“Most of Iraq's civilizations were exposed to various threats, and terrorism had a hand in destroying civilizational monuments, but these terrorist acts cannot obliterate history,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said while attending the sixth Ancient Civilizations Forum in Baghdad.
The minister added that “the Iraqi government has made efforts to stop sabotage operations against antiquities, as more than 18,000 smuggled artifacts have been returned”.
Hussein further expressed his hope that through cooperation with other countries, Iraq would be able to recover the remaining stolen artifacts.
Iraqi antiquities have been subjected to frequent looting and vandalism since 2003, the most severe of which was in 2014 when the Islamic State (ISIS) occupied large swathes of the country.
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in March inaugurated the Iraqi National Museum showcasing Iraqi artifacts recovered from the US, Netherlands, Japan, Italy, and Lebanon.
The Lebanese Ministry of Culture in February said that hundreds of trafficked artifacts were to be returned to Iraq from the Lebanese Nabu Museum. Dozens of other artifacts have been recovered to Iraq over the past months.
Iraq’s embassy in the United States in January received five ancient artifacts valued at a total of over $680,000.
Last December, the US returned a 3,500-year old clay tablet featuring a portion of the epic of Gilgamesh to Iraq. The tablet was stolen from an Iraqi museum and illegally trafficked to the US.
