Towards a Whole History: Archiving and Annotating Iraqi Ba'th Party Documents

FAIN: PC-50137-07

Iraq Memory Foundation (Washington, DC 20006-1533)
Hassan Mneimneh (Project Director: July 2006 to April 2009)

A project to archive and annotate more than six million pages of documents of the former Saddam Hussein regime and Ba'th Arab Socialist Party in Iraq (1991-2003) at a documentation center to be established in the city of Erbil, in northern Iraq.

The Iraq Memory Foundation proposes to archive, preserve and annotate more than six million pages of documents of the former Saddam Hussein regime and Ba'th Arab Socialist Party in Iraq at a Documentation Center in the city of Erbil in Northern Iraq. For thirty-five years, the Saddam Hussein regime terrorized the Iraqi people, erasing civil society and creating a "Republic of Fear". These documents provide a view of the inner workings of the party on a day-to-day basis, including membership files, correspondence, propaganda pieces, school registers and intelligence agency files. As Iraq struggles to rebuild and Iraqis struggle to find new identities in a democratic Iraq, these documents will play an important role in giving Iraqis, and scholars across the world, a view towards a whole history of Iraq during the Saddam Hussein regime.