Iraqi security forces have overtaken the state library. 20 Iraqi troops “seized the building at gunpoint yesterday, threatening staff and guards.”
“The reckless actions of the Iraqi forces and the US military, who appear to condone the operation, will put the staff and library and archival collections in real danger,” said Saad Eskander who has run the library since 2003.
“They have turned our national archive into a military target…tomorrow or the day after, the extremists will attack the Iraqi forces there.” says Eskander.
The forces are occupying the building “to defend Shia worshippers heading to the shrine of Khadimiya, about 15 miles away.”
Eskander is already a biblio-hero. He is responsible for putting the pieces of the library back together after “large parts were gutted by arsonists, and pillaged by looters,” after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The library is believed to have lost 25% of its collection including many rare books and 60% of the national archive including material dating back to the Ottoman Empire.
Eskander might be familiar to some of you. He has achieved worldwide recognition through the blog he had been keeping about his experiences. The blog appears on the British Library website.
As to why this might be happening Eskander offers this: “They don’t want liberal secular-oriented people running cultural institutions.”
Sound familiar?
Michael Howard has the story in the Guardian, Looting fear as Iraqi state library seized
Website of the Iraqi National Library and Archive (INLA)
Edited version of Eskander’s keynote speech at the 2004 Internet Librarian conference The Tale of Iraq’s ‘Cemetery of Books’
Photo of Eskander