Chronicle of Higher Education

Thursday, December 7, 2006

Iraq's National Library and Archive, Caught on the Front Line of Sectarian Fighting, Is Closed
By BURTON BOLLAG

After months of determined efforts to keep going amid Iraq's deepening violence and chaos, the National Library and Archive, the country's largest depository of books and documents, has closed.

Saad Bashir Eskander, the library's director-general, said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Wednesday that he had reluctantly decided to shutter the institution on November 21 after several staff members where killed and the building had increasingly come under fire.
The institution and its collections were heavily damaged when the library was twice looted and burned shortly after the American-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The national library was only one of many institutions -- including libraries, museums, universities, and hospitals -- that were plundered in the lawlessness that followed the invasion.

But after being gradually repaired, the National Library and Archive, which is known as the NLA, had become a haven for students and scholars in Baghdad, the capital.
The library, on Rashid Street, is a modern three-story structure with four wings built around a central courtyard. Unfortunately for the institution, it is located on the front line of battles between Shiite and Sunni militias, which have escalated in recent months.
"On many occasions, the NLA was hit directly," Mr. Eskander wrote on Wednesday. "Windows were smashed. My staff are naturally frightened."

Three staff members have been "murdered," he said, as have three drivers. The library has devoted a significant portion of its meager budget to providing buses to carry its staff -- which numbered 230 last year -- safely to and from the institution. Mr. Eskander added that 50 staff members had been forced to flee their homes because of the sectarian violence or death threats.

The director had wanted to reopen the library last Sunday, but then reconsidered, he wrote in an e-mail message to Jeffrey B. Spurr, a librarian at Harvard University who has helped organize training programs for Iraqi librarians in neighboring Middle East countries.

"Today, Sunday Dec. 3, I have decided not to reopen the library and the archive," Mr. Eskander wrote to Mr. Spurr. "As soon as I arrived to my office, a bomb exploded in the opposite building. We have not received any instruction from either the government or from our minister," he said, referring to the minister of culture. "It is really chaos."
Mr. Eskander, who has been director-general since December 2003 and is credited with working diligently to rebuild and modernize the battered institution, says the library's 30 guards have been unable to provide much protection. "Four months ago," he wrote in his message to The Chronicle, "armed men opened fire on our guards at night. My guards contacted the Ministry of Interior, asking for its help. The answer they received was: 'Are the attackers Shiites or Sunnis? If they are Shiites, do not worry -- they will not hurt you. If the attackers are Sunnis, please resist them.'"
Iraq's armed forces, and its interior ministry, are controlled by Shiites.

"I reported the incident to our minister of culture, who in turn reported it to the minister of interior," continued Mr. Eskander. "Nothing happened."

Mr. Eskander said that preserving the library is crucial to Iraq's future. "If Iraq becomes a stable country," he wrote, the institution "can play a constructive role in the transition process to democracy. For example, we can provide ... historically invaluable documents, records, and books to our readers without censorship."

The library has large archives and manuscript collections, from as far back as the conquest of Iraq by Süleyman the Magnificent in 1535, near the beginning of the Turkish Ottoman period. The collections were seriously damaged in the looting of 2003.

Yet experts who have been involved with international efforts to rescue Iraq's cultural heritage viewed the fate of the national library, more than three years after the toppling of the government of Saddam Hussein, with much pessimism.

"The forces of intolerance are thriving, and those institutions and persons representing a progressive and hopeful future for Iraq are under assault and in retreat," wrote Mr. Spurr, the Harvard librarian, in an e-mail.
René Teijgeler, an anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam who served as a senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture from July 2004 to March 2005, said many of the museums, libraries, and monuments that were rebuilt over the last three years have again been suffering damage as the country spirals into civil war.

"Compared to 2003, when the whole world was concerned about preserving Iraq's cultural heritage," he said, "it's even worse now. It's all going down the drain."

Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education