq’s borders into the world’s antiquities markets.
“I’m not aware of any major recovery of these pieces,” said Irving Finkel, curator of the current exhibition on Ancient Babylon at the British Museum.
“I’m not holding my breath for one.”
Finkel can read Babylonian cuneiform, and the treasures in his exhibition include a broken tablet recording Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem in 597BC, and a cylinder seal from 1300 BC, illustrating a ziggurat, almost certainly the origin of that wonder of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
There must be answers to gaps in the story of his exhibition in the thefts from the Baghdad museum — including objects never even catalogued, never mind published.
But today curators such as Finkel are celebrating. The museum is open. Tomorrow the work of patchworking together lost history resumes.
The museum that was looted after the US invations will open for a few hours Monday to highlight recovered pieces.
By Jane Arraf | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
BAGHDAD
Iraq Museum director Amira Edan, swamped by a pile of papers on her desk, sighs as she tries to explain the political firestorm swirling around the opening of the Iraq Museum, which became a symbol of the postinvasion looting that devastated Baghdad.
Over the past two weeks, the Ministry of Tourism had declared it would reopen soon. The Ministry of Culture had said it wouldn’t. During the ministerial feud, experts proclaimed that it was still to dangerous and the museum itself wasn’t prepared for the public.
In the end, there was a compromise: The museum will reopen Monday for the first time in six years. But only eight of the museum’s 26 galleries will be accessible, and for only a few hours, to highlight stolen pieces that have been recovered – some from as far away as Peru.
Even though this has turned into a gala affair – a banner nearby heralds the “reinauguration” of the museum by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – Ms. Edan, caught in the middle of the political dispute, is keen to give the event a much more modest description. “I think we can call it an exhibition,” says the former head of the state board of antiquities.
Six years ago next month, in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, looters swarmed Iraq’s unprotected institutions. Outside the Iraq Museum – which tells the continuous story of 11,000 years of world civilization – US solders unprepared for the looting stood by in tanks without stopping it.
The resulting theft of more than 15,000 pieces from the museum sparked an international outcry and accusations of “cultural genocide.”
Some of the 5,000 pieces that have either been voluntarily returned or seized will be highlighted in the exhibition attended by Mr. Maliki and senior Iraqi, US, and foreign officials but not the Iraqi public. Many of the pieces were returned with the help of the United States, which is eager to turn the page on this particular footnote of Mesopotamian history.
Notably absent will be the heart of the collection – including gold jewelry and ceremonial objects from the royal graves of Ur and Nimrud, which rival the treasures of King Tut’s tomb.
“The collections of the Iraq Museum itself are in boxes in a safe place. We cannot show anything from that collection,” says Edan. Officials will have to be content with looking at photos.
The last time the museum was opened with such fanfare was July 2003, when US administrator Paul Bremer peered into glass cases containing some of those priceless gold treasures. The museum was hastily closed just a few hours later in the midst of mortars and gunfire and hasn’t reopened since.
“The opening of a museum is more than putting items in the showcases,” says Edan. “It means lighting, it means having security control systems, alarms. But we received the order and we are doing our best…. We still do not know what we are going to do after the opening.” She said, though, that she believed the controversy might make the Ministry of Tourism hesitate next time before ordering the opening of more galleries.
Opening or exhibition, museum staff have been working seven days a week to prepare for it.
On the weekend, when it is almost unheard-of for civil servants to be at work, the museum galleries were buzzing with workmen and archaeologists in overalls filling in for cleaning staff.
A maintenance man repainted the tan metal doors and gardeners watered the new flowers, which are planted near where bunkers protected the Iraqi gunmen who briefly fought US troops as they invaded Baghdad.
New Italian lighting cast a polished glow over the reliefs of Khorsabad lining the walls of the Assyrian gallery. But there are cracks in the ceiling and the museum still lacks security systems, fire alarms, and even an air-conditioning system. The US has pledged $14 million to help restore the museum but it will take much more, and Iraq’s own funds are tied up in budget problems and bureaucracy.
What it lacks in funds, it makes up for in the passion of its staff, who treat the museum like a beloved family member.
“We’ve all studied together and worked together for years,” says cuneiform expert Mahdi Rahim, who repaired and sold air conditioners to support himself as an archaeologist during the lean years of sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s.
