The US, UN & Iraq III

sozobe


OK I will bite. Show me some proof that the US knew the museum would be looted. I would also like to see some evidence that there were troops available to perform that function.

Just wanaa say I'm enjoyin' hell outta HofT's posts. Go get 'em, girl!

au, she already posted sufficient citations to prove that at the very least, the US command could have known - they read the same papers we do, I presume, or have someone at intelligence doing it ...

Either they omitted basic intelligence-gathering even amateurs like us can do - which I don't believe - or they knew, but chose to give it low priority.

As for whether there were soldiers available - well, you get back to the (now a bit tired) ministry of oil vs national museum argument - in the end, all's a matter of setting priorities, making choices. But how many soldiers on guard at the entrance would it have taken to intimidate potential looters into forgetting about the idea, really?

Concerning that makng of choices, HofT makes the point that this is a military operation and soldiers should focus on military aims rather than try play policeman (I'm paraphrasing here). But the US has gone into this war with explicitly formulated goals going beyond the mere military defeat of the opponent. This war was eventually dubbed "Iraqi Freedom", after all (after all the arguments of WMD and Al-Qaeda links and the like collapsed). When fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, the US gvt still made clear it was 'not in the business of nation-building', but this time around, the Bush government has promised democracy, and has planned an interim rule by a US military governor. The aims clearly go beyond winning in those last 'pockets of resistance' - they are about a functioning post-war Iraq.

In that context, the suggested clarity between the exclusively military jobs that are supposed to be appropriate to the work of soldiers and the kind of civilian-oriented work they shouldn't be expected to do - the latter presumably including protecting hospitals and the libraries of civilisation - is a bogus one. If the case that the new interim rulers really care about Iraqi society is to be made convincingly enough for this war not to end in the violent grumbles of resentment after all, the military better expand their job to take care of the most basic protection of social as well as military objects. As already noted above, when the glaring contrast between ministry of oil-vs-national museum at the very least was a PR disaster, that alone has immediate repercussions for the risk estimations on the military goal of the country's stabilisation as well.

nimh


I do not believe the powers that be understood what you seem to think they did. I cannot believe, if they understood or realized the extent of the looting which would ensue they would have if at all possible done nothing to stop it. It may have been stupidity on their part or it may just have been that they did not have the hindsight we are now blessed with.

au, here's a start -- I can dig further, if you'd like. (This is just something I happened to read in today's NYT.)



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/16/opinion/16DOWD.html

Here's something else:



http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/muse-a16.shtml

And this one looks to be the most credible, from the Washington Post:



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19691-2003Apr13.html

sozobe


Who Knows if this was not just a Rummy statement to coverup his stupidity. Anyone who has listened to Rumsfeld knows he makes stupid and unfeeling statements. Than again who knows.

Yeah. No argument from me as to Rummy's stupidity.

Thanks James Morrison, for picking up on my post there. Appreciate it.

You write:



I wonder. It seems to have precious few avenues to use in tackling a state like Syria, at first sight, though I really don't know enough about it yet. Concerning the DPRK, one could indeed say little has at least been achieved thus far, even in the matters of disarmament and the neighbour countries' military security - and nothing, of course, on the matter of brutal dictatorship. Yet the little that has been achieved on the former has been taken in gratitude by South Korea, and the chilly reaction of South Korea's government to the new, no-nonsense line Bush Jr seemed to propagate at least suggests that the "Iraq doctrine" might not necessarily be seen to yield better results than the cautious UN-mechanisms, by those who'd know best - who apparently mostly seem to fear it could escalate matters instead.

Concerning Iraq - in terms, again, of disarmament and of guaranteeing neighbouring countries' security, the UN, I believe, didnt do badly at all these past twelve years. In fact, the US didnt think so either, until just about a year or two ago. It's only been a few years since the US was boasting about the 80% disarmament achieved thus far. We have now, in this war, been able to see that the Saddam regime apparently did not have ready-to-use Scud missiles anymore, which meant that Israel turned out to be safe this time, in glaring contrast with 1991. Such contrasts plead for the partial UN success of this past decade. The no-fly zones and Kurdish autonomy had at least ended the very worst of the regime's human rights excesses - the attempted genocide against the Kurdish minority. No, in terms of the goals originally set by the UN, the US included, one can not say the UN has proven itself to be unable to handle such matters. The few examples used before the war started to suggest it was - the proposed matter of Iraq's nuclear programme, the suggested harboring of Al-Qaeda terrorists - thus far seem to have been proven unfounded.

