The Kurddish Genocide: Saddam's Legacy

The Kurdish Genocide: Saddam's Legacy

The al-Anfal Campaign or Operation Anfal, was a genocidal campaign directed toward Kurds by Iraq. Controlled by the regime of Saddam Hussein. The campaign's name originally was taken from Surat al-Anfal in the Qur'an, which was the code name chosen by the former Iraqi Baathist regime for a long string of attacks against the Kurdish armed rebels and the mostly Kurdish population of rural Northern Iraq, conducted between 1986 and 1989.

Al-Anfal is the eighth sura or chapter of the Qur'an. It explains the victory of 319 followers of the new Muslim faith over almost 900 pagans at the battle of Badr in 642 AD. Al Anfal translate literally into "the spoils of war". This was quite possibly seen as all to fitting for a military campaign of extermination and looting commanded by Ali Hassan al-Majid. His orders to his basic infantry units said that taking cattle, sheep, goats, money, weapons and even Kurdish women were legal.

The Anfal campaign was headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein both of which lived in Tikrit. The Anfal campaign included the use of conventional means of war and some not so conventional, such as ground offensives, aerial bombing, systematic destruction of settlements, mass deportation, concentration camps, firing squads, and worst of all, chemical warfare. This last "tool" contributed to the coining of al-Majid's nickname of "Chemical Ali".

Thousands were killed during chemical and conventional attacks stretching from early 1987 through mid 1988. The attacks were only a small portion of the campaign that obliterated almost every Kurdish village in the wide open land of northern Iraq and caused at least a million of the country's estimated 3.5 million Kurdish population to leave. With this loss of lives also came the loss of an important part of history. Certain sources approximated 100,000 to more than 200,000 deaths. It also produced as many as 100,000 widows and an even larger