CPTnet
1 September 2006

IRAQ: Remembering Anfal

by Jan Benvie

On Monday 21 August 2006, the trial of Saddam Hussein for crimes committed
during the Anfal campaign began. Government offices in the Kurdish north
closed for five minutes as a mark of respect for the victims of Anfal. (The
campaign takes its name from Surat Al-Anfal in the Qur'an; the former Iraqi
Baathist regime used it as a code name for a genocidal campaign against the
Kurdish community of southern Kurdistan. )

I was at a government office to extend my visa, and we stood outside for the
five minute silence. At first it seemed inconvenient, another delay in the
interminable process of obtaining a visa. But standing in the silent crowd I
thought about some stories Kurdish friends had told us.

Beside me was Kawa, a Kurdish friend, who had been nine years old when he
witnessed the chemical attack on Halabja on 13 May 1987, which killed 5,000
civilians.1 He had watched from a nearby hillside. People fled to their bomb
shelters as Iraqi war planes flew overhead, then other planes came. They
first dropped a colored gas to check air direction, to ensure the gas would
spread over Halabja, then they released the cargo of poisoned gas. Many were
overcome by fumes before they could escape their shelters. Others, like Kawa
and his family, survived and fled to Iran.

I wondered how many standing beside me had suffered from the Ba'athists'
genocidal campaigns.2

Oppression of the Kurds had begun on long before Anfal. In the 1970s the
Iraqi government forcibly deported Kurdish families from oil-rich areas
around Kirkuk and replaced them with Arab families, often poor Shia from the
south, promised work and cheap housing. Some Kurds were resettled elsewhere
in Iraq; others disappeared.

During the Iran/Iraq war (1980-88) Saddam, who became president in 1979,
argued that the Kurds were supporting Iran. Killings, deportations and the
destruction of Kurdish villages continued. The international community saw
Saddam as a bulwark against Iranian-style Islamic fundamentalism. They not
only turned a blind eye, but also supplied him with weapons.

During "Anfal," from 23 February to 6 September 1988, males considered to
be of military age, some as young as seven or as old as seventy, were
killed. Women and children were sent to "relocation" camps, where many died
in the appalling conditions. Kenneth Roth, of Human Rights Watch, has
referred to "100,000 Kurdish men and boys machine-gunned to death during the
1988 Anfal genocide."3

In the five minute silence, I remembered other Kurdish friends: Acram, who,
as a child, had fled over the mountains and into the relative safety of a
refugee camp in Iran; Othman who had wept as he told us of a mother who
years later still prepares the beds of her young sons, taken from her during
Anfal.

The people here are happy and friendly, but I have discovered that the
sadness they carry much pain underneath their demeanor. I hope the trial of
Saddam Hussein brings some healing.

1. news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/ /2/hi/middle_east/4877364.stm, 2006/04/04

2. In December 2005 a court in The Hague ruled that the killing of thousands
of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s was an act of genocide.

3. Roth, "Show Trials Are Not the Solution to Saddam's Heinous Reign," The
Globe and Mail, 18 July 2003.

4. Kendal Nezan, "When our 'friend' Saddam was gassing the Kurds," Le Monde
Diplomatique, March 1998, http://mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn.