The North Iraq Dataset (NIDS) files: Northern Iraq under Baʿthist rule, 1968–911

Abstract

The first archival collection from Saddam Hussein’s regime to receive the attention of researchers in the early 1990s was the large number of documents secured by Iraqi Kurdish rebels in the March 1991 uprising. The documents have been referred to variously as the Iraqi secret police files, the Anfal files, the North Iraq records, and are today known as the North Iraq Dataset (NIDS). In addition to being the first of several collections of Baʿth-era documents removed from Iraq by the US military as a result of the 1991 and 2003 wars, the NIDS was also the first collection returned to the country by the US government in 2005. This article discusses the history of the NIDS, the contents of the archive, efforts to digitize and study the documents, along with investigating the fate of the original records.