The Iraq History Project (IHP) has gathered over 7,000 detailed personal narratives that provide insight into how three decades of brutal repression severely impacted the lives of the Iraqi people. IHP staff have selected a small number of these testimonies to be presented in Arabic, Kurdish and English in publications and radio programs.

These testimonies document the direct personal experience of massacres, assassinations, torture, rape, chemical weapons attacks, and other serious violations. The testimonies present the stories of men, women, and children from all over Iraq and representing all major ethnic and religious groups including Shi’a Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Sunni Kurds, Shi’a Kurds, Turkoman, Assyrians, Yazidis and others. Some testimonies reveal the stories of those who resisted the prior regime as political activists, Peshmurga, religious leaders, and others. Others recount those targeted indiscriminately through systematic campaigns of terror, or those targeted as a means of punishing husbands, fathers, brothers and other family members. Some testimonies provide the stories of perpetrators, including torturers, whose actions allowed the regime to engage in systematic atrocities.

While these stories and the thousands of other testimonies collected by the IHP reflect diverse experiences, they are linked in their common engagement with the profound human suffering resulting from decades of authoritarian rule. While the names of individuals, organizations, and military and security units are included in the database and play a significant role in the IHP’s analytic work, the featured testimonies have been edited to preserve the anonymity of the interviewee, as well as individuals mentioned by name.

To search the featured testimonies from the Iraqi History Project, please select from the following menu: