Politicized efforts to appropriate Iraq’s heritage are part of the ongoing contest for control of the state. This effective ‘weaponization’ of heritage also includes the recasting of cultural and historical narratives to support sectarian agendas.
Cultural heritage provides a means for Iraq’s ethno-nationalist and sectarian elites to give credibility to their political actions, make claims to the past and, by extension, legitimize efforts to access the resources and institutions of the state. These elites have fought fiercely to control cultural and religious property in the country, as part of a wider ongoing contest to shape Iraq’s political future. In addition to complicating the national political context, heritage predation and elite competition for cultural and religious property are affecting local power dynamics in cities across the country, thereby reshaping the political geographies of entire regions.
The politicization of cultural heritage in Iraq has been in large part enacted through the institutionalization of political quotas. Muhasasa, as it is referred to in Iraq, was actively promoted as part of US occupation policy, which was designed to appease groups which the US government had chosen to lead Iraq and to weaken opposition to the US presence. Appointments to the key institutions of state, including the positions of president, prime minister and speaker of parliament, were (and continue to be) based on an ethno-sectarian division of power between Kurdish, Shia and Sunni interests respectively. This resulted, in turn, in the sectarianized division of state assets, including cultural resources.
Sectarian political groups continue to carve out new spaces for the pursuit of their political agendas. While such manoeuvring has become a part of everyday politics, sectarianism was a particularly prominent feature of the 2017 referendum in the KRI, in which Kurdish ethno-nationalist political parties sought to claim and secure new territories based on ethnicity and cultural differences. Similarly, in the 2021 national elections, Azm – a leading Sunni political coalition – sought to appropriate cultural identity for its own interests by referring to Samarra’s Abbasid-era Great Mosque and minaret as a source of Sunni power and political renewal. The exploitation of ethnic and sect-based identities by political parties is a common tactic in heritage predation, often used to secure control of cultural property and win public support.
By embedding a sectarian allocation of power within Iraq’s state structure, the top-down muhasasa system has dissipated central state authority, creating an environment conducive to heritage predation. Since 2003, substantial powers have been transferred from central state agencies to autonomously controlled institutions, including to political parties, religious groups and the KRG. In addition, influence within central ministries, including the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities, has been distributed among Shia, Sunni and Kurdish political parties, as the muhasasa system has delivered post-electoral windfalls to competing interests. Outside the KRI, control of which is entrenched between two major political parties, this ‘merry-go-round’ of political influence has devastated the prospects of developing cohesive state institutions able to govern, provide adequate services, and address urgent cultural needs and emergencies.
The fragmentation of Iraq’s national cultural heritage has been compounded by the establishment of religious endowments. The Shia, Sunni and non-Muslim endowments were created from the disbanding of the pre-2003 Ministry of Religious Affairs and Endowments. Religious and cultural sites pertaining to different denominations were formally reallocated to these new entities. Religious sites in Iraq are now controlled by confessional political and religious groups, sanctioned by the Iraqi Constitution of 2005 and by separate laws promulgated in 2012 that include the Shia Endowment Law, the Sunni Endowment Law, and the Christian, Ezidian and Sabean Mandean Religions Endowments Law.
In a similar way to the situation in Samarra (see Box 1), the parcelling out of power to non-state and semi-state institutions has meant that cities, districts and provinces are being reshaped not with a view to national, Iraq-wide, interests but for furthering the entrenchment of sectarian elites. The province of Babil, for example, which neighbours Baghdad, Karbala and Najaf, is gradually being transformed through the actions of religious groups. Babil was once a centre of cultural diversity and a key component of Iraq’s national identity, containing the UNESCO World Heritage Site of ancient Babylon.
A well-known example of heritage predation in Babil is the ‘restructuring’ of the Shrine of Prophet Ezekiel, known as al-Kifl in Iraq, who is said to have belonged to the exiled Judean community in Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Until 2010, the SBAH was the custodian of the complex, which comprised the shrine, a synagogue, a mosque and adjacent khans (inns). However, its ownership was subsequently transferred to the Shia Endowment, on the basis of a claim that Imam Ali had set up camp and prayed on the site. In the decade since its assumption of control of the site, the Shia Endowment has implemented a series of interventions to remove the synagogue and Ottoman-era khans, expand the mosque and build new minarets.
Most of those interventions have fundamentally degraded this former icon of multicultural, inter-community identity, which embodied histories from ancient Babylonian, Jewish, Ilkhanid, Islamic, Ottoman and modern-day heritage, by restructuring the site to serve Shia pilgrims. The politically orchestrated transformation of al-Kifl and the eventual appropriation of its management are just one example of the rapid growth of a network of religious sites, controlled by the Shia Endowment and spanning the country. This illustrates again how the management of cultural and religious sites has provided a means for political and religious institutions to expand and deepen their political power.
The sectarian appropriation of heritage sites has commonly been accompanied by similar transformations of administrative districts. For example, the sub-district surrounding the Shrine of Prophet Ezekiel has been renamed al-Nukhailah (from al-Kifl previously); the new name is that of an historic mosque formerly located in or close to the site, according to the Shia Endowment.