You have got to remember, however hard it is in today's heady time, that until the very advent of this war, the argument of the Iraqi's plight under brutal dictatorship was almost wholly absent in the US case for war. It just didnt figure. The US had shown no particular concern for their plight in any of the earlier phases of this protracted crisis - not when the Kurds were gassed, not when the Shi'ites were persecuted, not when Powell was preaching to the UN about the risk Saddam posed to the US and the world. We were supposed to go to war about terrorism, about WMD. Only when the first argument wasnt bought and the second was disclaimed by those "in charge" of the resolutions in the matter, did the US turn to its present tagline of "Iraqi Freedom".

Its turned out, thus far, a tremendously successful tagline. If the war had dragged on into a new Vietnam, it would have looked ridiculous. But it didnt, and no matter what anarchy currently prevails and what risks loom for the regional and national stability of the future, the liberation from Saddam must be like manna from heaven to many Iraqis. It is all the more succesful a tagline when you consider that it is exactly this - tackling the harm dictatorships do to their own citizens - that the UN has thus far turned out to be mostly impotent about. It can mediate in civil wars, keep cease-fires, control atomic programmes and development and use of banned weapons, it can reconstruct countries after wars, but the principle of national sovereignty still is overriding to such an extent that the UN can not do all that much about the harm a dictatorship does at home.

Not that no progress hadnt been made. Kosovo: the first war waged against a country for its persecution of its own citizens (in casu the Kosovar minority). The UN legitimized it, be it afterwards. That was a very first step, but not a precedent the Iraqis could have profited much from: no escalation of persecution of the kind the Kosovars seemed to be facing (i.e., imminent attempted genocide) was on the agenda, just the depressing continuation of three decades of totalitarianism.

It is that part that I was writing about where you quoted my frustration: "why are we only ever talking about what Rumsfeld wants or means or what really behind what Powell wants or thinks - have they robbed us of our ability to formulate our own analyses of Middle East problems, on what would be good policy responses to what clearly are situations that could do with change?"

I do want to note that it was about that, specifically - in casu, concerning finding alternatives on what to do about the Syria type of dictatorship, when one rejects the Rumsfeld strategies. Thats the part where I feel the pacifist case is lacking arguments.

You call it


but I disagree that the observation would hold for the debate we had here on Iraq. I have seen people on this board clearly argue their case for a mix of UN actions on Iraq, falling short of war but still having been proven sufficiently succesful in containing the matters at hand in the debate at the time: WMD, terrorism, danger to other countries and the outside world. Yes, they pleaded - we pleaded - for a form of containment. Not because we believed Saddam would have ended up spontaneously "doing the right thing". But because we saw enough evidence that he might be forced to do enough of the good thing in those matters, without us having to go to outright war about it, to safeguard world security. Enough evidence to grant those in charge of the matter - the UN weapon inspectors - the extra time they asked for, at least. The war seemed - still seems - too fraught with risks to justify for something that would merely speed up a process we saw as already being underway and having been largely successful.

But of course that was a 'is the glass half-full or half-empty' debate. The 'still half-full' part would refer to how this policy of containment, though in our eyes succesful enough in world security matters, involved continued repression for those remaining in the core Iraq, though a repression robbed of the fighter jets and chemical weapons used in earlier times. It's that part that now deserves discussion, in my view. This war has, to my eyes, shown that a dictatorship can be toppled with considerably less time of war than was foreseen by war critics. We have to wait a while now to see what costs additional to that of these three or four weeks of war are involved. But should it work to even any minimal degree, then the Rumsfeld clan has a powerful enough argument about being able to overturn dictatorships and restore basic human rights at a cost less than had been expected - whether that was really a sincere goal in their original plans or not (I believe not). Its argument will be all the stronger the longer the war opponents fail to come up with convincing notions on alternative equally succesful, but less damaging ways to achieve the same.

Again, in terms of the issues at play during all of the debate running up to the war - WMD, regional security, terrorism - I think the war opponents came up with many valid notions on what else could be done "about this situation", without threatening to tear the world apart. They just suggested different ones than the proponents of war - who on this thread seemed more concerned with defending and celebrating America than with the Iraqi population in any case.

It's like in the UN itself - you may be right where you write that "the position of 'No War, no matter what' is probably the most pernicious abdication of morality that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq" - but while France was taking that line, a majority of SC member states did not exclude the military option, but simply considered it as of yet unwarranted and unjustified. I still haven't seen any convincing argument why their proposals had to be swept aside and why the war was needed right now, no delay, no compromise. The argument basically seems to be that you're gonna run out of patience some day, and the US happened to run out of its patience this day.

My truck with the pacifists is purely that they seem to lack a coherent strategy about dealing with the excesses of dictatorship, in general, too, whereas that's the subject the Rumsfeld victory in Baghdad has - unintendedly, I'm sure - put on the agenda of the moment.

Thanks for your link about the Friedman piece and the "aggressive engagement" line, btw. I have to look my NYT password back up, but "Something between outright military engagement and useless constructive engagement" does sound supiciously like what most of us war opponnents have been suggesting on Iraq all along :wink: .

Hey timber. Allow me a repost:



Thats quite some statements you have there.

"Timing and location determined which buildings could be protected before they were looted. It was an operational matter, not political ..." So its sheer coincidence that only the Ministry of Oil and, I believe, the Ministry of Defence are protected and the other ones looted? You are better in military strategy matters than I am, so perhaps you can explain how the location of these ministries in the city determined they were the only ones the US troops could get to in time?

"Global Terrorist Activity is way down" - question mark? How do you measure that one? Is way down from since when? Since America started the war, a month ago? Could you compare for us the amount of "Global Terrorist Activity" this past month with that of, say, the month before, or that of October 2002, to name but one random month? <shrugs> It sounds like mere rhetorics to me.

"The Iraqi People appear increasingly grateful and cooperative" - I'd say the evidence is mixed so far - hugs and kisses here, grumbling there, and political murder in Najaf. It's an impression.

"Iran and North Korea show signs of having noticed"? Anything about Iran we missed? Did their ongoing democratisation process of the past few years suddenly drastically speed up? And North Korea? Is the record anything more than mixed there? I for one remember this quote from Yahoo News:

I am hours back, thinking about nimh's question about Syria. Working on that.

Then I find timber's post:




This post is not worthy of you.

While likely shortsighted of them, I believe CENTCOM and The Pentagon actually overlooked the potential magnitude of looting. Hindsight is always 20-20. More attention could have been paid to the preservation of cultural treasures, but still the task would have been formidable, possiblt insurmountably so in an active warzone. The military force on the ground really was just about what was adequate to accomplish the assigned mission of eliminating the control of The Regime, and in fact was strained by the rapidity and magnitude of its own success. It may be a nice "If only they had thought of it" thing, but the fact of the matter, from my perspective, is that it simply is impracticable to maintain civil order while simultaneously actively engaged in combat ... no matter how good the idea sounds. The buildings secured and the buildings looted show a logical correspondence to the actual route-of-advance taken as US troops entered the city, such buildings as were initially secured were secured from a tactical, not a cultural, set of priorities, and the bulk of the looting occurred in areas not yet under US control ... either contested or distinctly enemy territory. Tellingly, the hardest hit by the looting were the assets of The Regime itself and private enterprises owned or controlled by prominent Ba'athists. It is ludicrous to expect Civil Security Action to coincide with Combat Action. Combat troops aren't cops; their perspectives and training are quite different. Using them for such easily results in incidents such as the killing of civilians at checkpoints or during protest rallies. As the organized resistance declined, the US began exerting more and more control of the civilian populations as more and more of the cities' neighborhoods, throughout Iraq, were cleared of enemy combatants.
It has been less than a month since the first bomb struck Baghdad. Using roughly 1/4 the manpower and 1/3 the airpower utilized during Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom destroyed the Iraqi military, eviscerated the Ba'ath Party, and toppled The Regime in less time than it took merely to evict Iraq from Kuwait. In some neighborhoods of Baghdad and in much of Southern Iraq, there is now more access to potable water than ever there was under Saddam. Over 1/2 the Iraqi population subsisted on government handouts under Saddam, and much of that demographic now has available more calories-and-nutrients-per-person, and superior medical care, to that which was afforded them by Saddam. That aspect of US Occupation increases hourly. Of course there are vignettes of heartwrenching tragedy, but The Average Iraqi is measurably better off now than a month ago, and things are getting better rapidly. Quagmire, Disaster, Civilian Holocaust, Bungle .... dunno where any of that is evidenced. There have been no significant terrorist attacks since The Bali Bombing, itself a mere whisper compared to 9/11, and the Israeli/Palestinian violence has been if anything notably subdued since the onset of hostilities with Iraq ... hardly indication of an upswelling of terrorism.
The governments of the opposition to US intervention, and The UN as a body, have toned down their rhetoric and begun to cozy up and lobby for participatory rights in the reconstruction of Iraq. Documentation of ongoing evasion, if not outright violation, of UN Mandated Sanctions by intervention opponents mounts day-by-day. To the dismay of most who opposed it, The Attack on Iraq continues to disappoint the pessimists. Domestic Polls show solid support for The Current Administration, and both Domestic and Global Economic Indicators continue to show resilience and strength which cannot but be hieghtened by stabilization of supportable oil prices. Meanwhile, Chirac, Schroeder, and Putin face declining public support at home. All in all, if Bush the Younger continues to meet and surmount challenges and obstacles in similar fashion as has been demonstrated, things look even bleaker for not only The Pessimists, but the entire Opposition.

