Statues, Vases and 120 mm Rounds - Wikileaks documents tell harrowing stories of Iraq's antiquities

On Friday wikileaks posted the “largest classified military leak in history,” nearly 400,000 documents that were dated from May 2004 to March 2009.

Each of these postings is a “SIGACT” – a document detailing a specific action in the war. Brief and loaded with military jargon these reports can be a bit intimidating. Some of the details were blanked out by wikileaks after the Pentagon protested that they posed a risk to security operations.

I went through the reports with an eye to what they can tell us about how the war affected Iraq’s antiquities. The reports related to artefacts and ruins tend to be quite brief - the details are often lacking, blanked out or obscured by complex military jargon. However they do tell some interesting stories. 

Antiquities guards help remove 120 mm mortar round

The documents indicate that the Iraqis took great risks to protect their past.

On November 2, 2008 officers from Iraq's “Antiquities Protection” service participated in a dangerous operation in Karbala. Working with the “Establishment Protection” service, they "found and cleared" a weapons cache containing an astounding amount of firepower.

It had sixteen 60 mm mortar rounds, 15 containers of machine gun rounds, a 120 mm mortar round, three [blanked out] propelling charges and a 122 mm [blanked out] round - that's the caliber of weapon used to destroy battle tanks.

Why antiquities officers were involved in this operation is not known, the report lists only the services involved and what weapons were found. Presumably this cache was discovered near an ancient site.

Can you imagine a parks officer or a museum guard in the UK or Canada being called in to help with something like this? This is an activity that would make even the most seasoned SWAT team uneasy.

A “documentary” crew with 36 washer timers?

Perhaps the strangest story is that of a “documentary” crew, with an American civilian, that was detained after being found with “36x washer timer devices.” They were stopped on May 17, 2005, during the peak of the conflict.

They “claimed to be producing a documentary on ancient [blanked out],” the report says. “The US civilian had an [blanked out] passport an [blanked out] passport, a [blanked out] drivers license and numerous credit cards.”

This ended badly “all 3x were taken to FOB [forward operating base – exact name blanked out] for tactical exploitation by THT [blanked out] INJ/damage.”

No, I don’t understand what that last part means, but it does not sound good.

Antiquities and hand grenades

Another example of the risks the Iraqis took is seen in an operation that happened on October 28, 2004, in the southern part of Nasiriyah. Local police assisted in a mission whose aim [according to an American commander] was “to oppose and repress the illegal trade of archaeological stolen finds in [blanked out] province.”

The team was successful “As result of the op. several vases, statues and tools dated [blanked out] BC. All finds were given to archaeological authority of [blanked out],” the report says.

But that wasn’t all they came across – they confiscated an enormous array of weaponry consisting of multiple hand grenades, AK-47 rifles, air rifles, stem rifles, pattern rifles and weapons simply labelled “automatic rifles” – their precise designation apparently not being known. They also found plenty of ammunition to go along with the weapons.  

A missile left in ancient ruins

One of the documents reveals that on February 19, 2004 an entire missile was found at an archaeological site. The type of missile and the name of the ruins are not given. An American commander sent a team to investigate.

“They confirmed that there was a missile discarded near the ruins of ancient [blanked out] the missile was assessed as safe to transport, and transported back to FOB [forward operating base – name blanked out] for detonation.

We can only speculate as to what kind of "missile" this was. The SCUD missiles used by Saddam Hussein are quite famous and are known for their mobility. It's possible that one of them was hidden at an ancient site for safekeeping or disposal.    

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Walking around with 31 artefacts

There are many accounts of looted antiquities in these papers – most of them mentioned in passing, with little detail.

On June 3, 2005 a team went on a raid in Baghdad. Their goal was to “kill or detain” members of a blanked out group. They ended up capturing five people and found that they had “money making machines,” stolen [blanked out] devices and 31 artefacts. The artefacts turned out to be “stolen from the Baghdad Museum,” wrote the team commander.

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Owen Jarus (follow me: e-mail or )

Last three pieces by this author:

19 New Objects from King Tutankhamun's Tomb Discovered in New York | 'Unique' astronomical object reveals Ancient Egyptians kept close tabs on the Big Dipper | King Tut suffered 'massive' chest injury, new research reveals

Owen Jarus is a freelance writer based in Toronto ,Canada. He has written articles on archaeology for a variety of media outlets including The Canadian Press newswire (CP), U of T Magazine, The Mississauga News and The Guelph Mercury. Education: BA from the University of Toronto in History, Geography and Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations.