On April 10, 2003, a group of thieves stormed the National Museum of Iraq in the capital, Baghdad. Staff had evacuated their workplaces two days earlier, before U.S. troops entered the capital, and the museum was looted for the next 36 hours.
After returning to work, the staff showed tremendous courage and were able to safely transport and store 8366,15 artifacts before looting them, after seizing some <>,<> objects in less than two days.
Although 7,8 objects have been recovered, more than <>,<> are still missing, including thousands of years old artifacts from some of the oldest sites in the Middle East, according to a previous article by Craig Parker, director of education at the University of Sydney Museums.
Ironically, centuries after many of the remains of these ancient artifacts were looted by European forces to fill major colonial-era national museums, we are watching the 21st-century version of cultural colonialism, as collectors give the opportunity to grow an entire economy based on illicit activities.
After 20 years of looting the Iraqi National Museum, Baha returns to the site in central Baghdad and the trip to the museum feels like a journey through time spanning thousands of years, says Adel Fakher, Al Jazeera English's Baghdad correspondent.
Behind the gates of the museum will live the heritage of Mesopotamia with its Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Akkadian civilizations. Impressive, the sculptures are just a limited part of Iraq's ancient heritage, destroyed by years of destruction and looting, an issue the Iraqi state is working to deal with.
The years following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw large numbers of antiquities stolen, both from museums such as the National Museum of Iraq, and due to illegal excavations at archaeological sites across the country amid security chaos.
Official figures are absent from monitoring the bleeding of Iraqi antiquities smuggled out of the country, according to previous reports of Al Jazeera Net.
Iraqi National Museum among sites looted (Al Jazeera)
Some masterpieces were also destroyed, especially during the rise of the Islamic State after 2014, as statues and antique sculptures were destroyed in the Mosul Museum in Nineveh Governorate (north) and precious objects were looted from the museum and smuggled abroad.
The group bulldozed important archaeological sites, including the city of Nimrud (30 km south of Mosul), which dates back to the 13th century BC and is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in Iraq and the Middle East.
"Nimrud" is the local Arabic name for the Assyrian city of Kalkho (Kaleh), which was built on the Tigris River by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser I and was the capital of government during the Middle Assyrian Empire.
Restoration efforts
Hakim al-Shammari, media director of the Iraqi Ministry of Culture's General Authority for Antiquities and Heritage, said efforts to recover stolen antiquities are continuing. "We are working to return these objects to their original homeland in accordance with international conventions that emphasize the need to return cultural property to their owners," he told Al Jazeera English.
"Iraq has managed in recent years to recover about 17,364 artifacts from the United States and <> from Lebanon," he said, adding that the total number of looted antiquities is estimated at thousands, stressing that work is underway to recover antiquities from other countries.
The Iraqi presidency recently announced the return of 9 artifacts stolen from the United States, including 7 seals dating back to the Babylonian period, a piece of ivory in the shape of a human face, and a clay tablet from the Middle Babylonian period.
This was preceded by the recovery of thousands of pieces at once after a US court ruling in July 2017 ordered Hobby Lobby to return the thousands of pieces from the Mesopotamian era illegally exported to the United States.
Partial success
While the government's success in returning some of the antiquities has received some praise, much work remains to be done, said Haidar Farhan, a philosophy professor of archaeology at the University of Baghdad and an archaeology expert.
Farhan said the Iraqi government's attempts to negotiate the recovery of stolen antiquities are positive, but "but these attempts do not fully meet expectations. What has been achieved is a partial success."
"There are no official statistics on the number of antiquities stolen from the Iraqi Museum, and the figures contained in fact are inaccurate and incomplete when looking at the official inventory of the Iraqi Museum's holdings," Farhan said.
Thousands of artifacts looted from Iraq during the US invasion (Al Jazeera)
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry, which is responsible for the return of Iraqi antiquities from around the world, did not respond to questions from Al Jazeera English, but Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein earlier said that 18,<> smuggled artifacts had been returned to Iraq and expressed hope that international cooperation and coordination would help return all stolen artifacts.
The office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Baghdad told Al Jazeera English that it is working with the Iraqi government to recover more than 40,30 artifacts scattered around the world, in addition to 2017,2022 pieces already recovered, between <> and <>.
Other objects are kept in Iraqi embassies and antiquities lending centres around the world until suitable storage centres are found in Iraq.
U.S. Responsibility
Many Iraqis see the biggest blame for the loss of much of their country's history as the United States; during the U.S. invasion, U.S. officials were reportedly frustrated by the generals' unwillingness to protect archaeological sites, such as the National Museum of Iraq.
Archaeological researcher Amer Abdul Razzaq says that the negligence was deliberate, and that American tanks surrounded the Iraqi Museum during the occupation and chaos, but did not lift a finger in the face of gangs and thieves who attacked the museum and stole about 14,<> precious pieces from it.
Assyrian artifact representing the winged bull in the National Museum in Baghdad (Al Jazeera)
Although the U.S. military later committed to protecting antiquities due to pressure from Iraqi archaeological institutions, it initially turned archaeological sites into bases and camps for its forces, such as in the city of your in Dhi Qar province, by placing its heavy military equipment at the archaeological site of Ziggurat of your, Abdul Razzaq said.
"The US military has turned the ancient city of Babylon into a military base, so much so that they have made mounds of earth, some of them from fragments of cuneiform clay tablets," Abdul Razzaq said, adding that "the same applies to the city of Nimrud in Mosul and other archaeological sites across the country."
Although the United States has already returned thousands of artifacts to Iraq, they are still not enough, according to Abdul Razzaq.
"What has been recovered is a small part," he said, with items still being sold at auctions in the United States, Britain and other countries, and "we need greater diplomatic efforts and international cooperation."