[MSN] Lost: The Looting of Iraq's Antiquities mentions another article in the same issue of Museum News about the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield on p. 11. The article is not available online, but the text is posted below.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

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From: Cori Wegener [mailto:coriwegener at hotmail.com] 
Sent: 12 January 2007 21:03
To: msn-list at te.verweg.com
Subject: MSN-list Digest, Vol 7, Issue 10 - Lost: The Looting of Iraq's
Antiquities



Lost: The Looting of Iraq's Antiquities mentions another article in the same
issue of Museum News about the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield on p. 11.
The article is not available online, but the text is posted below.

This article was published in Museum News January/February 2007.

 To Protect and Serve

 

In May 2003, Minneapolis Institute of Art Assistant Curator Corine Wegener
stepped off a U.S. Air Force cargo plane and into the sweltering heat of a
Baghdad summer.  One month earlier, the Iraq Museum, home to some of the
most significant artifacts in the history of archeology, had been looted.

 

Prior to her arrival, Wegener, also a major in the U.S. Army Reserve,
expected to serve as an advance scout for the teams of curators,
conservators, and other specialists she anticipated would soon arrive to
help rebuild the museum's systems and conserve its objects.  Reality proved
otherwise.  "I thought some group of international crisis response
conservators would parachute in," Wegener recalls ruefully.  "Instead the
few conservators who made it into the country . . . were only able to stay
for a day or two."  During Wegener's 10 months working with the Iraq Museum,
no organized team of U.S. cultural heritage professionals ever arrived for
extended relief work.

 

The problem was not a shortage of U.S. museum professionals willing to go,
according to AAM's Helen Wechsler, then director of International Programs.
"Within a few weeks of the fall of Baghdad we had a list of 18 highly
qualified people willing to travel to Iraq," says Wechsler.  "The trouble
was getting them in."  Wegener understands why it was difficult for the
Pentagon to take up ad-hoc offers of assistance from organizations like AAM.
"The U.S. military likes to deal with organizations that have a concrete
track record of being able to both provide assistance and support themselves
logistically," she notes.  "In an emergency situation, the military doesn't
need more problems; they need solutions."

 

After returning to the United States and retiring from the Army, Wegener
looked for a way to prevent the military-civilian disconnect she witnessed
in Iraq from recurring.  A relatively young international organization, the
International Committee of the Blue Shield, caught her attention.  "The Blue
Shield symbol is the cultural equivalent of the Red Cross," Wegener
explains.  Under the 1954 Hague Convention, the shield was used to mark
protected monuments and sites.  It is also the name of an international
committee set up in 1996 to respond to armed conflicts that may threaten
cultural property.

 

As a military specialist, Wegener immediately saw the possibilities.
Non-governmental organizations like the International Red Cross or Doctors
Without Borders "provide a civilian partner the military can turn to with a
single phone call," she said.  "A U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield can do
the same for cultural heritage issues."

 

Finding that no U.S. committee of the Blue Shield had ever been established,
Wegener created one.  She gathered support from the U.S. wings of the
International Council of Museums (ICOM), International Federation of Library
Associations, International Council on Archives, International Council on
Monuments and Sites and Co-ordinating  Council of Audiovisual Archives
Associations.  "Because I'm a museum person I turned first to my own
professional associations, AAM and AAM/ICOM, and they were the first to come
on board," she said.

 

The U.S. Committee has already begun practical work in advance of receiving
these official recognitions.  Soon after returning from Iraq, Wegener
collaborated with Roxanne Merritt, the civilian director of the John F.
Kennedy Special Warfare Museum at Fort Bragg, N.C., on the first major
revision since 1983 to the Army's manual on protecting monuments, arts and
archives.  "The manual provides guidance to soldiers who, in the course of
their duties, are going to be responsible for cultural property or historic
sites damaged by both natural and man-made disaster," Merritt explains.  "It
gives practical guidance on actions they should or should not take until
professionals arrive."

 

Wegener notes that involving civilian experts was crucial to the manual's
development.  "We had advice from civilian professionals like Barbara
Roberts and Jane Hutchinson, who supplied basic, common-sense information on
field conservation, especially what not to do - 'first do no harm.'"  The
John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School is currently working on a
CD-ROM and Web materials to support the printed training aid.

 

Next year, the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield will begin a pilot program
to train U.S. military civil affairs units in recognizing cultural property
and emergency response to cultural property at risk.  Training troops to
recognize archaeological sites would be a significant step forward, notes
John Russell, a professor of art history and archaeology at the
Massachusetts College of Art and former senior advisor to the Iraqi Ministry
of Culture under the Coalition Provisional Authority, the transitional
government following the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  Untrained commanders have
sometimes placed military installations directly on top of archaeological
sites in Iraq, said Russell, also a Blue Shield board member.  "Field
commanders usually want to do the right thing with respect to heritage but
lack the necessary information.  Greater heritage awareness . . . should
allow them to make informed choices and prevent needless destruction."  For
more information about the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, visit
<http://www.uscbs.org/> www.uscbs.org - Erik Ledbetter, senior manager of
AAM's international programs