The archive as an artefact of conflict: the North Iraq dataset

Whiting, R. A. (2021) The archive as an artefact of conflict: the North Iraq dataset. Critical Military Studies, 7(4), pp. 435-449. (doi: 10.1080/23337486.2019.1691409)

Abstract

An uprising in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq in 1991 against the rule of the central government led to the overthrow of the Baʿth regime’s institutions. During the revolt, members of the public and of Kurdish political groups seized large amounts of official records. The regime responded to the revolt brutally and retook the regions within three weeks. However, the records, the bulk of which were created by the government’s security offices, had been hidden away. In the following two years, Kurdish groups reached agreements with the United States government and an international non-governmental organization to ship the records to the US, where they were formed into an archive. Approaching the archive as a site of political struggle, this paper explores how the capture, movement and de-territorialization of the records have shaped the archive. The trajectory of the records illustrates the ways in which their value and potential uses shifted within new socio-political contexts that emerged as a result of the conflict.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Whiting, Ms Rebecca
• Authors: Whiting, R. A.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities
• Journal Name: Critical Military Studies
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• ISSN: 2333-7486
• ISSN (Online): 2333-7494
• Published Online: 18 November 2019
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor and Francis Group
• First Published: First published in Critical Military Studies 7(4): 435-559
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy