Iraqi archivist demands US return seized documents
by wsws.org
Sunday Nov 18th, 2007 4:19 PM
Millions of historical documents seized by US occupation forces from Iraqi
archives remain held in the United States by the CIA and the Pentagon and
must, under international law, be returned to Iraq, Dr. Saad Eskander, the
director of the Iraqi National Library and Archive in Baghdad, told an
audience at Columbia University in New York City on November 12. By Sandy
English
17 November 2007
Eskander stressed that the taking of these documents threatened the Iraqi
people with the loss of their historical memory.
The Iraqi National Library and Archive (INLA) functions as one of the major
cultural institutions in the Middle East. It is a repository for government
and historical documents from many periods and is the central location for
research into the history of the Iraqi people.
Arsonists destroyed much of the library and archive on April 14, 2003
shortly after the occupation of Baghdad by American-led forces. The entire
Old Library wing was almost completely burnt. The fire also desolated the
microfilm collection of periodicals and other documents.
A portion of documents removed for safekeeping by Islamic clerics faced
another disaster. These were stored in the basement of the Board of Tourism,
which was deliberately flooded by looters. By the autumn of 2003, the
documents had been moved to a space above ground, according to a 2005
report, "where the Library of Congress mission saw them in November
exhibiting 'extensive and active mold growth.'"
Since then, the INLA's compound has been bombed and shot at, and its staff
have been threatened and beaten. Five of them have been killed in the last
year and a half. For their safety, employees are discouraged from leaving
premises during working hours.
The Iraqi government routinely ignores the INLA's importance as a cultural
center. In August Iraqi security forces "positioned themselves on the roof
of the library and dismantled the building's main gate and smashed doors and
windows inside the main building," according to a CBS News report based on a
communication from Eskander.
Stanley Cohen, president of the Scone Foundation, which co-sponsored
Eskander's lecture at Columbia, introduced him by noting that the Bush
administration had played a critical role in extinguishing historical memory
in the Untied States as well.
Cohen was referring to the notorious 2001 Executive Order 13233 that gutted
the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which allowed for the public access to
presidential documents, and to the 2003 Executive Order 13291 that delayed
the declassification of millions of government documents.
Cohen worried that the history of the last six years is incomplete, that
documents that have been withheld will ultimately be destroyed. These
Executive Orders, he noted, reversed the presumption of disclosure of public
documents. While archivists have vigorously protested them, Cohen observed
that they were "Perhaps the first casualty in the decline of a free and open
society."
Eskander began by giving a brief history of the difficulty in preserving
historical documents in Iraq under British colonialism, the monarchical
regime, and then under the republican and Baathist nationalist regimes.
Eskander then reviewed the disaster of April 2003: the National Archive lost
60 percent of its documents, the National Library lost 25 percent of its
books, and over 95 percent of its rare books. The groups that had attacked
the institution had been, on the one hand, professional thieves looking for
valuable books, and on the other hand, ordinary Iraqis who wanted to know
the fate of their relatives under the Baathist regime.
The arsonists, who burned the INLA and destroyed many documents from the
Republican period, have widely been acknowledged to be Baathist operatives
who were protecting the perpetrators of crimes against the Iraqi people.
Extremely significant was Eskander's observation that British and American
troops had seized millions of documents from the secret police archives. The
Baathist Ministry of the Interior, for example, had more documents in
basements than existed in the entire National Archive collection.
He said that it was well known that many of these documents were used by the
Americans to blackmail the secret police operatives of the former regime
into working for the occupation.
These documents are now in the United States, presumably held by the CIA and
the Pentagon. Eskander highlighted their importance for understanding Iraqi
history and to the Iraqi people. "We need to compensate the victims" of the
Hussein regime, he said.
Eskander outlined the way in which government documents that do remain in
Iraq have been misused or ignored. De-Baathification, for example, was not
supported by documentary evidence, and was subject to the whims of the
partisan groups and individuals.
He also noted the many published documents violated the privacy of victims,
and that the manner in which the names of perpetrators have been revealed
has led to an escalation of violence and revenge killings. He spoke of the
uneven government compensation for crimes of the former regime, based on
selected release of documents.
"Without archives, democracy cannot be established," Eskander said. "There
is only oral testimony."
Some individuals, such as the American intelligence asset Ahmed Chalabi,
took Baathist records and have printed them to sell at a profit.
Eskander told the audience that for four years he has tried to persuade the
new government of the importance of archives, but with little result. "The
situation is very bad," he said. Rather than attending to the preservation
of historical memory, "Politicians are raising their salaries and holding
parties in the Green Zone."
He ended by saying that he hoped that educated Americans would pressure the
American government to return seized Iraqi documents. According to
international law, they belong to the Iraqi people and represent an
important part of Iraq's cultural heritage.
In a question and answer period, Eskander was asked if documents were used
in the trial of former regime leaders, such as Saddam Hussein. He said very
few were used in the Dujail trial (for reprisals against the village of
Dujail after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein in July,
1982). Eskander called the execution of Hussein "morally wrong." Better
documentary evidence, he said, was used in the trial over the Anfal
campaigns in which the Baathists, between 1986 and 1989, gassed thousands of
Kurds to death.
In response to another question, Eskander noted the hypocrisy of the Arab
regimes, which condemned the destruction of Iraqi cultural heritage, but
have done little to stop it themselves. He noted that rare books looted from
Iraqi collections are sold openly on the black market in Amman, Jordan.
He also observed that over the last period many pledges of aid and equipment
for the reconstruction of the Iraqi National Library and Archive,
particularly from the American military, had gone unfulfilled.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/libr-n17.shtml
See Also: Iraq's libraries: what recovery from "a national disaster beyond
imagination"? 17 September 2005
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