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Qais Mizher contributed reporting.
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The director of the Baghdad Museum has resigned and moved to Syria because he felt under threat from fundamentalists with ties to the Shiite-led government, according to a Western diplomat. The director, Donny George, is known as a prominent advocate for the preservation of antiquities in Iraq.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, which is in charge of the museum, confirmed that George resigned this month and left Iraq a few days ago. "We think he left Iraq to eventually try to go to the United States or a European country," said the spokesman, Abdul Zahra al-Talaqani.
The Western diplomat, who has some expertise in antiquities, said by telephone on Sunday evening that George had recently told people close to him that he had felt threatened. George was a midlevel official in the Baath Party under Saddam Hussein's government and may be the target of a revenge campaign by conservative Shiites, said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Since Saddam's fall in 2003, hard-line Shiite politicians have pushed for a purging of Baath Party officials from the government, even though many Iraqis joined the party out of social pressure or to advance their careers and not out of ideological motivation. Many Shiites and Kurds feel great hostility toward Baathists, whose top officials, including Saddam, were from the Sunni minority.
The Western diplomat said George was dedicated to saving antiquities. "I think any institution would revere somebody with his skills and abilities," the diplomat said.
George could not be reached by telephone in Damascus. He did not return e-mail messages asking for comment.
George's flight was first reported by The Art Newspaper, a trade publication based in London. George told the newspaper he had fled Iraq because the current government had appointed fundamentalist Shiites to oversee the ministry's antiquities board and no longer had money to pay for the guarding of ancient sites. George, a Christian, spoke to The Art Newspaper from Damascus. The interview was posted on the Internet on Saturday.
George said his position had become untenable over the past year because the new officials in charge of antiquities preservation were followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who led two uprisings against the Americans in 2004. Sadr's allies hold at least 30 seats in Parliament, making him one of the most powerful political forces in Iraq. He also commands the Mahdi Army, a formidable militia. "I can no longer work with these people who have come in with the new ministry," George said. "They have no knowledge of archaeology, no knowledge of antiquities, nothing."
George added that the new appointees were focused exclusively on preserving art from the country's Islamic history and not from earlier periods. Long before Islam arrived here, Iraq was the site of other flourishing civilizations. George said he had come under increasing pressure from ministry officials to sever his contacts with international experts on antiquities.
In addition, he said, the work of preserving ancient sites and relics had come to a stop over the past two years. Though there exists on paper a government force of 1,400 guards assigned to protect various sites, the government will run out of money in September to continue paying the guards, he said. "The coalition has to do something about this," he said, referring to the U.S.-led forces.
Talaqani, the ministry spokesman, accused George of trying to make himself look besieged in order to apply for asylum in the United States or Europe.
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