Iraq National Library and Archive - Iraq War

Iraq War

“In April of 2003, the National Library and Archives (Dar al-Kutub wa al-Watha’Iq), which was located directly across from the Ministry of Defense, had been burned and looted”. The burning and looting appeared to have taken place on two occasions: April 10 and April 12-13. These fires were set professionally with accelerants. A report was later given by Saad Eskander, the director–general of the National Library and Archive, regarding the destruction. He noted that three days before the invasion, library staff were told to destroy all archival material related to the Ba’athist rule. Eskander also reported that the destruction was performed by “a mix of poor people looking for a quick profit, along with regime loyalists intent on destroying evidence of atrocities”.

Due to an iron door having been locked, most of the damage occurred in the main reading room and lobby of the building. “After the first round of destruction, staff and volunteers associated with a cleric named `Abd al-Mun’im welded the door shut and removed as many books as they could transport to the cleric’s al-Haqq Mosque in Sadr (formerly Saddam) City.” In total, an estimated 60 percent of its total archival materials, 25 percent of its books, newspapers, rare books, and most of its historical photographs and maps were destroyed.

Before the destruction, the library and archives were reported to have held 417,000 books, 2,618 periodicals dating from the late Ottoman era to modern times, and a collection of 4,412 rare books and manuscripts. “According to Eskander, Saddam loyalists burned the entirety of the Republican Archive, which contained the records of the Ba'athist regime between the years 1958 and 1979. Also completely destroyed were the Ba'athist court proceedings detailing the charges against and trials of party opponents. Records of Iraq's relations with its neighbors, including Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, are missing. Iraq has accused neighbouring countries of stealing sections of its national archives. In addition to these documents, which would have been of great interest to Iraqi citizens as well as to historians, the INLA lost records and documents from the Ottoman reign, the British occupation, the monarchical era, and much more. The destruction or loss of these materials, according to Eskander, did not occur only during the April 2003 attacks”.

In November 2003, the US Library of congress sent a team to Baghdad that amongst other things also visited the library in its fire damaged state. They entered the building and visited the stacks of the library, which were hidden behind a metal door.