Documents of the Iraqi State and the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and the Impact of the 2003 Occupation on them

Abstract

On March 19, 2003, the American forces began their invasion of Iraq to end the rule of Saddam Hussein's regime under the pretext of destroying Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and bringing democracy to Iraq. On 9 April 2003, the invading forces occupied Baghdad, and that was the announcement of the end of Saddam Hussein's regime and the overthrow of the Iraqi state. This invasion had devastating effects on various aspects of life in Iraq politically, economically, socially and culturally. Cultural property has been subjected to systematic and indiscriminate looting and deliberate vandalism by the occupation forces or antiquities gangs that took advantage of the collapse of Iraqi state institutions to wreak havoc on Iraq's precious cultural property. It is necessary to shed light on what happened to cultural property in Iraq, specifically the records and archive of the Iraqi state, which were part of the history of Iraq after April 9, 2003. Some of the Iraqi government institutions' documents were seized by US forces, while the Iraqi archive was subjected to theft and arson.