Returning Evidence to the Scene of the Crime: Why the Anfal Files Should be Repatriated to Iraqi Kurdistan

  • Bruce P. Montgomery

Abstract

On 22 April 2008, five years after the American invasion of Iraq, the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) issued a joint statement calling for American authorities to repatriate millions of captured intelligence documents and intervene with the “government of Kurdistan” to return the Iraqi Anfal files to the Iraq National Library and Archive in Baghdad. The Anfal files, which chronicle Iraq’s genocide against the Kurds during the mid- to late-1980s, were captured by Kurdish peshmerga in the March 1991 uprisings following the first Gulf War. They were transferred to the United States for safe storage and analysis for human rights crimes with the understanding that the documents were Kurdish property. The SAA and ACA based their statement on the archival principle of the inalienability of national records, a concept that claims that the alienation of national records can only occur through a legislative act of the state. This principle of inalienability, however, is incompatible with the laws of war that allow for the capture of state records during hostilities, conflicts with the international legal regime of human rights regarding the restitution of state security files to a repressive regime that may reuse them, and contradicts the original agreement between American and Kurdish authorities governing ownership of the Anfal files. Indeed, with the growing appearance of a new Iraqi repressive regime – with one faction ruling at the expense of the others – there is considerable danger in repatriating the Anfal files and Hussein’s archive of atrocity to the ruling theocrats in Baghdad before political reconciliation takes root. Reasons of historical patrimony and provenance also argue for the return of the Anfal documents to Iraqi Kurdistan.

RÉSUMÉ

Le 22 avril 2008, cinq ans après l’invasion américaine de l’Iraq, la Society of American Archivists (SAA) et l’Association of Canadian Archivists (ACA) ont émis une déclaration commune demandant aux autorités américaines de rapatrier les millions de documents du renseignement saisis et d’intervenir auprès du « gouvernement du Kurdistan » afin de retourner les dossiers de l’Anfal iraquien à la Iraq National Library and Archive, à Bagdad. Les dossiers de l’Anfal, qui documentent le génocide iraquien des Kurdes durant la deuxième moitié des années 1980, avaient été saisis par les peshmergas kurdes pendant les insurrections de mars 1991 suite à la première guerre du Golfe. Ils ont été transférés aux États-Unis pour entreposage sécuritaire et pour les analyses dans l’optique des crimes contre l’humanité, tout en demeurant propriété kurde. La SAA et l’ACA ont basé leur déclaration sur le principe archivistique de l’inaliénabilité des documents nationaux, concept qui affirme que l’aliénation des documents nationaux ne peut se faire que par un acte législatif de l’état. Ce principe de l’inaliénabilité, cependant, est incompatible avec les lois de la guerre qui permettent la saisie de documents d’état pendant les hostilités; il entre en conflit avec le régime légal international en matière de droits humains au sujet de la restitution des dossiers de sécurité d’état à un régime répressif qui pourrait s’en servir à nouveau; et il contredit l’entente d’origine entre les autorités américaines et kurdes au sujet du droit de propriété des dossiers de l’Anfal. En effet, étant donné l’apparence montée d’un nouveau régime répressif en Iraq – avec une faction qui gouverne au détriment des autres – il y a un danger considérable de rapatrier les dossiers de l’Anfal et les archives des atrocités d’Hussein aux théocrates au pouvoir en Iraq avant qu’aucune réconciliation politique n’ait pu s’enraciner. Les notions de patrimoine historique et de provenance encouragent aussi le retour des documents de l’Anfal au Kurdistan iraquien.

Author Biography

Bruce P. Montgomery

Bruce P. Montgomery is Faculty Director of Archives at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the founding director of the UCB Human Rights Initiative and a founding member of the International Federation of Human Rights Centers and Archives. He has served as an analyst of classified documents for the US government, and is currently a consultant for the Institute for Defense Analysis, a Pentagon-funded think tank, to help set up a digital resource centre to make available electronic copies of captured al Qaeda, Taliban, and Saddam Hussein-era records. He is the author of three books, including The Bush-Cheney Administration’s Assault on Open Government; Subverting Open Government: White House Materials and Executive Branch Politics; and his most recent, Richard B. Cheney and the Rise of the Imperial Vice Presidency. Articles by Montgomery have appeared in many lead­ing journals, including Presidential Studies Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, Human Rights Quarterly, Peace Review, Archivaria, American Archivist, and the Washington Post, among others.

Published
2010-05-19
How to Cite
Montgomery, Bruce P. 2010. “Returning Evidence to the Scene of the Crime: Why the Anfal Files Should Be Repatriated to Iraqi Kurdistan”. Archivaria 69 (May), 143-71. https://www.archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13264.