This is an account from an Anfal survivor who was imprisoned at Nugra Salman, the notorious concentration camp located in the desert on the Iraq-Saudi Arabia border.
A group of Anfal survivors from across the Kurdistan Region returned to the site in their desperation to preserve the living evidence of Anfal, a genocidal campaign when the Iraqi regime killed an estimated 182,000 Kurds people in 1988. The survivors had returned to their desert prison to collect the bodies of their loved ones who had been killed and bring them home.
The survivors, disappointed by a lack of action from Baghdad and Erbil, raised funds to buy the land surrounding the prison from Arab farmers. They fear the cultivation of the land has harmed the remains of their loved ones who are buried there.
It was after dark when a Rudaw team, accompanied by dozens of prominent Kurdish intellectuals and genocide experts, reached Nugra Salman where the survivors had already arrived. The Rudaw team had taken two hours to find the death camp in the dark desert.
A makeshift road leads to a large compound with watchtowers at each corner. There were no signs marking the way and locals repeatedly had to remove stones from the road to make way for the bus that transported the Rudaw team and the delegation of Kurdish intellectuals.
“We are going to this place on a positive note, that the Kurds prevailed and sustained their existence even after Anfal, the chemical attack and other atrocities,” said Abubair Karwani, a Kurdish politician and writer.
The question they have now, he said, is whether Anfal is something from the past or is something that could happen again.
Faruq Rafiq, another prominent writer, said the Kurds have much to learn from the experience of the Holocaust and the lessons learned by the Jewish community about preserving the memories. He told Rudaw’s Legel Ranj program that the new state of Iraq is no different from the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Husein.
“They committed Anfal against us because we are Kurdish. So long as we insist that we are Kurds and are different, there is always a possibility for another Anfal. This is more so because the mindset in Baghdad has not changed,” Rafiq said.
He believes that the Kurdish understanding of what happened four decades ago is wrong. “We are living in Anfal, a slow Anfal. We have lost our awareness. We do not feel like we are experiencing Anfal. We have been deceived, to come to the impression that we have put [the atrocity] behind us.”
“The force that committed Anfal is now back in full force and they want to repeat it… Something new was founded, named the new Iraq state. But to start with, there is no state in the first place. Several groups have come together and imposed their rule. They have their own militia,” Rafiq said, calling the present day Iraqi government a kleptocracy.
“We should forget the fantasy that Anfal was at the hands of the Baathists. It was committed by the majority and the majority have not reviewed their views on Kurds.”
Muhsin Adib, the head of Sulaimani’s culture department, agrees that Anfal is not a thing of the past.
“We always thought that Anfal belonged to 1988,” he said. “But it continued, coming back in Shingal, in Afrin and in Kobane.”
In Shingal, the Islamic State (ISIS) committed genocide against the Yezidis. The Turkish military invaded the Kurdish city of Afrin in 2018 and forced the majority of the Kurdish population out of their historical homeland. Kobane came under an ISIS onslaught at the start of the group’s rise in 2014.
“If they had the chance, they would have killed every one of us,” Adib said about Anfal. He said the objective of the genocidal campaign was to exterminate the Kurds.
The writer Sherko Kirmanc argued that Anfal and the Arabisation that has taken place in his home city of Kirkuk go hand in hand. The majority of people who were massacred in the Anfal campaign came from the Garmiyan region, he pointed out, an area that like Kirkuk is disputed between Baghdad and Erbil.
For Karwani, the politician who comes from an Islamic background, Anfal is an event that Arabs should resonate with. He explained the story of Hussein bin Ali, the grandson of Prophet Mohammed who was killed alongside his family members in what is known by Muslims as Ashura, which is commemorated annually. Hussein’s companions died of thirst. Even though they were close to the river, they were not allowed to have any access to water. Karwani said the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds, a genocide with the intent to destroy the Kurds in whole or in part, is far worse than what Islam’s holy figures experienced.
Wrya Mohammed is an Anfal survivor who was just two years old in 1988.
“I have never felt so devastated all my life than this moment when we are visiting the place,” Mohammed said as he looked at the road leading them to the site of one of the worst atrocities committed against the Kurdish people.
"I imagine my mother when I was with her while I was two years old, of how she must have felt thirsty, that she might not have had enough breast milk. How can you write about the moment she choked on her cries?”
He said he also thinks of his brother, also a child at the time, who was beaten by an Iraqi guard for being “naughty.” He suffered damage to one of his eyes that effectively made him blind.
Some of the prisoners were from Halabja, the city that was the victim of the largest chemical attack against a civilian population in 1988. Halabja is surrounded by mountains and trees. The
concentration camp in the desert could not be more foreign to them.
One man said they buried 52 people from Halabja who died of starvation, malnutrition and torture in Nugra Salman, including his own brother.
"We are visiting thousands of innocent children,” Abdullah Sagram, a famous Kurdish musician said about the visit, explaining that Anfal was a religious, ethnic, linguistic and cultural genocide.
“None of them spoke Arabic, none of them was familiar with the desert. They come from mountains and valleys. It is a painful wound for which there is no healing.”
“Desert is not part of our topography,” Kazm Ahmad, a researcher, said in agreement. “They intentionally took mountain people to the desert.”
Burhan Zebari, a poet, said in his writings mountains are always juxtaposed with the desert. “We would like to see trees and green scenery. As Kurds, we are not used to these colours” of the desert.
A relative of an Anfal victim said the Iraqi government wanted to “inflict a more painful death in the desert than shooting them in their areas.”
One of the survivors said they could not dig a proper grave for their loved one. The soil was hard and all they could manage were shallow holes that did not properly cover the body. Others spoke about black dogs that fed on the dead bodies.
A woman survivor who said her brother died in her arms in the prison came back to Nugra Salman to put pressure on the authorities to return the bodies of the victims. Her brother died several days before she was released from the concentration camp, but even though she asked the Iraqi soldiers to let her take his body home, they did not allow her to do so. She went back to the mountains. He stayed in the desert.
“We just want the bones back,” she said in her black clothes. She said she never celebrates any of the national or religious festivals. All happiness and joy died with her brother.
The Nugar Salman compound is dark. There is no electricity. It has been abandoned in many ways. Some of the survivors lit oil lamps and formed a circle of mourning. In the middle was a man dressed in white. He performed a sketch about a victim.
“Please take me home, please,” the man shouted as the survivors cried.
“They have named me Anfal, Anfal, Anfal, an Arabic name,” the performer continued, his voice catching on the word.
Anfal is the Arabic word for the spoils of war, and is taken from the holy book of Islam.
“Take us back to Kurdistan, to our land, the land of our ancestors,” the performer said, echoing the calls of the survivors gathered at Nugar Salman.
