Thursday, December 7, 2006
Iraq’s National Library and Archive, Caught on the Front Line of
Sectarian Fighting, Is Closed
By BURTON BOLLAG
After months of determined efforts to keep going amid Iraq’s
deepening violence and chaos, the National Library and Archive, the
country’s largest depository of books and documents, has closed.


Saad Bashir Eskander, the library’s director-general, said in an e-
mail message to The Chronicle on Wednesday that he had reluctantly
decided to shutter the institution on November 21 after several
staff members where killed and the building had increasingly come
under fire.
The institution and its collections were heavily damaged when the
library was twice looted and burned shortly after the American-led
invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The national library was only one of
many institutions — including libraries, museums, universities, and
hospitals — that were plundered in the lawlessness that followed
the invasion.
But after being gradually repaired, the National Library and
Archive, which is known as the NLA, had become a haven for students
and scholars in Baghdad, the capital.
The library, on Rashid Street, is a modern three-story structure
with four wings built around a central courtyard. Unfortunately for
the institution, it is located on the front line of battles between
Shiite and Sunni militias, which have escalated in recent months.
“On many occasions, the NLA was hit directly,” Mr. Eskander wrote on
Wednesday. “Windows were smashed. My staff are naturally
frightened.”
Three staff members have been “murdered,” he said, as have three
drivers. The library has devoted a significant portion of its meager
budget to providing buses to carry its staff — which numbered 230
last year — safely to and from the institution. Mr. Eskander added
that 50 staff members had been forced to flee their homes because of
the sectarian violence or death threats.
The director had wanted to reopen the library last Sunday, but then
reconsidered, he wrote in an e-mail message to Jeffrey B. Spurr, a
librarian at Harvard University who has helped organize training
programs for Iraqi librarians in neighboring Middle East countries.
“Today, Sunday Dec. 3, I have decided not to reopen the library and
the archive,” Mr. Eskander wrote to Mr. Spurr. “As soon as I arrived
to my office, a bomb exploded in the opposite building. We have not
received any instruction from either the government or from our
minister,” he said, referring to the minister of culture. “It is
really chaos.”
Mr. Eskander, who has been director-general since December 2003 and
is credited with working diligently to rebuild and modernize the
battered institution, says the library’s 30 guards have been unable
to provide much protection. “Four months ago,” he wrote in his
message to The Chronicle, “armed men opened fire on our guards at
night. My guards contacted the Ministry of Interior, asking for its
help. The answer they received was: ‘Are the attackers Shiites or
Sunnis? If they are Shiites, do not worry — they will not hurt you.
If the attackers are Sunnis, please resist them.'”
Iraq’s armed forces, and its interior ministry, are controlled by
Shiites.
“I reported the incident to our minister of culture, who in turn
reported it to the minister of interior,” continued Mr.
Eskander. “Nothing happened.”
Mr. Eskander said that preserving the library is crucial to Iraq’s
future. “If Iraq becomes a stable country,” he wrote, the
institution “can play a constructive role in the transition process
to democracy. For example, we can provide … historically
invaluable documents, records, and books to our readers without
censorship.”
The library has large archives and manuscript collections, from as
far back as the conquest of Iraq by Süleyman the Magnificent in
1535, near the beginning of the Turkish Ottoman period. The
collections were seriously damaged in the looting of 2003.
Yet experts who have been involved with international efforts to
rescue Iraq’s cultural heritage viewed the fate of the national
library, more than three years after the toppling of the government
of Saddam Hussein, with much pessimism.
“The forces of intolerance are thriving, and those institutions and
persons representing a progressive and hopeful future for Iraq are
under assault and in retreat,” wrote Mr. Spurr, the Harvard
librarian, in an e-mail.
René Teijgeler, an anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam who
served as a senior adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture from
July 2004 to March 2005, said many of the museums, libraries, and
monuments that were rebuilt over the last three years have again
been suffering damage as the country spirals into civil war.
“Compared to 2003, when the whole world was concerned about
preserving Iraq’s cultural heritage,” he said, “it’s even worse now.
It’s all going down the drain.”
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Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education