WASHINGTON: As Washington prepares to go to war against Baghdad, US defence officials — mindful of the widespread devastation that a military campaign would inflict — are looking for ways to preserve and protect Iraq’s priceless antiquities and archeological treasures.

Pentagon officials, who have long endeavoured to limit civilian casualties in military engagements, are presented with an additional concern in the impending conflict with Iraq, as they try to minimize the potential damage to a treasure trove of irreplaceable religious and cultural artifacts in Iraq that have come to be seen as part of the world’s cultural heritage.

The first task however, is determining where these treasures are, US officials say. There are roughly some 10,000 archeological sites throughout the area, according to experts, the oldest of which date back to 5000 BCE and the vast majority of which are unexplored.

Uppermost in the concerns of US officials are archeological sites located in and near the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, identified in the bible as the home of Prophet Abraham and deemed by some scholars to be the cradle of civilization.

Also of interest is Nineveh, the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire, located in what is now northern Iraq. Both locales are believed to hold substantial undiscovered antiquities.

Washington has enlisted a team of experts knowledgeable about the region who will catalogue information about historical and archeological sites scattered across Iraqi territory, and who have agreed to pass that information to the Pentagon.

Leading the effort is McGuire Gibson, an archeologist from the University of Chicago who has made frequent expeditions to Iraq over the past decade. Working with him is Charles Butterworth, a professor at the University of Maryland.

“They contacted us because they recognize our expertise in this field,” said Butterfield, who qualified Iraq’s treasures as being of “incalculable historical value.”

The effort is massive in scope. It involves a detailed review of existing archeological surveys — some of which date back to the 19th century — and in some instances even cross referencing maps of ancient Mesopotamia against those of modern Iraq.

Gibson and Butterworth, who are to be aided by about 40 academics in the task of locating and charting Iraq’s historical sites, have a longstanding interest in the antiquities of the region. The duo had hoped years ago to open a historical research center in Iraq, but that effort had to be abandoned because of the 1991 Gulf War.

“The work is indispensable,” Butterfield said. “The plotting of these sites was done by the Iraqis a long time ago, and is not precise enough.”

The possibility that war could lead to the destruction of even a small percentage of Iraq’s historical treasures has raised the concern of scholars, curators and archeologists from around the world.

Ashton Hawkins, president of the American Council for Cultural Policy and Maxwell Anderson, president of the American Association of Art Museum Directors, said recently that it is not just the Iraqis who will be impoverished should an errant missile strike one of the sites.

“What they contain is not merely the patrimony of one small nation but that of much of the modern world, including the United States,” they wrote in an opinion piece published recently in the US press.

Even artifacts safeguarded at the Museum of Baghdad are not fully out of harm’s way, according to Butterworth.

He warned that a nearby television station likely would be a prime target of US missiles, and worried that a bomb might go off course, laying waste to the museum and its precious exhibits.

Josh Keller, a military expert with the Federation of American Scientists said the risk of an errant missile striking an Iraqi museum or cultural site is greatly diminished in this era of “smart bomb” technology, which allows the US military to mark its target with pinpoint accuracy.

He cautioned, however, that such a system is not foolproof.

“It is difficult to mark the area electronically. It has to be done by the intelligence,” Keller said, adding that “it’s almost impossible to mark every area.”—AFP