Director of Baghdad museum goes into exile

Sandy English

Donny George, the former director of the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad and a leading conservator of Iraqi antiquities, has resigned as president of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and left Baghdad for Syria. In an interview with the British television station Channel 4, he said his reasons for departure were threats to his family and the impossibility of working with the current government. George has been an important figure in Iraqi archaeology for the last 30 years. He served as one of the officials of the National Museum under the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein when he supervised Iraq’s archaeological digs as well as the collection and study of archaeological artifacts. During the UN-sponsored sanctions after 1991, he maintained international connections with archaeologists and historians (...) George criticized the American-sponsored government as a whole, which he said does not really exist outside of the Green Zone in Baghdad...

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