On Saturday, Haji Abed Atiya al-Chameri, an elderly man in a long blue work coat and white head scarf, brought glasses of tea to Edan, the director. Earlier, he had been pushing a floor cleaner, showing up for work every day as he has for more than half a century – even though he retired last year and is no longer paid.
“He is the history of the museum – he just cannot imagine himself out of the museum,” says Edan.
Mr. Atiya knew personally all the great archaeologists of the 1940s and 1950s, including Max Mallowan, who excavated Nineveh and married Agatha Christie. “Saddam was a madman,” says the father of 11. “All those wars.”
Atiya was at the museum when it was looted in 2003. “I felt very sad,” he says. “I couldn’t stop the terrorists – they were carrying machine guns.”
CULTURAL HERITAGE IN GAZA DAMAGED AND IN GREAT DANGER
The International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) deplores the loss of human lives and the destruction that has recently taken place in the Palestinian Territories and the State of Israel, in particular in the Gaza area, and the ongoing armed conflict that threatens to disrupt a fragile ceasefire. It is also extremely concerned by the threat that the present conflict could escalate still further.
ICBS, founded in 1996 ‘to work to protect the world’s cultural heritage threatened by wars and natural disasters’, now calls on all parties to be respectful of the cultural property in the region. In making this statement, ICBS takes no position on any other issue relating to conflicts in the region.
There have been reports that two municipal libraries in Amoghazi and in Juhur-el-Deek were completely destroyed and that the libraries of the Islamic University and the Tal el-Hawa branch of the al-Aqsa University were severely damaged. Sadly we have to assume that civil records have been destroyed in the violence of the recent period.
In 1998, ten museums were registered in Gaza and on the West Bank, while this number was reduced to five in 2002, and the number of visitors had decreased dramatically. In August 2008 the first archaeological museum in Gaza was opened, privately funded and with support of the Geneva Musée d’art et d’histoire.
This private antiquities museum run by Gazan collector Jawdat Khoudary, has now been damaged. Furthermore, preliminary reports, still to be verified, of damage to cultural heritage sites, including excavated archaeological sites, are cause for alarm. .
Gaza is one of the richest crossroads of cultural history in the region, with many archaeological sites and historic buildings. The whole region has an exceptionally complex and rich cultural heritage and it is of greatest importance that all parties in the conflict take whatever precautions necessary to avoid destruction and damage to cultural heritage. The city of Gaza is thousands of years old and has been inhabited by all the important cultures in the region - Canaanite, Hebrew and/or Jewish, Greek-roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Crusader, Egyptian, Ottoman - leaving behind archaeological sites that are a dominating factor in the region. There are also many ancient mosques, churches, synagogues, a market hall, a caravanserai, the port of Anthidon, the end of the Incense route, as well as modern heritage which is also of great importance. Khan Younis is known for its well-preserved caravanserai. Rafah, Abasan al-Kabeera, Deir al-Balah and Ralia are ancient cities. The majority of destroyed buildings constitutes the vernacular heritage that reflects the history of the daily life of ordinary people.
The clearing and rebuilding process that takes place as a result of armed conflict can often be hazardous. Interventions may take place without properly recording the damages to cultural heritage. Sufficient qualified staff required for such a task is often not available, etc. When the civil administration collapses cultural heritage, such as archaeological sites, is in great danger of being looted.
While ICBS is keenly aware that there are other compelling concerns at times of armed conflict, not least the loss of human life, it wishes to stress that international humanitarian law also protects cultural property. It urges all parties concerned to be mindful of their responsibilities to respect the provisions of The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and its two Protocols, which calls on countries ‘not to take any deliberate measures which might damage directly or indirectly the cultural and natural heritage’ in the territory of other countries.
ICBS therefore calls on all parties to take the greatest possible care to protect the rich cultural heritage of the region, to refrain from using cultural property for military purposes or to shield military objectives and to take the necessary preventive measures to ensure that it is not damaged in any way during the present conflict.
Culture should be considered as a basic need and supported by International Organisations and Governments.
Gaza needs its cultural heritage to strengthen its identity and unity.
For more information please contact the Blue Shield Office
The Blue Shield is the protective emblem of the 1954 Hague Convention which is the basic international treaty formulating rules to protect cultural heritage during armed conflicts.The Blue Shield network consists of organizations dealing with museums, archives, audiovisual supports, libraries, as well as monuments and sites.
