A Kurdish delegation will visit the University of Colorado Boulder campus Sept. 29 and 30 to deliver a public talk on the political situation in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and receive an electronic copy of important documents captured by Kurdish rebels in 1991 but removed from Iraq for safekeeping and analysis.
Known as the Captured Iraqi Secret Police Files, the documents contain evidence of Iraq鈥檚 genocidal Anfal campaign against the Kurdish minority population in the late 1980s, including repeated use of chemical weapons.
鈥淭hese historical documents have great meaning to the Kurds because they reveal what brutality transpired and how it was carried out,鈥� said Curator Bruce Montgomery, who negotiated with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee to acquire the files for 抖阴旅行射-Boulder鈥檚 Human Rights Archive.
The collection has been part of the University of Colorado Libraries Archives and Special Collections since early 1998 when 18 metric tons of documents were transferred to 抖阴旅行射-Boulder from the National Archives with the approval of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At the same time, Montgomery obtained an electronic copy of the 5.5-million-page collection from the Defense Intelligence Agency鈥檚 Documentation Exploitation Division, which had scanned the documents for intelligence.
Members of the delegation coming to 抖阴旅行射-Boulder include Woshiar Rasul Mohammed Amin, adviser to the Sulaimaniyah governor and former member of the Sulaimaniyah Provincial Council; Professor Ferdinand Hennerbichler, faculty of languages and humanities at the University of Sulaimaniyah and a former Austrian diplomat; Mohammed Fatah Mohammed, member of the General Directorate for Culture, Sport and Youth of the Sulaimaniyah Governorate; and Ako M. Wahbi, international board member of the Zheen Archive Center, where the repatriated files will be housed.
The four delegates will speak at听a talk, 鈥淭he Future of the Kurds and Iraq: Confronting the Threat of ISIS,鈥� on Monday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. The campus event, hosted by the Conference on World Affairs Athenaeum, is free and open to the public but attendees must pre-register on a first-come, first-served basis at听听while space is available.
In addition to the public talk addressing the current political upheaval in Iraq, Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano will host a private ceremony to officially hand over an electronic copy of the documents, which will be taken to the Zheen Archive Center in Sulaimaniyah, located in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The ceremony will signify the first act of restitution of captured Saddam Hussein documents in more than 20 years of internal upheaval, rebellion and war.
Produced by Hussein鈥檚 regime, the Iraqi military and security information was seized by Kurdish rebels from Iraqi secret police stations, interrogation and torture centers, and prisons during the March 1991 uprising immediately following the Persian Gulf War.
An agreement among the rebels, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Human Rights Watch resulted in the materials being airlifted out of Iraq under U.S. military cover, where they were put in the temporary custody of the National Archives and Records Administration.听
The files span the period from the 1960s to 1991 and detail Iraq鈥檚 top leadership, security and intelligence agencies and collaborators. They also contain information on governmental policies, directives and decrees, military operations and troop movements, including the use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War and against the Kurds, elimination of villages, disappearances, collaborators, torture, pro-government Kurdish militias, the Arabization campaign for Kurdish areas and the political and human rights situation during the crisis over Kuwait.
Montgomery has long held that the documents should be repatriated back to the Kurdish people.
鈥淭his repatriation is the result of ongoing efforts and members of the Kurdish delegation are pleased to finally receive a copy of the digital archive,鈥� Montgomery said. 鈥淭he return of the Anfal documents to Iraqi Kurdistan honors the original agreements forged with Kurdish leaders who allowed them to be shipped to the United States for safe storage, analysis and use by the international community to bring Saddam Hussein and others to trial.鈥�
Contact:
Malinda Miller-Huey, 抖阴旅行射-Boulder media relations, 303-492-3115
millerm@colorado.edu
Bryan New, Conference on World Affairs, cwapress@colorado.edu
Bruce Montgomery, Norlin Library, 303-492-7394
bruce.montgomery@colorado.edu
Bruce Montgomery in Norlin Archives. (Photo by Patrick Campbell/University of Colorado)
