Baghdad statues being pieced together again

Shahryar has recovered his hand and Abu Nuwas will soon be clutching his wine goblet again -- statues damaged during the US-led invasion are being restored to their former glory across Baghdad.

Shahryar, legendary king of Samarkand in "One Thousand and One Nights", is back on his pedestal near a statue of storyteller Sheherazade overlooking the Tigris River, complete with a new hand replaced after vandals hacked it away.

Abu Nuwas, the famed eighth-century poet who wrote about wine and the joys of drinking, will soon recover the bronze cup spirited away  by thieves after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime following the March 2003 invasion.

Craftsmen and artists commissioned by Baghdad municipality are busy restoring the cup and other items that have vanished since US-led troops entered Baghdad more than five years ago.

According to officials and specialists, many statues made of bronze and other materials that adorned the streets of the Iraqi capital were pillaged by thieves who sold the metal.

In July 2003, thieves dismantled the statue of ex-premier Abdel Mohsen Saadun, who was considered a hero of Iraqi independence, and sold it to a foundry owner for 50 US cents a kilogramme (less than 23 cents a pound).

Vandals also attacked statues to obliterate all reminders of the former regime of dictator Saddam, who was executed for crimes against humanity in December 2006.

Such was the fate of a giant Saddam statue which once stood in Firdoos Square in central Baghdad. Dozens of Iraqis pulled it down as US marines swarmed into the capital.

"More than 200 works of art disappeared after the invasion of Baghdad in 2003," art critic Salah Abbas told AFP, adding that a full 30 of them were various representations of Saddam.

According to Abbas, "two thirds of the monuments had been erected in tribute to military and political figures cherished by Saddam, his ruling Baath party, or for the (1980-1988) Iran-Iraq war. They are gone forever."

The Iraqi authorities have no plans to rehabilitate statues that glorified the former regime but the municipality is restoring monuments that pay tribute to such figures as Abu Jaafar al-Mansur, the Abbasid caliph and founder of Baghdad.

"We have put back the statues of Al-Mansur and Shahryar in their places and we have restored (a modern statue known as) 'The Mother'," Baghdad municipality chief Saber al-Issawi told AFP.

Shahryar is the legendary king in the Oriental folk tales in "One Thousand and One Nights" narrated by his wife Sheherazade.

In October 2005, vandals blew up Mansur's bronze head with explosives but two months ago the statue was restored and placed back on its pedestal in the residential neighbourhood named after Baghdad's founder.

Several other works of arts are being repaired ahead of their return to the streets of Baghdad, including a monumental mosaic by Faiq Hassan, a pioneer of modernism in Iraq.

Created after the 1958 revolution that toppled the monarchy, the mosaic is an ode to peace. But during the invasion it was was riddled with bullets and lost many of its multi-coloured mosaics.

Another Baghdad landmark, the Hands of Victory or Victory Arch that was commissioned by Saddam to commemorate the war against Iran, was saved by a group of Iraqi artists who sought help from US-led coalition forces.

For art critic Abbas, the destruction of monuments is not new in Baghdad.

"Whenever a new regime arrives, destroying the (art) of the past is in the soul of Iraqis. It has happened before -- after the fall of the monarchy and each time there was a revolution," Abbas said.

The people "simply don't understand that all this belongs to the country's artistic heritage," he added.