North Koreans and U.S. Plan Talks in Beijing Next Week

By DAVID E. SANGER

[]ASHINGTON, April 15 — President Bush has approved a plan for the United States to begin negotiations with North Korea in Beijing next week, the first talks between the countries since the government of Kim Jong Il threw out international inspectors and restarted its main nuclear weapons plant, United States and Asian officials said today.White House officials refused to comment on the negotiations. But officials in several countries said China has promised the United States that it will act as a full participant in the talks rather than just convening them. The Chinese had hoped to conduct the initial meetings in secret, officials said.The agreement to enter the negotiations with both China and the United States marks a major concession for North Korea and an apparent victory for President Bush. Mr. Bush's strategy of not engaging in one-on-one talks with North Korea had been widely criticized by Asian allies and by many Korea experts.

Can anyone doubt that the softening of North Korea's stance was in response to the results of the action in Iraq?


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/16/international/worldspecial/16KORE.html?th

au, there is no doubt in my mind the two are connected ... and in fact, beginning hundreds of posts ago, a few folks, myself among them, postulated over many replies in several different interactions on this thread's progenitors, precisely that eventuality, including China's "Sudden Interest". Nobody is right all the time, but a number of participants here have, at least in The Short Term, gotten very little right so far.

The other side of the coin in journalistic integrity

April 14, 2003
Our Western Mob
From The Graveyard of Kabul to The Quagmire of Iraq to The Looting of Baghdad
Victor Davis Hanson

The jubilation of liberating millions from fascism and removing the world's most odious dictator apparently lasted about 12 hours. I was listening to a frustrated Mr. Rumsfeld last Friday in a news briefing as he tried to deal with a host of furious and crazy questions ?- a journalistic circus that was nevertheless predictable even before the war started.

I thought immediately of the macabre aftermath to the battle of Arginusae in 406 B.C. After destroying a great part of the Peloponnesian fleet in the most dramatic Athenian naval victory of the war, the popular assembly abruptly voted to execute six of their eight successful generals (the other two wisely never came back to Athens) on charges that they had failed to rescue seamen who were clinging to the wreckage.

The historian Xenophon records the feeding frenzy and shouting of the assembled throng. Forget that Sparta felt beaten and was ready for peace after such a catastrophic defeat; forget the brilliant seamanship and command of the Athenian triremes; forget that a ferocious storm had made retrieval of the dead and rescue of the missing sailors almost impossible; forget even that to try the generals collectively was contrary to Athenian law. Instead the people demanded perfection in addition to mere overwhelming success ?- and so in frustration devoured their own elected officials. The macabre incident was infamous in Greek history (the philosopher Socrates almost alone resisted the mob's rule), a reminder how a society can go mad, turn on its benefactors, throw away a victory ?- and go on to lose the entire war.

