Those plans should involve arming guards, as well as mobilizing local citizens' groups to come out to help as well, as the protestors did in front of the museum. It is that sort of situation, not the everyday one involving scavengers, that needs to be prepared for with contingency plans.
And Donny George along with a few other brave souls carrying nothing more than steel pipes, managed to keep guys who were driving by the museum brandishing guns from attacking it a second time. I know from Wathiq Hindo, a security specialist who visited Iraq just before the 2003 invasion and bought an AK-47 himself for a site guard, that that guard did manage to ward off would-be looters when the government collapsed. They are already in danger - they have been beaten and shot at by armed gangs in both Iraq and Egypt - but those gangs would be much less likely to attack if they knew the guards were armed and that the guards could call for help. The real issue though is what to do when the folks who usually do carry weapons and who deal with the industrial, mafia-like-organized looting gangs - the antiquities police - melt away, and those guards who don't have guns are left to the mercy of those armed gangs. Site and museum guards could be trained to do the same thing - and indeed, many do carry weapons already. In the normal course of affairs, the antiquities police (who do carry guns) deter these folks. Hmm, where to begin? First off, no one is encouraging guards to shoot subsistence diggers. Shoot the looter was the practice in Saddam's Iraq.
#LARRY THE LOOTER ON FREE#
Of course, every country is free to address this issue in its own way, but I also suspect that Professor Rothfield wants Western countries to fund these armed guards.Īnd let's not forget. Do we really want to encourage them being killed in the name of archaeology? As for the armed gangs of archaeological lore, to the extent they exist at all, wouldn't they likely be better armed than the guards?
Most "looters" in places like Egypt, Iraq and Peru are "subsistence diggers" who remove treasures from the graves of their ancestors in order to put food on the table. While our own museums like the National Gallery of Art have some armed guards, I agree with Dorothy King that this particular proposal may lead to unnecessary deaths. That at least is the implication of Professor Rothfield's suggestion that armed guards police archaeological sites and museums in places like Egypt and Iraq.
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