US to return Iraqi archives of Jewish expulsion, Anfal campaign to Baghdad in 2021

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq’s minister of culture announced on Sunday that the historical document collections archiving Iraq's genocidal 1980s Anfal campaign against the Kurds and the mass deportation of Jews from the country in the mid-20th century will be returned by the United States to Iraq in 2021.

According to Minister Abdulamir al-Hamdani, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry has signed an agreement with US officials to bring back both the Anfal documents, now in North Carolina, and those from the Jewish deportation, stored in Washington.

“The two archives will be retrieved and displayed in the headquarters of the [Iraqi] Criminal Court,” he said.

“The archives have been digitized, but the hard copy of the document is going to be displayed in several states in the US. After that, they will be returned to Baghdad, as it is within our rights.”

Hamdani pointed out that the Jewish archives “contain detailed state documents for every individual that has been forcibly deported.” He dismissed theories previously voiced by some that they had been tampered with, saying “allegations that someone stole them and then published forged copies are false.”

The history of the Jews in Iraq goes back to King Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylon dynasty.

Following the post-WWII creation of Israel in 1948 and subsequent regional military conflicts, some Middle Eastern nations including Iraq reacted by expelling their Jewish communities. Between 1950 and 1952, Iraq deported roughly 125,000 Jews by airplane to Israel, revoking their Iraqi citizenship and permitting each to bring only one bag with them.

Decades later during the Iran-Iraq war, the regime under Saddam Hussein undertook the Anfal campaign, now commonly recognized as an act of genocide against ethnic Kurds. Led by the infamous Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as “Chemical Ali,” the operation resulted in the deaths of up to 182,000 ethnic Kurds.

A large number of people, including women and children, were forcefully displaced, many transferred to camps in southern Iraq where the government killed them and consigned them to mass graves and burying others alive in the desert. 

In July, a mass grave was discovered in the southern city of Samawa that contains the remains of Kurdish civilians killed as part of the Anfal.

Read More: 171 remains of Kurds unearthed in first mass grave in Iraq's Samawah desert: official

Editing by John J. Catherine