ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - On the 34th anniversary of the Anfal campaign, a genocidal operation against Iraq’s Kurds at the behest of the country’s former notorious leader Saddam Hussein, survivors continue to demand compensation from the Iraqi government and international recognition of their tragedy as a genocide.
The Anfal campaign, named after the eighth surah in the Quran, was the codename for Hussein’s genocide which killed around 182,000 Kurds. The Garmiyan phase of the campaign began on April 14, 1988, and that date is used to commemorate the anniversary of Anfal each year.
“Iraq should compensate the families of Anfal both financially and emotionally, but unfortunately this has not been done yet,” Taimour Abdullah Ahmed, a survivor from the first phase of the campaign in Garmiyan told Rudaw English via a phone call on Saturday.
“Why can Iraq compensate Kuwait, sending trillions of dollars on a yearly basis… while we remain uncompensated,” he added, referring to the war reparations worth $52.4 billion paid by Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Known as Anfal’s Taimour, Abdullah was born in Sulaimani’s Hawara Barza village, and was only 12 when the killing in Garmiyan commenced. Often called the “Anfal Orphan,” Abdullah and his family were separated and taken by Hussein’s army to a number of different villages over the course of a few weeks. Abdullah recalls seeing his mother and sister being shot right before his eyes.
“I saw my mother being shot in the head, dropping the scarf that was covering her hair. I saw my sister being shot on the cheek, with the bullet coming out of the back of her head… Their beautiful faces were covered in blood,” he added.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has presented petitions to the federal government to secure compensation for Anfal survivors and families since 2012, but the federal government has not answered the petitions to date, according to Baravan Hamdi, the administrator of Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs, who spoke to Rudaw English via phone call on Wednesday.
The Anfal campaign has been recognized as genocide against Kurds by Iraq, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, and South Korea. Researchers and politicians believe that access to archives from the time could be the key to garnering wider international recognition.
“The KRG are in constant contact with Baghdad regarding the topic of the mass graves, and trying to get the case recognized as genocide,” Bahman Kaka Abdullah, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) MP in the Kurdistan parliament and member of the committee of martyrs, genocide, and political prisoners affairs, told Rudaw English via a phone call on Saturday.
“We, in the martyrs committee, have taken multiple steps, visiting a number of European parliaments in the hopes of creating relationships and gaining recognition for Anfal and the chemical attack as genocide,” he added.
Over five million pages of secret Iraqi police files and documents were captured by Kurdish forces in 1991, recording the full extent of human rights abuses and atrocities committed by Hussein during his time as Iraq’s president.
The original documents were transferred to the US and scanned by the Defense Intelligence Agency, and later acquired by the Archives at the University of Colorado-Boulder where the original documents and a copy have been kept since 1997. Access to these files was made available to researchers around the world seeking to bring Hussein’s violations of human rights to justice.
Human Rights Watch gained access to the files in 1992, putting together one of the most important reports, “Genocide in Iraq - The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds,” detailing the events of the genocidal campaign.
In 2014, the Zheen Archive Center in Sulaimani received a copy of the documents from the University of Colorado-Boulder in a high-level ceremony. The delegation from the Kurdish archive center stated that they hoped the repatriation of these files could help illuminate the “tragic events” that befell the people of the Kurdistan Region under Hussein’s rule.
The original documents in their entirety were quietly sent back to Iraq in August 2020. Baghdad has expressed no intention of releasing the documents to the public, which is disheartening to thousands of Kurdish and Iraqi families who still seek justice for the crimes committed against their loved ones.
Many survivors hope that the archives will give them clues regarding the whereabouts of their missing loved ones.
“Iraq’s Ministry of Culture was the one who received the archives from the US,” Hamdi said, adding that the ministry has not allowed them to view the documents.
The Iraqi parliament recognized Anfal as genocide on April 14, 2008. Military commanders were handed the death sentence, with Ali Hassan Majeed, widely known as “Chemical Ali”, hanged in 2011.
In addition to the hundreds of thousands killed, around 4,500 villages in the Kurdistan Region were demolished during the Anfal campaign.
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