Saad Eskander, director of the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad, issued a plea to the international library community August 9 for support in his efforts to resist the unlawful entry of Iraqi national guard troops, which, he believes, endangers the INLA’s staff and collections. According to Eskander, a group of guards forced their way into the main building August 8 as the government declared a four-day curfew, which kept the director in his home.
British Library Board Secretary Andy Stephens circulated an e-mail message from Eskander the day after the forced entry. “I need all the support I can get from around the world,” Eskander said. Urging Stephens to alert British newspapers to his situation, he described what had occurred.
“This morning, August 8, a group of Iraqi national guard has broken into the National Library and Archive’s main building. By this action, the national guards have violated the instructions of the Council of Ministers, which clearly assert that Iraqi security and armed forces cannot enter any state-run institution without a prior approval of the government and the concerned authorities,” Eskander said. “I talked to the commander of the national guards by phone, asking him politely to leave the building immediately. He refused to consider the idea of evacuating the building, claiming that he had orders from his superiors and the Americans to occupy the INLA. He justified his action by claiming that the national guards wanted to protect Shi’i visitors of the holy shrines of al-Kadhimiyah, which is 30 km away from the INLA!”
Eskander went on to point out that on August 6 a U.S. military patrol had also entered the library without his permission. “The commander of the patrol interrogated the INLA’s guards and ordered them to show their IDs,” Eskander said, noting that “this was not the first time in which U.S. patrols entered the INLA without my permission. In July, U.S. soldiers entered the INLA three times. It seems clear to me that the actions of U.S. soldiers have encouraged Iraqi national guards to do the same, i.e., entering and then occupying the building by force.”
“My staff and I have spent a lot of time and efforts on the reconstruction of the INLA after it was destroyed in mid-April 2003,” Eskander said. “The reckless actions of U.S. Army and the Iraqi National Guards will put the INLA’s staff and library and archival collections in real danger. I hold both U.S. Army and the Iraqi National Guards responsible for all future material damages, cultural losses, and human casualties.”
American Libraries interviewed Eskander in April about his struggle to return the National Library to some semblance of normalcy. The British Library has been posting his diary blog since the end of 2006. “Eskander’s blog provides cogent and unmediated witness to the perilous and tragic conditions that the Iraq National Library and Archive and its staff are operating under,” said Stephens.
An August 9 Associated Press story noted Eskander’s position that while “it is not uncommon for American and Iraqi forces to temporarily commandeer houses and buildings for use as rest stops or lookout posts during military operations,” the library and archives “should be exempt from such activities, since it is a repository for the national heritage.” .
Posted on August 10, 2007.