Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered

Battle to destroy hearts and minds

The dismantling of Iraqi intellectual life may have been a deliberate strategy, Roger Matthews learns

(Dahr Jamail contributed a chapter to this book.)

Today, the discipline of Mesopotamian archaeology lies in tatters; Iraq’s universities and its antiquities service face an uncertain future in the midst of a harrowing present; standards of education, literacy and international engagement have plummeted to levels unknown in the history of Iraq; and the world continues largely to turn its back on calls for assistance from our Iraqi friends and colleagues. All this in a country renowned throughout the Arab world and beyond for its sophistication and open-mindedness, epitomised in the Arabic saying “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads”.

Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered | Dahr Jamail - Independent Reporting from Iraq and the Middle East