US to return 17,000 ancient artefacts to Iraq

August 4, 2021

Iraqi historian Abdullah Khorsheed Qader has been working in the field of archaeology since 2000, when he started his master's degree at the Salah-al-Din University in Erbil, northern Iraq, and where he went on to become a professor at the university's department of archaeology.

As a scholar and the director of the Iraqi Institute for the Conservation of Antiquities and Heritage, Qader is elated his country will get back its ancient treasures from the US. "Feeling great and hopeful because of the positive responses from the United States of America," he told DW in an email interview.

On Wednesday, the US announced it was returning 17,000 archaeological artifacts to Iraq. The objects, which are around 4,000 years old and from the Sumerian period, were returned on Thursday onboard the flight of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who was in Washington DC for a meeting with US President Joe Biden.

Calling the restitution "unprecedented," Iraqi culture minister Hassan Nazim said it was "the largest return of antiquities to Iraq" and a "result of months of efforts by the Iraqi authorities in conjunction with their embassy in Washington," he said in a press statement. In 2018, the British government returned ancient objects that were similarly looted after the US invasion and which then appeared in England.