ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – On Iraq’s Armed Forces Day on Monday, the minister of Anfal affairs in the autonomous Kurdistan Region refused to honor the holiday, instead opening a photographic exhibition of anti-Kurdish atrocities committed by the military under Saddam Hussein.
“We wanted to let them (the military) know that the history of the Iraqi army has been the suppression of the Kurdish people and others; what the Iraqi army has left was destruction,” said Aram Muhammad, the Minister of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
The Anfal campaign refers to the brutal suppression of Iraq’s Kurds by previous regimes, including Saddam’s. More and more, Saddam’s brutality against the Kurds is being internationally recognized as genocide.
Muhammad said that, instead of honoring the Iraqi army, the Kurds should pay their respects to their own Peshmarga forces.
“We should have a day for the Peshmerga of Kurdistan, which for years have been in a struggle to defend our land,” said Muhammad, who inaugurated the exhibition.
“There is not a single thing in our memories to make us respect this day,” said an employee at the Anfal ministry.
Meanwhile, several newly-elected Kurdistan MPs went to the parliament building in Kurdistan on Monday to show their opposition to the holiday being observed by the Kurds.
“Since the formation of the Iraqi army the people of Kurdistan have only one experience with this army, and that is a bitter one,” said MP Ari Harsin, who went to parliament and stayed at the courtyard because the building itself was closed due to the holiday.
“I don’t understand the logic behind making the Army Day a holiday, and remembering our terrible experiences with the military,” he added.
The Kurds especially suffered under Saddam’s brutal rule, enduring the destruction of their villages, massacres, torture and the infamous 1988 poison gas attack against the town of Halabja that killed 5,000 Kurdish civilians.
A proposed bill in the Kurdistan parliament has scrapped the Armed Forces Day from the list of future public holidays.
Opposition to the holiday is also common among the people of Kurdistan, who believe that the Kurds should honor their own Peshmarga forces.
“It shouldn’t be a public holiday since the Iraqi army has hurt and killed people,” said Roshna Ismail, a university graduate from Sulaimani.
“It was the army that launched the Anfal campaign against the Kurds and destroyed Iraq. We like to have a neutral army,” said another Sulaimani resident.
Britain helped to establish the Iraqi Army in January 1921. Since the Iraqi army has involved in many atrocities against the Kurds in Iraq, including the genocide Anfal campaigns and use of chemical gas in 1988 in Halabja and other areas, where hundreds thousands of people perished.
