Iraq asks Hoover to return records
The Iraqi National Library and Archives has asked Stanford’s Hoover Institution to return Baath Party records acquired in early 2008 on a five-year loan — a request Hoover is resisting because it doesn’t deem security in Baghdad sufficient to ensure the documents’ security.
The records consist of more than seven million documents that once belonged to Iraq’s Baath Party and security forces, which ruled the country from 1968 until its overthrow by U.S. and coalition forces in 2003. The documents came to Hoover via the Iraq Memory Foundation (IMF), a Washington, D.C.-based group that entered Baghdad in 2003 to protect historical records.
Richard Sousa, the director of Hoover’s library and archives, brokered the agreement with the foundation, which agreed to store the Baath records in a Hoover archive until conditions in Baghdad are sufficient to ensure the archive’s security.
“We have documents from the Iraqi ministry saying Hoover can hold on to these while we [the ministry] find a safe haven for them,” Sousa said. “Now, even though the Iraqis say things are better, it’s certainly not clear to everyone that the situation is better.”
Indeed, several scholars have, in light of the request, lamented the security in Baghdad, where the National Library and Archives is located.
“Circumstances are unstable in Iraq — there are different actors with a variety of motives and the ability to ensure the physical integrity of the documents is questionable,” said Larry Diamond ‘73 M.A. ‘78 Ph.D. ‘80, a Hoover senior fellow and former adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. “If you’re a Baath terrorist and you know these records have been physically returned to Iraq and are sitting in building X or basement Y, that’s going to be a very inviting target.”
Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies and an Iranian exile, expressed concern that the records, if returned, could be used for political means.
“My fear is that, if the rest of the region is any example, those in power will use these documents for scoring political points against opponents,” Milani said. “I would hope that they would go back to a democratic Iraq that will make them readily available to scholars, equally available to scholars and safely available to scholars.”
“It doesn’t take an area expert to really see that Iraq today is not a very safe place for these kinds of valuable documents,” he added.
The director of the Iraqi National Library and Archives, Saad Eskander, has made the request not only to Hoover — which he and a delegation did in person earlier this month — but also to the National Archives in Washington, which currently stores a Jewish archive, and to the Pentagon and the CIA, which house other Iraqi records.
“This was the first time that Iraq presented an official demand to retrieve all the documents, not only the Jewish archive,” Eskander told Reuters last week.
Still, according to an e-mail to The Daily from Kanan Makiya, the founder of IMF, there is a “deep rift” within the Iraqi Ministry of Culture about whether or not any of the records should be returned now.
Makiya said that in an Iraqi radio program that aired last Thursday, which he heard in Erbil, Iraq, “a deputy minister of culture, senior to Eskander and his team who visited Hoover, tore into his colleagues’ allegations, supporting enthusiastically the IMF and Hoover’s role.”
Eskander did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite the back-and-forth, Sousa has maintained since the Baath records arrived at Hoover that the documents belong to the Iraqi people and will be returned.
“From the start, these papers belong to the Iraqi people,” he said.
Scholars who now work with the records access digitized copies; the originals are kept in an undisclosed location. Sousa said “most” of the archive has already been digitized.
“We have no other case where an entire ruling party’s archives are found in one place and are being rigorously, systematically catalogued and being made available to scholars,” Milani said of the digitization project.
Diamond said digitization of the archive will likely appeal to both scholars in the United States and the Iraqi people.
“Nationalism is very strong in Iraq, so the sense that their treasures or their precious history be returned to the country is probably something that would resonate with a lot of Iraqis,” he said. “But I think the goal of preserving a complete historical record is also something that will resonate with them.”
Talks between Hoover and the Iraqi National Library and Archives will continue next month, when Sousa and Eskander are set to meet in Washington.
“We’re working with them to try to find a time when these things should go back,” Sousa said.
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My Name is Saad Eskander, the Director General of Iraq National Library & Archives.
I must tell you that the writer of the article never contacted me. I do not know him. I do not know why he lied and gave the opportunity to the others to lie about the whole issue of the seized Iraqi records. The people he cited said nothing about respecting Iraqi archival legislations or about the right of the victims and indeed all the Iraqis to have access to their own records. The central issue is not US scholars’ access to illegally seized records, but the right of the Iraqis and their institutions to use them in service of transitional justice, national reconciliation and democratization,…
About all those who aired their narrow-minded veiws, I emphasize that we are determined to return all our cultural properties, regardless of what the scavengers of our records say or do.
All those who have seized, stored or had access to the Ba’ath are abusers. Practically, they are not much different from Saddam’s security agents who made the records in order to abuse their use.
Saad Eskander
Fascinating topic. Comfortable copy,
http://www.latestinternationalnews.com/2009/05/19/iraqis-dont-jog-or-spin-but-fitness-clubs-are-in/
Give them back, there’s not much value in them anyway. Just about all the players have been deactivated so what’s the point? The chances of their long term survival is is probably much greater if they remain at Hoover, but Hoover should keep that storage capacity open for other things.
first could understand the infrastructure of the past government PXU69…can serve as evidence in future tribunal cases… unfortunately doesn’t have the necessary protection needed in Baghdad, with some “players” and their political agendas.
BTW Saad, you claimed the docs were here illegally yet, I heard through the grapevine their presence here is completely supported by the Iraqi Prime Minister’s and Iraqi President’s offices. In fact there is documentation to support it. Are you claiming that the document is a forgery? or are you claiming the PM and President’s office did something illegal?
J
(Iraqi?) Memory Foundation’s decision to ship the records to the US, came after it failed to make money out of the records in Iraq. One of its grand propagand projects was cancelled. No Iraqi was willing to cooperate or fund its operations, because of its close association with the occupiers. That is the reason why IMF left Iraq permenantly. IMF exploited the chaotic situation at the top and the ignorance of some of the newly appoint Iraqi officials to get an approval for the shipment of the records to the US. It was the advissers of the then PM who persuaded him to give his approval. He did not know that his approval goes against the articles of the Iraqi Penal Law number 111 for the year 1969. This law states clearly that no one has the right to seize, hide, destroy, disclose, change or transfer the records from their original places. Those who violate the terms of the law will be punished severely. In other words, only the Iraqi Parliament has the right to give a permission though enacting a new law. Moreover, IMF is not an Iraqi NGO. Do not believe its directors when they claim that the IMF is registered in Iraq. IMF is first and for most an American organization and closely connected to the Department of State and the former US Administration in Iraq. The Department of State funded IMF’s projects and provided it with continuing political support and the Pentagon with logistic assistance.
Please note, contrary to Makkiy’s claim, we have protected tens of millions of our old records and received tens of millions of new records of the Saddam regime. No single record lost or was damaged. We, the Iraqis, are the rightful owners of the records. Any decision must be made by us, not by the occupiers and all those who have been associated with them.
Makkiya and his associates have betrayed their country and undermined the sovereignty of Iraq. Unlike him and them, we have been very hard and extremely difficult condition to build a better future for all people. Unlike him and them, we did not just give up to the forces of darkness and fanaticism. We have made some considerable sacrifices, including the murder of six of our staff. We will not change our campaign whatever the cost…
I am having a hard time believing that this guy is who he says he is; Could the author validate? I could claim to be the President of the US. catch my drift…
Dear Margret
You can ask Mr. Ritchard Sousa, whose name is mentioned in the article, and with whom I have been in communication.
you can also ask the writer of the article, Devin Banerjee, who contacted me after the publication of the article.
Dear Mr. Eskander,
As much as I appreciate your response. Ask them what? to vouch that this is you? I would be more confident seeing the author of this article confirming your identity, than someone quoted with in this article.