Museum's main mission: Recover its priceless pieces

BAGHDAD — The halls inside Iraq's National Museum are buzzing with activity. Employees are hunched over desks or conferring in small groups.
The exhibit halls, however, are walled off, some with bricks. The museum has yet to open to the public.

"The main job (of the staff) is to recover looted archaeological pieces," says Amira Idan, acting museum director.

Founded in 1923, Iraq's National Museum was among the region's best collections of antiquities.

A looting spree that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq devastated its collections. The museum's staff is hard at work trying to recover the items, many of which made their way into black markets around the world.

An investigation found that more than 13,840 items were missing after the invasion, though the inventory is not complete, says Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos, a classics scholar and Reserve officer who has investigated the thefts and co-authored a book, Thieves of Baghdad.

About 5,400 items have been recovered from eight different countries.

Idan could not predict when the museum would reopen. She says the neighborhood around the museum is dangerous, which is the biggest obstacle to opening to the public.

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