An Introduction to Dr. Husam Khalaf’s “The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility” The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility

Abstract

of the Introduction This is an introduction to the following article, “The Cultural Genocide of the Iraqi Archives and Iraqi Jewish Archive and International Responsibility.” It was written by Dr. Husam Abdul Ameer Khalaf in 2017, and I translated it from Arabic to English in 2021. Khalaf contends that the loss of Iraqi archives after Saddam Hussein’s fall and subsequent US occupation in 2003 was cultural genocide. The first part of the article focuses on the losses suffered by official archives, national archives, the Ba’ath Party archives, and the Iraqi Jewish Archive. The second part examines the international laws governing the protection of cultural heritage and the extent to which the US-led Multinational Force was responsible for the loss of Iraqi archives.