Iraq must DNA test mass graves, give Anfal families closure: MP

Hedar Zubir Barzani was five years old in the early 1980s when Iraqi soldiers came to her home to take away her father and five other relatives. She never saw them again.

Now a lawyer and a member of the Iraqi parliament, Hedar has made it her mission to find out what happened to them and thousands like them disappeared by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein.

The focus now is on two mass graves in southern Iraq where many of the Kurds taken in the 1980s are thought to be buried.

While Hedar finds solace in her work uncovering these mass grave sites, she is bothered that not a single individual retrieved from the desert sand has been properly identified through DNA testing, leaving families without closure.

“As a daughter whose father was executed in the Anfal campaign, as a former lawyer defending the rights of martyrs and political prisoners, and now as an MP, I hope from now on any bodies uncovered by the government will stay in the laboratories and not be buried until they are identified by their families and relatives,” Hedar said. 

In this interview with Rudaw, Hedar describes her efforts to secure justice for victims and their families, including Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, and Iraq’s other minorities caught in the slaughter.

The Anfal campaign took place over eight phases – beginning in 1986 and reaching its peak in the closing weeks of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) with the Halabja gas attack, which killed 5,000 people instantly and wounded 10,000 more. 

Anfal, the eighth sura of the Quran, was the moniker used by the Baathist regime for the slaughter of the Kurds.

Political dissent was not tolerated under the Baathists, and hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shiites were disappeared. Men, women and children were trucked en masse to the southern deserts where they were killed and buried. 

Of the estimated 210,000 victims of Anfal, including the 182,000 people reported missing, just 2,672 bodies have been recovered, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Martyrs Affairs and Anfal. 

The ministry estimates there are 151 mass graves from this period scattered around Iraq, with some pre-dating the formal beginning of Anfal. 

Rudaw: Two mass graves have recently been found in Iraq, one in Samawa and another one in Shingal which is supervised by the UN. How many mass graves are there in Shingal, and how many have been uncovered so far?

Hedar Barzani: Islamic State (ISIS) attacked some parts of Iraq, including the disputed areas, which [disputedly] belong to the Kurdistan Region ... especially Shingal and specifically Kocho. During March 2019 we as the martyrs and political prisoners committee in the Iraqi parliament attended the first mass grave exhumation ceremony in Kocho alongside many international and local officials. Fortunately, last week the committee that the Iraqi government appointed to supervise the discovery and excavation of mass graves finalized its mission in Kocho after discovering and excavating 15 mass graves that all belonged to Yezidi people.

Are there any laws or decrees in Iraq that prevent ordinary people uncovering mass graves?

There is an Iraqi government law or decree that says a mass grave discovered anywhere in Iraq, from Zakho to Basra, by a citizen or by police officers or any other governmental employee must be made known to the Iraqi Human Rights Commission or the Iraqi martyrs affairs department in order to establish a committee to supervise the uncovering of the mass grave under Article 5 of the [Iraq constitution]…a specific committee should be appointed to supervise the uncovering process of the mass grave, and the same committee must not be appointed to supervise several mass graves at the same time.

Who sits on these committees? How are they structured?

The committee that the Iraqi Human Rights Commission and the Iraqi martyrs affairs department appoints to supervise the excavation process should consist of nine members headed by a judge, a local official, and a representative of the Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs of the Kurdistan Regional Government. Sometimes the process of uncovering the mass graves takes a long time due to the process of appointing the committee and finalizing its members, or security issues that are mostly happening in the areas that used to be under the control of the Islamic State, fear of landmines and other explosive devices, as well as a lack of budget that slows down the process of uncovering the mass graves.

Have the 15 mass graves been found in Shingal as a whole or in Kocho alone?

Only in Kocho, but sometimes there are some small clusters of graves that are mostly not counted as mass graves, and they are inside Shingal. As an MP in the Iraqi parliament and deputy head of the martyrs and political prisoners committee, I receive my information from the directorate of mass graves in the Iraqi martyrs department.

Do you have any links with the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIL (UNITAD)? Do you work together?

The ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons) is one of the essential and formal parts of the committees that support the committees in supervising the uncovering process of mass graves in Iraq. During [former US president] Bill Clinton’s administration, the Bosnia genocide happened in 1995-96, in which the dictatorship executed mostly the males of the community ... discovered after the mass graves in Bosnia were uncovered. They remind us of the Barzani community when the Anfal genocide happened against the Barzanis by the Baathist regime, when mostly the males were executed.

After the fall of the dictator in Bosnia and the discovery of the mass graves, the people of Bosnia, and especially the families who had loved ones in the mass graves, prevented the Bosnian government from uncovering any mass graves until the United Nations Secretary General attended the process of uncovering the mass graves in Bosnia. The Secretary General of the United Nations also opened a laboratory that belongs to the ICMP, which is the largest laboratory in Bosnia. I had the privilege of visiting the laboratory in 2014, and that was at a time when the ICMP visited Iraq before ISIS attacked in 2014.

 

 

Barzani visits an ICMP laboratory in Bosnia in 2014. Photo: Hedar Barzani

The ICMP has worked in Iraq before, in 2010-12, and has been a real supporter in uncovering the mass graves in Iraq. Therefore, the ICMP decided to establish an organization in Iraq. All its members are women, five from the Shiite community, five from the Kurdish community, and two from the Sunni community. Fortunately I was one of the women that has been chosen to be part of the organization. We successfully conducted seven summits in different cities in Iraq and the final summit was in Bosnia, where we established the “Ship of Life” organization in April 2014. The organization has an official license from the non-governmental organization department to operate in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, but Baghdad did not recognize the organization.

