The creation of cities is only one example in a long list of cultural evolutions invented in Iraq. From Nineveh in the north, to Babylon and Ur in the south, the remains of ancient cities lie scattered across all of Iraq (Roux 1992). Ancient cities that flourished across Mesopotamia from 3500 bce onwards were left largely abandoned and untouched for millennia until European explorers began excavations in the early nineteenth century. International excavations between Western and Iraqi archaeologists were eventually sponsored by Western organisations and the Iraqi antiquities authorities through the years (Bertman 2003). However, the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s caused the cessation of most joint excavations, with only a slight reprieve between wars until the First Gulf War in 1990, which eventually led to UN sanctions imposed on the entire country. The sanctions caused further complications for cooperative work and, while local experts continued working on sites, cross-cultural relationships were hindered by a lack of international partnerships and an absence of communication with the West (Forsyth 2004; Palumbo 2005; Russell 2001).

The 2003 Iraq War further compounded problems by making it almost impossible for Western cultural heritage experts to engage one on one with their Iraqi counterparts. During the first several years of the war, the Westerners with whom Iraqis came into contact were mostly American combat troops, encounters that were often based on fear and suspicion of the US military's strong-arm tactics (Diamond 2005b; Fallows 2005; Hendrickson & Tucker 2005). With the spread of unrest throughout the country, Iraqi cultural heritage experts encountered difficulties travelling to and gaining access to sites, some of which were being used as military bases, leading to further problems of establishing rapport with the troops. This chapter therefore discusses how the disruption of access to sites by the Iraqi cultural heritage community contributed to a breakdown in social cohesion, as well as creating communal tensions.

Concern about the Iraq War and its impact on the country's cultural heritage sites began before the first US and Coalition troops entered Baghdad. Western cultural heritage experts warned US and UK leaders of the hazards that combat operations would pose to cultural heritage sites in the forms of looting and damage.