Evidence of a predatory approach to the management of historically significant cultural and religious sites can also be seen in and around Babylon. Although the ancient ruins themselves are in part protected, at least nominally, by Babylon’s 2019 designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a growing list of unique sites in the surrounding province of Babil are gradually coming under the control of the Shia Endowment and being absorbed into the endowment’s expansive political economy in this region.
Heritage predation in this region, with a view to control of new land, has seen the construction of hundreds of mosques and shrines, as well as encroachments on and violations of extensive archaeological plots. On a largely unexcavated area of the Babylon site, for example, the expansion of the Omran Ibn Ali Shrine has included the development of a new tourist-oriented market and a car park, in addition to work on the mosque itself. The use of cement, bricks, glass and other modern materials has compromised the integrity of the significant archaeological complex of Esagila, an ancient temple to the god Marduk. In addition, the nearby Bakr Ibn Ali Shrine, previously a modest grave, has been transformed into a reinforced concrete building, to the detriment of the underlying archaeology and in disregard of the SBAH’s concerns for appropriate care or laws. A few kilometres away, at the largely unexcavated Babylonian city of Borsippa, the mosque and maqam (a site for visitation and prayer) of Ibrahim al-Khalil, a site purported to have been visited by the Prophet Abraham, are located on top of an archaeological mound. This site too is now overlain by new concrete structures, a market and a car park.
In many ways, the ease with which heritage predation has unfolded in Iraq reflects the weakness of the SBAH and the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities. An archaeologist from Iraq summarizes the situation:
In Baghdad, competition for cultural heritage is also highly prevalent and, again, symptomatic of a much larger crisis over the ownership and future of the country. Disputes over cultural identity at mosques, monuments and landmarks in the Iraqi capital have commonly been settled through the federal courts, but at other times through forcible action by one party or another. In other contexts, under the guise of investment and development, cultural or sectarian competition has unfolded in relation to attempts to undermine national icons such as the Martyrs’ Monument commemorating the Iran–Iraq War. Attempts to demolish the Martyrs’ Monument were initially pursued through de-Ba’athification politics and regulations, but were stopped after public pressure. Post-2003 heritage predation, in this context, has undermined symbols of the nation and what little remains of popular nostalgia of better times.
History is thus being reimagined through narrowly constructed prisms of Shia, Sunni and Kurdish identity, with a view to pitting sections of society against one another.
Statues and symbols in the capital are also increasingly the objects of sectarian contestation. Examples include calls by certain religious actors to destroy Baghdad’s Abu Hanifa Mosque, or to remove the bust of the Abbasid-era founder of Baghdad, Abu Jaafar al-Mansour (accused by some Shia religious leaders of having poisoned the Shia imam, al-Jaafar al-Sadiq, in the eighth century). The latter agenda is less about claims of historical injustices than about who owns the future of Baghdad: by targeting the city’s founder, agitation for the removal of this bust in the Sunni-majority district of Al-Adhamiyah aims to pre-empt or subdue any political action on the part of Sunni leaders that would seek to derive legitimacy from the past – in this case, from the Abbasid Empire (which is increasingly being appropriated as a symbol of Sunni identity). History, and more specifically the cultural property that it embodies, is thus being reimagined through narrowly constructed prisms of Shia, Sunni and Kurdish identity, with a view to influencing public perceptions and pitting sections of society against one another.
Across the Tigris River from Al-Adhamiyah, the district of Al-Kadhimiya has also undergone substantial transformation with the expansion of the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim. More than 130 heritage buildings and archaeological sites, including from the Ottoman era and historically significant modern heritage, have been demolished to make way for the shrine’s expansion, as well as new hotels and commercial enterprises to accommodate religious tourism. These developments have fundamentally changed the architectural character and urban fabric of the district. The shrine itself has also been substantially ‘renovated’ without due regard for its historical and cultural character, as seen in the unsympathetic use of modern materials to replace Qajari-era (1789–1925) architecture.
The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities has been undermined by Kurdish and Shia political parties, which view it as a potential competitor in respect of their efforts to control cultural heritage. Part of the problem is that, since 2003, responsibilities for the management of Iraq’s heritage have been shared – at least in theory – between the central government authorities and the country’s provinces. Article 113 of the 2005 Iraqi constitution states that:
Weak enforcement, combined with a severe lack of resources, has impaired the SBAH’s ability to protect and maintain Iraq’s cultural heritage. Under-resourcing makes cooperation with other institutions difficult, a problem compounded by the fact that responsibility for cultural heritage is split between different bodies: the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities; the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works; the religious endowments; and local and provincial governments. This not only causes conflicts of interests but leaves the SBAH without the full authority to carry out its mandate. In effect, the quotas of the muhasasa system have made Article 113 nearly impossible to implement, with the SBAH being viewed by other agencies and interest groups not as a partner but as a rival.