Why didn’t Baghdad grant a license to “Ship of Life”?

Baghdad asked us to change the name of the organization because the name “Ship of Life” already existed in the Kurdistan Region, therefore the activities of the Ship of Life were reduced and no more large activities have been implemented by the organization since then. But the Ship of Life is still alive.

Recently some mass graves were discovered in the Samawa area of Iraq. How many mass graves have been found? How will the governments deal with those graves?

To be honest the Iraqi areas which fall on the border with Saudi Arabia in the western part of Iraq are full of mass graves. The mass graves mostly belong to people who have been executed during the Anfal campaign and most of the graves are Barzanis. It is sad that since 2003 only two mass graves of Barzanis have been found and brought back to the Barzan area. Recently, a mass grave was found in Samawa. For that reason the Iraqi government appointed a committee to begin uncovering the mass grave. However, due to the hot weather, the committee postponed the uncovering process, which is unacceptable, and I have called them and informed them to start uncovering the mass graves as soon as possible, since the Iraqi President Barham Salih has already visited the mass grave on the day of Anfal genocide anniversary and the uncovering process should have been finalized by now. Unfortunately, I have been informed by some governmental officials that an unofficial uncovering of the Samawa mass grave started on July 15, 2019.

What do you mean by unofficial excavation?

Unofficial excavation of a mass grave happens when there is no media coverage of the process, as well as no representatives from the Iraqi parliament supervising the process.

Why has the excavation process started in Samawa without the presence of media and MPs?

The committee informed us that there were some bones from the mass graves which were showing above the ground, so in order to prevent the people and media from noticing them, they had to start digging and uncovering the mass graves […] that action made me criticize them. However they claimed they didn’t want the bones to be shown. It is expected that prior to Eid, the Samawa mass grave will be completely uncovered and the committee will finalize its duty.

Who are the people in the mass grave? 

According to some governmental sources that I have been in touch with, the mass grave belongs to Kurds, but I am not sure if they are Garmiany, Barzani, or of another Kurdish tribe. Therefore, I investigated the case by myself and found out that the mass grave does not belong to the Barzani tribe, because the mass grave contains female bodies - clearly shown because there are women and children’s clothes found within the mass graves - while the Barzani mass graves contain only male bodies, because the Anfal campaign executed only the males of the Barzani tribe not the females.

So the mass grave might belong to Garmiany people?

Yes, it might be Garmiany people or people from the city of Halabja, the town of Said Sadiq town or any other Kurdish town that faced Anfal back in 1988.

And how many mass graves found in Samawa?

According to an Iraqi government source, two mass graves were found close to each other in Samawa.

Are there any mass grave containing Kuwaiti soldiers in Samawa?

Of course there should be, but until today there is no official statement by the committees that uncover mass graves in Iraq regarding mass graves containing Kuwaiti soldiers in Samawa. What I have been informed is that one of the two recently discovered mass graves in Samawa belong to Kurds executed during the 1988 Anfal campaign.

Is any of the undergoing mass grave DNA testing to help families in the Kurdistan Region identify their relatives?

That is the tragedy that we have to deal with in this country. I have criticized the Iraqi government several times, demanding there should be DNA tests for the mass graves by the Iraqi government to help the families identify the graves of their relatives because that is their right and that is the duty of the Iraqi government to implement, not the government of the Kurdistan Region. I, as a daughter who lost her father in the Anfal campaign, wish that people in Barzan could have had the chance to identify the graves of their relatives. I wish I could identify the grave of my father. However, in Barzan we consider all graves in Barzan as those of our family members and we don’t differentiate between them, but it is the right of every citizen to identify the graves of their family members.

What made me happy and impressed in Bosnia is that they have identified many of the graves with testing. Some families didn’t accept their loved ones executed during the 1995-96 war in Bosnia being reburied, and left them inside the refrigerator in the laboratory until they had undergone tests and been identified before they reburied by their families. I visited Bosnia in 2014, and at that time around 1,500 bodies had been identified by their families thanks to DNA tests, while many were inside the refrigerator waiting to be identified through tests inside the laboratory. I wish we had the same process here in Iraq, and the ICMP also vowed to help us to reach this level and that is the reason behind the Ship of Life organization that the ICMP helped us to establish and made all its members women, since women are more careful and detailed than men, and mostly women are the ones who lost their men due to the Anfal campaign and are waiting to identify the grave of their men.

The ICMP was planning to open a laboratory in Baghdad or Erbil in order to help people and families to identify the graves of their loved ones and family members that they lost during the Anfal campaign. However, the reason that they didn’t accept to open a laboratory until now is unclear and unknown to me.

Let’s forget that you are an MP in Iraqi parliament and consider you simply as a daughter who lost her father in the Anfal campaign. Do you wish to identify the grave of your father?

Of course I wish to, and still it is not too late. Therefore, as a daughter who lost her father in the Anfal campaign and as a former lawyer defending the rights of the martyrs and political prisoners and now as an MP, I wish from now on that any mass graves that the government uncovers will stay in the laboratories and not rebury them until they are identified by their families and relatives. We need to implement DNA testing as soon as possible as well, since DNA tests need blood samples from the father or mother of the victims – therefore, let’s implement the DNA test before we lose them. As an MP I have informed the government and visited the ICMP with the government in Baghdad to ask them to help us implement the DNA test. Unfortunately, due to political reasons, the implementation of the DNA tests in Iraq is still difficult.

Interviewed by Lawk Ghafuri and Fazel Hawramy