by Doug Pritchard


In 1987-88, Saddam Hussein’s Ba'athist military launched a brutal offensive against the Iraqi Kurds called the "Anfal," a term from the Koran meaning "the spoils of [holy] war." In the final years of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Hussein feared that Iraqi Kurds might ally themselves with Iran. His campaign against the Kurds centered on the destruction of Kurdish villages across Iraq's three northern provinces and the killing or exile of their rural population. The Iraqis used aerial bombing, chemical gas attacks, and mass executions against the Kurds. Kurds say that 180,000 were killed, 90% of their villages destroyed, and one million displaced out of a population of 3.5 million.  The Iraqi government removed the survivors from two-thirds of the Kurdish land areas and concentrated them in the few remaining Kurdish towns and cities under harsh restrictions with few resources.

Even more displacement was to come.  Immediately after the February 1991 defeat of Iraqi forces in the First Gulf War, the U.S. government and Iraqi exiles encouraged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein's regime, and then provided no support for the rebels.  The uprising started in March 1991 in the south with revolts in several cities. Kurds in the north followed suit and took over most major northern cities with little more than small arms.

Within days, the regime counter-attacked with tanks, heavy artillery, bombers, and several army divisions. At least 20,000 Kurds are thought to have died in this immediate attack, and an exodus of vast proportions began.  Up to 500,000 Kurds sought refuge in Turkey and 1.5 million in Iran. Thousands died of exposure and hunger during their flight into the trackless high mountains on Iraq's northern borders. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees described this crisis as the "highest rate of influx" of refugees in the forty-year history of the UNHCR. For three weeks, Turkey, concerned about its own “Kurdish problem.” refused entry to the Iraqi Kurdish refugees, leaving them stranded in exposed, snow-covered mountain passes on the border.

Finally, the U.S., U.N., and Turkey responded with a massive relief effort and set up safe havens back in the Iraqi north to which refugees could return with protection from further attacks by Saddam Hussein's forces.  These havens were the origin of the semi-autonomous Kurdish regional government area. Frustrated by losing control of the region, Hussein cut off all economic assistance and trade with the Kurdish north.

The north was also subject to the economic sanctions that the U.N. imposed on all of Iraq at the U.S.'s behest. So, while they gained a measure of security under western protection, Iraqi Kurds now suffered from the "double sanctions" imposed by Iraq and by the U.N. for the next twelve years until the Second Iraq War in 2003.

(Source: "The Kurds of Iraq," by Kerim Yildiz, 2007, Kurdish Human Rights Project, London, England, pp 25-43)