The International Committee of the Blue Shield, founded in 1996, comprises representatives of the five Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in this field
the International Council on Archives (www.ica.org),
the International Council of Museums (www.icom.museum),
the International Council on Monuments and Sites (www.icomos.org), and
the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (www.ifla.org)
the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (www.ccaaa.org)
National Blue Shield Committees have been founded in a number of countries.The Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS), recently founded in December 2008, will coordinate and strengthen international efforts to protect cultural property at risk of destruction in armed conflicts or natural disasters. The ANCBS has its headquarters in The Hague.
Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS)
BAGHDAD — Great museums engender great debate, and there is no exception for Iraq. Officials here are at odds over the reopening of Iraq’s National Museum, the renowned institution that was pillaged after the American invasion in 2003 and has been closed to the public ever since.
Last week, Iraq’s state minister for tourism and antiquities announced that next Monday the museum would reopen, an eagerly anticipated event seen as a milestone in the country’s recovery. In a statement on Sunday, though, the Culture Ministry overruled the decision and put off indefinitely the chance for Iraqis to return to a museum that holds a rich collection of archaeological relics and art.
Jabir al-Jabiri, the senior deputy at the Culture Ministry, said in a telephone interview that the reopening announcement had been premature and surprised the ministry officials who have the final say.
“The museum is not qualified and organized to be opened,” he said, adding that thousands of relics in the museum’s storerooms were neither registered nor ready for public exhibition.
The museum has undergone extensive renovations since the violence in 2003, with assistance from other countries, including Italy and the United States.
Meanwhile, the repatriation of its looted treasures has continued, most recently with three objects that ended up in Peru, including a letter written on a tablet.
The returning holdings, though, appear to have overwhelmed the museum and its staff. The Culture Ministry’s statement said the museum had effectively become “a large warehouse” for unregistered items, adding that allowing the public to visit could jeopardize “priceless relics.” The ministry cited concerns about security around the perimeter of the museum, which is located in central Baghdad not far from the Green Zone.
But officials of the Tourism Ministry, which is under the financial and administrative oversight of the Culture Ministry, remained unmoved.
In a statement issued later on Sunday, Baha al-Mayahi, an adviser at the ministry, said he was surprised by Mr. Jabiri’s comments and reiterated that all efforts were being made to reopen next Monday. He said invitations had already been sent out to government and foreign officials.
Reached in the evening, Mr. Jabiri was not backing down either, calling the reopening announcement an “illegal action” that was outside the Tourism Ministry’s authority.
“We are going to use all legal means to close the doors of the museum to preserve our historical heritage,” Mr. Jabiri said, attributing the chaos to “parties that have no experience in government.”
The discord underscores the conflicting aims of the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. It has called the reopening of the museum, along with the preservation of archaeological sites, a high priority. But hopes of reviving a cultural institution and tourism have been tempered by declining resources and the danger that is still palpable in Baghdad, despite a significant drop in violence in the past year.
Blast in Sadr City Kills 2
BAGHDAD — Two people were killed and 20 wounded Sunday when a bomb exploded in Sadr City, a poor Shiite neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said.
The bomb had been placed between two blast walls. It detonated when traffic was passing, and most of the casualties were shoppers at a nearby market.
Another bomb exploded in an adjacent neighborhood, wounding two people.
In the northern city of Mosul, which has still been wracked by violence while much of the rest of Iraq has calmed, a civilian and an Iraqi soldier were killed in separate attacks.
And in southern Iraq, an American soldier was killed by a bomb, the military said.
Campbell Robertson, Mohamed Hussein and Sahar S. Gabriel contributed reporting.
On 22 January, the International Committee of the Blue Shield appointed Julien ANFRUNS, the Director General of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), as its new President. Mr Anfruns takes over from Joan VAN ALBADA, the former Secretary General of the International Council on Archives (ICA).
Safeguarding cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict or natural disasters
Mr ANFRUNS’ main task will be to co-ordinate the measures implemented to protect cultural property by the five international organizations that make up the International Committee of the Blue Shield in the areas of archives, libraries, audiovisual archives, museums, monuments and sites. He will be responsible for guaranteeing the Committee’s independence and steering its international policy.