Something like that craziness often takes hold of our own elites and media in the midst of perhaps the most brilliantly executed plan in modern American military history. Rather than inquiring how an entire country was overrun in a little over three weeks at a cost of not more than a few hundred casualties, reporters instead wail at the televised scenes of a day of looting and lawlessness.

I had been expecting at least some interviews about bridges not blown due to the rapidity of the advance. Could someone tell us how special forces saved the oil fields? How the Navy Seals prevented the dreaded oil slicks? Whose courage and sacrifice saved the dams? And how so few missiles were launched? Exactly why and how did the Republican Guard cave?

In short, would any reporter demonstrate a smidgeon of curiosity ?- other than condemning a plan they scarcely understood ?- about the mechanics of the furious battle for Iraq? It would be as if America forgot about Patton's race to the German border, and instead focused only on Frenchmen shaving the heads of Vichy collaborators, or decided that it had not been worth freeing the Italian peninsula because a mob had mutilated and hung Mussolini from his heels. Did any remember what had happened to a Russian armored column that tried to enter Grozny to control that city? Did any have a clue what Germany or Italy was like in June 1945?

What was striking about the Iraqi capitulations was the absence of general looting on the part of the victorious army. From the fall of Constantinople to the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait City, winners usually plunder and pillage. American and British soldiers instead did the opposite, trying to protect others' property as they turned on water and power. That much of the looting was no more indiscriminate than what we saw in Los Angeles after the Rodney King Verdict, in the New York during blackouts, or in some major cities after Super Bowl victories, made no impression on the reporting. Remember this was a long-suffering impoverished people lashing out at Baathists ?- not affluent American kids looting and breaking windows at the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

A terrorized people, itself looted and brutalized by fascists for three decades, upon news of liberation feels the need to steal back from Baathist elites and government ministries what had been taken from them. This is not an excuse for general lawlessness, but rather a reminder that freedom for the oppressed sometimes goes though periods of volatility and messiness.

All this was lost on our journalistic elite, who like Athenians of old wished to find scapegoats in the midst of undreamed good news. Dan Rather, for example, finished one of his broadcasts from liberated Baghdad with an incredible "before" and "after" footage of his entry that should rank as one of the most absurd pieces of the entire war coverage. Tape rolled of his initial drive a few weeks ago to Saddam's HQ, when the roads were once safe from banditry and free of destruction. Then in glum tones he chronicled his harrowing current arrival into Baghdad amid craters and gunfire.

Mr. Rather ?- so unlike a Michael Kelly or David Bloom ?- forgot that he was now motoring right smack into a war zone. And he seemed oblivious that just a few weeks ago he had just conducted a scripted and choreographed interview with a mass murderer. Consider the sheer historical ignorance of it all: Was Berlin a nicer place in 1939 or 1946? And why and for whom?

The machinery of a totalitarian society, of course, can present a certain staged decorum for guests who are brought in to be manipulated by dictators. How many were shot in dungeons during his visit, he never speculated. In contrast the first 48 hours of liberation are scary ?- who after all could now put Mr. Rather up at a plush state-run hotel and shepherd him in to the posh digs of Saddam Hussein with the security of an armed Gestapo? That the chaos Mr. Rather witnessed was the aftermath of a 30-year tyranny under which one million innocents have been slaughtered made no discernible impression on him ?- nor did the bombshell story how the Western media has for years collaborated with a horrific regime to send out its censored propaganda.

Next I turned on NPR. No surprise. Its coverage was also fixated on the looting, and aired several stories about the general shortcomings of the American efforts. Again forget that a war was waging in the north, that Baghdad was still not entirely pacified, and that there was the example of a normalizing postbellum Basra. No, instead there must be furor that the United States had not in a matter of hours turned its military into an instantaneous police, fire, water, medical, and power corps.

Personally, I was more intrigued that in passing the same reporter at last fessed up that during all of her previous gloomy reports from the Palestine Hotel of American progress, she and others had been shaken down daily for bribe money, censored, and led around as near hostages. It is impossible to calibrate how such Iraqi manipulation of American news accounts affected domestic morale, if not providing comfort for those Baathists who wished to discourage popular uprisings of long-suffering Iraqis.

