TerrorismGW Launches ISIS Files Digital Repository

The George Washington University on Monday  launched its ISIS Files repository. The virtual public repository features a selection of the 15,000 digitized pages from the documents collected in Iraq by New York Times journalist Rukmini Callimachi and a team of Iraqi translators. GW’s Program on Extremism formed a partnership with the New York Times in 2018 to make these documents available to the public. The first collections released by GW focus on ISIS ideology and real estate and taxation. 

The Program on Extremism worked with the Times and GW’s Libraries and Academic Innovation division to digitize, translate, and analyze the documents. They then were posted on a new website in their original form, accompanied by English translations. The website also includes an introduction and three reports which analyze and contextualize the documents on a specific topic, written by experts on extremism. GW said it will release future batches of documents in the coming months. Each batch will be accompanied by expert analysis.

The Times delivered the original documents to the Iraqi government through its embassy in Washington after the files were digitized.

GW says that the ISIS Files project team, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, engaged in eighteen months of planning, research, and consultation with some 300 institutions and experts to craft an ethical foundation for this effort. The team did extensive work to preserve and present the information contained in the ISIS Files in an accurate and impartial manner. The GW project team redacted the documents to remove any personally identifiable information. 

The resulting public repository serves as a record of genocide, to aid in a better understanding of one of most dangerous terrorist organizations in decades, providing a sense of how such an entity runs a state, and informing future policies to prevent the rise of the next Islamic State type of group. 

“The launch of the ISIS Files repository is the result of a great spirit of collaboration between GW, The New York Times and the hundreds of experts who shared their wisdom and experience,” Geneva Henry, GW’s dean of Libraries and Academic Innovation, said. “The significant ethical considerations involved with creating public access to these documents called for a deep and critical engagement with many professions, a review of archival guidelines and, most notably, guidance from Iraqi citizens.”

“The ISIS Files pulls back the curtain on the inner workings and organization of one of the most violent terrorist organizations in recent history,” GW Vice President for Research Robert H. Miller said. “This public repository puts thousands of original documents at the fingertips of journalists, scholars and policymakers so they can tell a more complete history and formulate new and effective responses to extremism.”

To coincide with the 29 June launch of The ISIS Files website, the Program on Extremism organized an online public event. Discussing the significance of the files were the New York Times’ Rukmini Callimachi, Program on Extremism director Lorenzo Vidino, Program senior research fellows Devorah Margolin and Hararo Ingram, ISIS Files fellows Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi and Cole Bunzel, Mosul Eye founder and ISIS Files fellow Omar Mohammed, the Second Secretary of the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in Washington, D.C. Safaa Yaseem, and Geneva Henry, the Dean of GW Libraries and Academic Innovation. A recording of the event can be found here.