In December 2008, the ICBS network acquired a new operating arm, the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS). ANCBS is a network of experts in disaster risk management from all areas of heritage. Its remit is to co-ordinate the activities of the National Committees, particularly in emergency situations, and facilitate the creation of new Committees. It is chaired by Karl VON HABSBURG.
International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS)
The International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS) was founded in June 1996 to promote the protection of cultural heritage, as defined in the Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict of 1954. It was set up by four international heritage organizations representing the interests of archives, museums, libraries, monuments and sites: the International Council on Archives (ICA); the International Council of Museums (ICOM); the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS); and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). They were joined by the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA) in 2005. The ICBS symbol is the Blue Shield used to mark buildings to give them protection from attack in the event of armed conflict.
History in stone: Little money is devoted to upkeep of ancient panels depicting the conquests of King Asurnasirpal II, who ruled a vast empire from his palace at Nimrud. Jane Arraf
At Nimrud, decay is accelerating for 3,000 years of history.
By Jane Arraf | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 11, 2009 edition
Nimrud, Iraq - The carved stone reliefs lined the entrance to a great palace, a testament to one of the most powerful kings the world has known. The ancient works of art have stood for 3,000 years but for the past 20 they’ve been threatened by the lack of a corrugated steel roof.
One of the prizes of archaeology, the excavated palace of Ashurnasirpal at Nimrud, is in peril. The World Monuments Fund lists Nimrud as one of its most endangered sites.
Exposed to the elements, the reliefs are quickly deteriorating, experts say. Without basic maintenance, they will decay further and modern society will lose an important portal into the life of one of the great warrior kings and the beginnings of civilization.
Here on the banks of the Tigris River, King Ashurnasirpal II built a six-acre palace of cedar and exotic woods. The walls were lined with glazed and painted seven-foot-high stone bas reliefs of his epic battles. Inside, furniture was inlaid with the most delicate ivory carvings. When the palace was completed around 869 BC, 70,000 guests attended a feast that lasted 10 days.
Now, inside the North West Palace, dead birds lie at the feet of the mythical beings depicted on the alabaster panels. Droppings from pigeons flying in and out of the broken windows stain the seven-foot-high reliefs of King Ashurnasirpal and the winged genies that protected him. The weather has softened the sharp details of feathers carved by craftsmen 3,000 years ago, as well as the cuneiform inscriptions below them.
Outside, the soft stone of a huge, intricately carved winged bull guarding the entrance to the palace has been pockmarked by rain coming in from gaps in the makeshift metal roof and by blowing sand. Mold creeps from cracks in some of the carvings.
From 883 to 859 BC, King Ashurnasirpal ruled an empire that included Iraq, lower Egypt, the Levant, and parts of Turkey and Iran.
Today, only the wind whistles through what’s left of his excavated palace. Pigeons roost from the rotting timbers while guards who have no fuel for their vehicles – or even flashlights – patrol an archaeological treasure that few people visit. Outside, one of the guards sits on a mattress laid out next to a mud brick hut with broken windows.
“It’s a place that’s just been neglected,” says the Iraqi site manager. Despite improving security in the area, he says he’s afraid to give his name. “Before, there was more attention paid to it. From the occupation to date, there has been no renovation at all – there’s no money.”
For nearly 20 years, there’s been little money for upkeep. Under United Nations sanctions following Iraq’s 1991 invasion of Kuwait, Iraq was barred from importing even rudimentary conservation materials. That’s when the site began to fall into disrepair. After the US invasion in 2003, thieves sawed off two large pieces of the reliefs.
Unlike the systematic looting at archaeological sites in the south of Iraq, the main problem here has been one of neglect.
Nimrud and other Assyrian capitals have been on the World Monuments Fund list of most endangered sites since 2002. The fund says looting, lack of conservation, and an economic crisis have placed them in jeopardy of eradication.
“My sense is they are suffering from a lack of attention more than any kind of willful destruction – what we call in the conservation business ‘demolition by neglect,’ ” says Suzanne Bott, a conservation expert with the US State Department’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul.
“The ones that have been exposed to the elements are deteriorating terribly fast. It’s not so much a willful process, because nobody wants it to happen, but it’s the state of affairs in a country where there hasn’t been so much of an emphasis on preservation,” says Ms. Bott, who has worked on getting US and UNESCO funding to fix the roof and replace broken windows in the palace.
A recent UNESCO mission has highlighted severe signs of water infiltration, erosion, and neglect at the site, including decaying limestone and marble brick carvings. The UN agency has pledged to repair one of the walls at the site in danger of collapse.
Known in the Bible as Calah, Nimrud is believed to have first been settled in 5000 BC.
At its height, 60,000 people lived in the royal city, which was surrounded by five miles of walls and contained parks and gardens. Most of the spectacular panels found in the excavated throne room in the mid-1800s were taken away to the British Museum. Smaller pieces were sold to collectors – a common custom at the time.
But the most dazzling find – unearthed in the late 1980s – is one of archaeological legend. An excavation led by Iraqi archaeologist Muzahim Mahmood came across a royal tomb the British archaeologists had missed. Crawling deep into a hidden vaulted room, he discovered one of the spectacular treasure troves of the last century – hundreds of pieces of gold jewelry and ceremonial objects for an Assyrian queen.
“The whole of Nimrud is a treasure in and of itself,” says Dr. Mahmood, who dreams of excavating more of the 95 percent of the royal capital still underground.
Sabeeh Radyi, Rashid District Council education committee chairman, treats Iraqi school children from Rashid district’s Doura community to story time as part of the commemoration of the reopening of the Doura Public Library in southern Baghdad, Jan. 21, 2009. U.S. Army photo by Maj. Dave Olson
By Army Sgt. 1st Class Brent Williams
Special to American Forces Press Service
FORWARD OPERATING BASE FALCON, Iraq, Jan. 26, 2009 – U.S. soldiers and Iraqi security forces joined local civic leaders Jan. 21 to commemorate the opening of the Doura Public Library, christening a cultural and educational landmark for the residents of southern Baghdad’s Rashid district.
The library, capable of housing about 10,000 books and more than a dozen personal computers for public use, is an indicator of Iraq’s growing emphasis on education, Zahra Hussein, media supervisor for the library, said.
Hussein, an active volunteer for schools in the area, said she hopes the library will serve as one of many educational institutions created to foster the spirit of civilization and intellectualism in Baghdad and Iraq.
“The library has been opened today with the support and all of the good efforts [of the people] in order to promote the idea of reopening public libraries in Baghdad,” she said.
Hashim Dahash, Rashid District Council deputy chairman, recalled the library’s destruction due to past violence. ”Books were scattered all over the floor,” he said.
In conjunction of the opening of the Doura Public Library, Dahash said he hopes Jan. 21 will become Rashid district’s official “Reading Day” for future generations of Iraqis.
“This [library] is considered as proof of security and stability, helping the people to return to their lives normally, especially the educational life,” he said.
The library project came about when local leaders asked Army Col. Ted Martin, commander of the 4th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, for help creating a new cultural center in Rashid district, Yaqoub al-Bakhaty, Rashid district council chairman, said. The project included a renovation of the local community building and the restoration of books and services in Doura.
“Iraq is developing every day, and this library is part of this civilization’s development as a result of security provided by the Iraqi forces supported by the Americans,” Bakhaty said. “This accomplishment is a result of neighborhood stability combined with the efforts of the Doura residents.”
Army Staff Sgt. Aja Andreu, civil affairs team leader assigned to the 404th Civil Affairs Battalion’s Company D, out of Fort Dix, N.J., served as the project manager and conducted the initial assessment for the renovation.
According to regulations, the brigade commander can use military funds only to renovate the structural parts of the building and cannot buy books or restore the educational center’s services, Andreu, who hails from North Plainfield, N.J., said.
Working with the 1st Brigade Combat Team’s embedded provincial reconstruction team, the U.S. State Department and Friends of the Library, a nongovernmental organization, Andreu hired a local Iraqi contractor to refurbish the building, acquired furniture from a local carpenter and restored a children’s room and a computer room with 15 personal computers with desktop monitors and Internet service. She also acquired a generator for the library.
Through the nongovernmental organization, they acquired the library’s educational materials for public use, Andreu said. Nearly 1,000 children books and more than 150 adult education books are on back order to complete the project.
“I would like to thank everybody who helped make this happen,” Andreu said. “It is a special day for me. This has been a very hard project, and it has taken a lot of work by both the military and the residents of Doura.”
Andreu said she hopes the library soon will become a public institution for the benefit of all Rashid’s citizens.
(Army Sgt. 1st Class Brent Williams serves in the 4th Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team public affairs office.)