There is something profoundly amoral about this. A newsman who interviewed a state killer at his convenience later revisits a now liberated city and complains of the disorder there. A journalist who paid bribe money to fascists and whose dispatches aired from Baghdad in wartime only because the Baathist party felt that they served their own purposes is disturbed about the chaos of liberation. Now is the time for CNN, NPR, and other news organizations to state publicly what their relationships were in ensuring their reporters' presence in wartime Iraq ?- and to explain their policies about bribing state officials, allowing censorship of their news releases, and keeping quiet about atrocities to ensure access.

In general, the media has now gone from the hysteria of The Armageddon of Afghanistan to The Quagmire of Iraq to The Looting in Baghdad ?- the only constant is slanted coverage, mistaken analysis, and the absence of any contriteness about being in error and in error in such a manner that reflected so poorly upon themselves and damaged the country at large at a time of war. It is as if only further bad news could serve as a sort of catharsis that might at least cleanse them of any unease about being so wrong so predictably and so often.

In the weeks that follow, the media, not the military, will be shown to be in need of introspection and vast reform. Partly the problem arises from the breakneck desire of reporters to obtain near celebrity status by causing controversy and spectacle. Many (especially executives) also came of age in Vietnam and are thus desperate to recapture past glory when once upon a time their efforts made them stars and changed our national culture. Reporters are cultural relativists, who never ask themselves how many more people are tortured and die because of their own complicity with a murderous regime. Arrogance abounds that journalists are to be above reproach and thus deserve to be moral censors in addition to simply recording the news.

Ignorance also is endemic. Few read of history's great sieges and the bedlam that always follows conquest, liberation, and the birth of a new order.

So while it is censorious of politicians and soldiers, the media is completely uninterested in monitoring its own behavior. Would Mr. Rather have gone to Berlin amid the SS to interview Hitler in his bunker as the fires of Auschwitz raged? Would NPR reporters have visited Hitler's Germany, paid bribes to Mr. Goebbels, and then broadcast allied shortcomings at the Bulge, oblivious to the Nazi machinery of death and their own complicity in it?

There is also a final reason that explains our demand for instantaneous perfection. It is often a trademark of successful Western societies that create such freedom and affluence to fool themselves that they are a hair's breadth away from utopia. Journalists who pad around with palm pilots, pounds of high-tech gear, dapper clothes, and expensive educations have convinced themselves that if lesser people were as caring or as sensitive as themselves then we could all live in bliss. The subtext of the daily Western media barrage has been that if we were just smarter, more moral, or better informed, then we could liberate a country the size of California in days, not weeks, lose zero soldiers, not 110, and be instantaneously greeted by happy Iraqis who would shake hands, return to work, and quietly forget thirty years of terror as they voted in a Gandhi.

Anything less and Mssrs. Rumsfeld, Meyers, Franks, "the plan," ?- somebody or something at least! ?- must be held accountable for the absence of utopia.

But that is a word, they should remember, that means not a "good place" but "no place" at all.

A few days after looting the Museum of Antiquities, two important libraries are burned down -- Iraq's National Library and the Religious Affairs Ministry.
(Please read some news links listed on another thread)

We're all familiar with the photo event created for journalists, when Saddam's statue was pulled down. If even half that many U.S. troops were stationed at the museum and the libraries, don't you think we could have saved some pretty huge cultural treasures?

Which was more important, photographing a statue of Saddam, or saving some of the most priceless museums and libraries in all of Iraq (some would say all of the Middle East)? Is there ANY way the world can judge U.S. sympathetically in this?

Is it really that difficult to place a few troops at the most valuable locations in the city? Is it?

It is damned inconvenient if active combat action is ongoing, and locations are currently contested or even in supply and under effective control of enemy combatants.

Just an additional observation; it is not unreasonable to expect a few days of disorder, chaos, and relative unrest following the collapse of a regime following 30 years of vicious repression. Get real, here ... reality ain't pretty, and bad things happen to both bad people and good in war.
Another question I'd like to see answered ... who pillaged the Iraqi Treasure? Was it the Iraqis themselves, or were Third-Nation parties or entities involved? There are indications the looting of the museums in particular had a certain air of professionalism about them, a sophistication of execution not cutomary of a rampaging mob. Not that that has anything to do with US responsibility in the matter, just a curiosity point. To my understanding, Europe is the largest market for pilfered antiquities and artwork.