The SBAH’s weak position and the growth of autonomously controlled institutions, including in the KRI, bode poorly for coordination and partnerships in the future. The KRI has run a parallel heritage infrastructure for the past 30 years, which operates independently of Iraqi central authority and is answerable to the KRG only. Wealth accrued by the KRG from the post-2003 quota arrangement enabled it to put into action an ethno-nationalist state-building project premised primarily on promoting Kurdish identity as separate from the rest of the country. In other words, ruling political elites (including members of the KRG) not only established alternative institutions but claimed legitimacy to separate rule based on ethnicity and notions of suffering and ‘otherness’. Indeed, the KRG considers archaeology and heritage in the KRI, or in territories claimed by the KRG in Diyala and Nineveh, for example, as its own rather than as belonging to Iraq as a whole. Government authorities and the antiquities department in the KRI have viewed cultural heritage as a key component of state-building, commonly promoting the semi-autonomous region as a ‘cradle of civilization’ and framing understandings of Iraq’s national history in ways designed to promote Kurdish ethno-nationalism.
Attempts to reconstruct history have also been in evidence at the multi-period UNESCO World Heritage Site of Erbil Citadel, from which the KRG forced the eviction of residents from 2007 onwards as it sought to establish the citadel as an icon of its state-building agenda. The KRG is regularly accused by Assyrian and Chaldean communities of appropriating and undermining ancient Assyrian heritage. A common tactic of the KRG has been to use land grabs of Assyrian towns and villages to expand the territory under its control; this concerted programme has led to population displacement, migration and demographic change. This is another example of how heritage predation, whether of Assyrian, Chaldean and Christian-populated areas or multi-period heritage sites, is a direct outcome of competition for land and resources.
Political fractures make it difficult to develop cohesive national plans for the country’s archaeology and heritage. The KRG’s policy of issuing excavation licences to local and international excavation projects without approval from the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities – including licences for projects in ‘disputed territories’ – is a major point of contention.
Archaeology, in this sense, has become tied to competition for wider legitimacy, albeit through the assumed credibility conferred by US and European donor states that fund excavations. Archaeological sites within territories claimed by the KRG, as well as within the formal boundaries (demarcated in 2003) of the KRI more generally, have been instrumentalized as part of the aims of the political elite’s territorial expansionism in northern Iraq: namely, to facilitate political legitimation and separatism, and as part of resource control. Museums in the KRI too, including in Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah, have also been politicized and have promoted new ethno-nationalist histories that intentionally seek to separate the KRI and the history of that area from the rest of Iraq.
US and European cultural institutions have generally been dismissive of these issues, though their involvement is not without its problems. The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities has commonly complained that internationally funded projects, including those involving foreign excavation teams, have neither sought permission to work in the country nor shared their research, findings and lists of extracted artefacts. In other cases, the operators of rehabilitation projects funded by the US or European countries, including in ‘disputed territories’, have not properly consulted the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities and have regularly bypassed central state institutions altogether. In some cases, artefacts extracted in such excavations have been illicitly transferred to the KRI and distributed among its museums. In some cases, the exact history and labelling of artefacts and archaeological sites have been modified by KRG officials and archaeologists to suit ethno-nationalist politics and the construction of new histories. Many cases abound of ancient Assyrian sites and artefacts being redesignated to reflect narratives that align with the political objective of asserting the Kurds as a distinct and historical ethnic group in the region.
There are major repercussions for Iraq’s sovereignty. For example, a case of heritage predation has involved manuscripts from Mosul that are now being held in the KRI; digital copies of these manuscripts have been transferred to US and European funding organizations and libraries without the knowledge of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities. The fact that US and European cultural institutions compete for such transfers of knowledge, without the approval of central state authorities, represents an emerging point of contention that has not been addressed. In other cases, manuscripts and rare books from Iraq have been taken out of the country altogether for conservation, again without the knowledge of central state authorities. One example was a 500-year-old Christian manuscript that was restored and returned to a church in the province of Nineveh during Pope Francis’s visit to Iraq in 2021. Indeed, it was only during the Pope’s visit that the Iraqi government and other central state institutions were informed of the manuscript’s existence.
Some such cases have involved US organizations such as the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, located at Saint John’s University in Minnesota. While its work in the KRI has safeguarded significant manuscripts from Mosul and other areas, the absence of communication and coordination with the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities has reinforced Iraq’s fractured cultural heritage landscape and exacerbated tensions between the SBAH and heritage institutions in the KRI. Significantly, while knowing that cultural heritage is the property of the Iraqi state, US and European cultural organizations in several fields have opted to deal with the KRG directly.
There are also unresolved challenges in relation to thousands of cultural objects, including cuneiform tablets and seals, in the possession of museums in the KRI. These were purchased on the black market or confiscated at Iraq’s internal KRI-managed borders, in a scheme sponsored by Hero Talabani, the wife of the late Jalal Talabani (the former president of Iraq from 2006 to 2014 and co-founder of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan political party), to prevent their removal from the country. The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities has yet to receive a list of those cultural objects, many of which were looted from the Iraq Museum in the spring of 2003 or plundered from archaeological sites in the following months and years. The SBAH, which has no real political power or party backing, has been unable to assert authority over Iraq’s cultural heritage in the KRI. The current situation is one requiring high-level negotiations between stakeholders.
