This paper analyses activities of Iraq’s main intelligence agency, the Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma, carried out during the 1980s against the Kurdish opposition. I use this historical material in order to make a specific, theoretical argument about the role that the Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma played for the maintenance of the Iraqi state. I argue that the agency’s measures can be divided into knowledge-gathering measures and disciplinary measures. I follow the concept of policing as set out by Foucault, who presents policing as a tool for modern states to preserve raison d’etat. I argue that in the modern Iraqi state, police, in the Foucauldian sense, was best exercised through the Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma. During the 1980s, the Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma applied various methods to the Kurdish population, to reduce security risks. In this context the paper gives two arguments. First, I argue that the Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma acquired knowledge about the Iraqi Kurds and used disciplinary mechanisms to maintain raison d’état. Here, I elaborate the Kurdish rebellion in 1983 within the framework of the Iran-Iraq War. Second, I demonstrate that the Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma’s policing measures against Iraqi Kurds became transnational. I analyze the case of the attempted bomb attack against Iraqi Kurds at the 1980 Kurdish Student Congress in Berlin and argue that with economic and political interests trespassing boarders, also policing became transnational. Eventually, the Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma collaborated with the German Bundesnachrichtendienst to gather knowledge on the Iraqi Kurds in Germany. Research for this paper was conducted in the following archives: Hi?b al-Ba'th al-'Arab? al-Ishtir?k? Records (Ba'ath Party Records), Politisches Archiv, Bundesarchiv, BND-Archiv. Keywords: Raison d’état, Critical Realism, Intelligence Cooperation, Bundesnachrichtendienst, Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma, Iraqi Kurds, Kurdish Rebellion 1983, Bomb Attack on Kurdish Student Congress in Berlin 1980