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An archive from the Saddam era may reopen wounds in Iraq - Walla! news

2020-09-13T18:53:06.480Z


"Five million Ba'athist internal documents found after the overthrow of the regime in 2003 and passed to the United States were secretly returned to the country. Many want to open them to the public so they can know what happened to their loved ones, others fear revenge and an attempt to purge the dictator." The Iraqi people "


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An archive from the Saddam era may reopen wounds in Iraq

"Five million Ba'athist internal documents found after the overthrow of the regime in 2003 and passed to the United States were secretly returned to the country. Many want to open them to the public so they can know what happened to their loved ones, others fear revenge and an attempt to purge the dictator." The Iraqi people "

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  • Iraq

  • Saddam Hussein

  • United States

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Sunday, 13 September 2020, 13:53

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A variety of documents from his reign Saddam Hussein were returned to Iraq and re-exposed the country's painful past.

Five million internal documents of the Ba'ath party may give many hope for clarifying the fate of those close to them, along with the fear of a new bloodshed.



The party documents were found in 2003 at the party's flooded headquarters in Baghdad, a few months after the US invasion that overthrew Saddam.

Two local men were called by American soldiers to decipher the cases in Arabic.

One was Canaan Makia, a veteran opposition activist, and the other was Mustafa al-Khazimi, then a writer and social activist and today the Iraqi prime minister.



"We went into a water-soaked basement with flashlights, because the electricity was off," McKea told AFP.

"Mustafa and I read these documents and realized we had encountered something huge."



The documents included Ba'athist membership forms and correspondence between the party and various government ministries, as well as reports from Iraqi citizens accusing their neighbors of criticizing Saddam.

Other documents raised suspicions that relatives of Iraqi soldiers taken prisoner in the war with Iran were potential traitors.

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The U.S. military will partially withdraw from Iraq by the end of the month, with 3,000 troops remaining

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Some feel nostalgia for his regime.

Saddam Hussein and his deputy (Photo: Reuters)

With the escalation of ethnic violence in Baghdad following the American invasion, Makiya agreed to move the massive archive to the United States during a time that remained controversial.

The documents were digitized and stored at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, which has limited access to local researchers.



However, on August 31, all 48 tons of documents were quietly transferred back to Baghdad and hidden in an unknown location, according to an Iraqi source.

The source also said that none of the governments had announced the transfer, and that Baghdad had no plans to open the archive to the public.



This may disappoint thousands of families who have a personal interest in the contents of the documents.

"Saddam has destroyed the Iraqi people - one can not simply remain silent about such a thing," said Ayoub a-Zaidi, 31, whose father Sabar disappeared after being drafted into Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991. The family was never notified of his death or capture, and al-Zaidi is full Hopefully the Ba'ath Archive will be able to provide a clue.



"Maybe these documents will be the tip of the iceberg that we can follow to see if he's still alive," said Hasina, 51, Job's mother.

She spent the 1990s pleading with the regime for every shred of information about her husband's whereabouts, and today, hopes for more transparency.

"At this rate I will die before they publish it," she said.



Some argue that the archive could help Iraq prevent its blood-stained history from recurring.

"Many children today say 'Saddam was good,'" said Murdoch Faisal, an Iraqi filmmaker.

Faisal was only 12 days old when his father was arrested in the city of Najaf during a revolt in 1991. Since then his traces have disappeared.

He wants the archives to be opened to silence those who feel nostalgic about the Ba'athist return to power, given the country's political instability today.

"People need to understand how not to create another dictator," Faisal said.

"It's already happening - we have a lot of little dictators today."

Among those who found the documents in 2003 was the current Iraqi prime minister

Disagreements over the Ba'ath party's legacy still divide Iraq, and some of its defenders argue that the publication of the archives will serve to clear up the negative image of Saddam's rule.

"The publication of the archives would prove that the Ba'ath party was patriotic," a former party member told AFP.

"Iraq is not ready for that. It has not yet begun a reconciliation process that will allow this archive to fulfill its role," said Qadim, who reads



Iraq's initiative at the Atlantic Council Research Institute, saying that these disputes are exactly what makes the publication of the archive documents a reckless move



. The documents to write several academic books on Iraqi history and society.



In the information gathered by Kadim, he even found details, including the names of several senior officials at present.

"The Ba'athists have documented everything from jokes to executions. Politicians, tribal leaders, people on the street will start using it against each other," he added.

"Dangerous government portfolios"

Others say parts of the documents could be censored to make them less explosive but still accessible to local academics.

"The least we can do is make them available to Iraqi researchers as they used to be to American researchers," said Masharin a-Shamri, a fellow at the American Brookings Institution who used the archive as part of her doctoral dissertation.



The United States has left in its possession several archives seized after its 2003 invasion, including, according to an Iraqi source, "dangerous government files."



Makiya expressed hope that one day all the bloody events recounted in these documents will be part of Iraq’s distant past.

"We can not remember the glory of 'the land between the two rivers' and the Abbasid Empire, and forget the 35 years of real terror that modern Iraq has gone through," he told AFP.

"It's part of what it means to be Iraqi nowadays, like these romantic things."

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Source: walla

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