Looters pillaging Iraq’s vast ‘sea of antiquities’

James Janega, Chicago Tribune (MCT)

Four years after the looting of the Iraqi National Museum during the fall of Baghdad, frustrated antiquities experts say untold thousands of Mesopotamian artifacts have been stolen from other vulnerable historical sites across the nation. Though the museum is now safe - its doors bricked shut and collections entombed behind welded cellar doors - the country’s 12,000 archeological sites are mostly unprotected and the Iraqi government is hard put to stop their plunder. The longtime former director of the state board of antiquities fled to the United States last August after receiving a death threat. Car bombings and other violence mean the guards who would look after remote sites are often unable to get there...

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