Iraqis take page out of German book

Larger countries like Poland and the Czech Republic have been using the documents since the mid-1990s to prosecute former members of the communist regime - although, as in East Germany, there has been criticism that the effort has not resulted in enough convictions.

Both the Office for Investigation and Documentation of the Crimes of the Communists in Prague and the Institute for National Remembrance in Poland, have investigation wings that track injustices back to 1939. The two countries have already begun coordinating with the East German Stasi Archive, originally named the Gauck Authority after Joachim Gauck, a vicar who initiated public resistance against the communists and became the archive's first director in 1990. Areas of investigation include killings on their shared borders or the fate of foreign nationals arrested in their respective countries.

The progress in documentation is remarkable, considering the fierce political resistance against opening the files in many Eastern Bloc countries. Unlike the former German Democratic Republic, some communist countries - such as Hungary and Romania - couldn't simply dissolve their state security apparatus for fear of instability.

"The old institutions and people stayed the same, and were only modified," says Christian Booss, the Stasi Archive's spokesman. "The old spies sat on the secret files."

Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary all eventually passed laws opening up the secret service files in the 1990s. But the political will is inconsistent, say Birthler officials. Budgets are cut, access laws tightened or loosened depending on the whim of politicians. "There has been polite interest in cooperation, but the cooperation isn't very constant," says Mr. Booss.

In 2002, a Serbian nonprofit agency asked the Birthler Archive for help in drafting a law. After ideas were exchanged and a bill drafted, contact was broken off. The group didn't show up to a meeting last fall of the Warsaw Pact archivists in Romania.

Archive directors in former Eastern Bloc countries hope the European Union's expansion eastward this May changes attitudes. Many of the new members are former Warsaw Pact countries, and the EU insisted on membership criteria requiring the governments of former Eastern Bloc countries to confront their communist past. The idea is for such a re-examination to lead to the formation of a "common community of values," says Booss.

Iraq hopes for the same, says Makiya. At a recent press conference in Berlin, the former exile alluded to Germany's position after both World War II and the cold war in explaining the situation Iraq finds itself in. Reconstruction is not only necessary in Iraqi cities, but in Iraqi minds as well. "An archive like this," says Makiya, "will change the way Iraqis think of themselves in an infinitely better way."

• Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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