Looting in Iraq
By
Naguib Mahfouz
The looting that has been taking place in Baghdad and in some other Iraqi cities owes less to the Iraqi people's failure to act honourably than to the situation in which their invaders have put them. Such incidents are inevitable when the security apparatus that keeps society together breaks down. You'll recall that chaos reigned when there was a major power cut in New York City. To imagine that the Iraqi people are to blame is to be naïve and absurdly unjust.
The Iraqi people, after all, have a long and noble history. They are eminently cultured and civilised. I imagine, in fact, that they must have been the first to be upset by what's happening to public property -- not to mention that such plunder is occurring under the watchful eyes of US and British forces.
That Mosul University should be broken into and fires should reach its library and Baghdad Museum be plundered are all extremely disheartening occurrences. The heritage housed in Iraq belongs to all humanity, and treating it in such a way is a very different matter from robbing the houses of Ba'ath Party leaders as Americans and Britons look on. The Geneva Conventions clearly stipulate that maintaining order is the responsibility of invading forces, yet the invaders on the present occasion failed to react until looters reached the Ministry of Petroleum, letting all the other ministries be plundered. Yet, a single pot from among those destroyed in the museum is far more valuable than any amount of petroleum.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
