Iraq
An Anfal suvivor visiting the mass graves and Nugra Salman castle, a remote prison fortress in southern Iraq in May 2023. Photo: Bilind T. Abdullah/Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Iraqi government on Saturday handed over the remains of 172 victims of Saddam Hussein’s genocidal Anfal campaign to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
The ceremony was held at the health ministry in Baghdad and was attended by Iraqi Health Minister Salih al-Hasnawi and Iraq’s first lady Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed.
“This matter is a priority for the agenda of the ministry. Thankfully 172 remains were identified,” Saif al-Badr, spokesperson for the health ministry, told Rudaw.
The ministry continues to work to identify genocide victims as new mass graves are found, he added.
Families of Anfal survivors and relatives of the victims also attended the event in Baghdad.
The process of identifying the remains is often criticized for being slow. Badr said that the slow pace is mainly due to the complicated nature of doing the testing and the high cost.
“The DNA tests are not slow, they are difficult, complicated and costly. Tens of years pass after the incidents and the remains decompose. The more time passes, identifying becomes more difficult and complicated,” he said.
The Anfal campaign began in 1986. Then-president Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime killed more than 182,000 Kurds in two years of slaughter and around 4,500 villages in the Kurdistan Region were demolished.
Iraq’s Supreme Court recognized Anfal as a crime against humanity in 2008. Years later, however, very little has been done for the survivors or the families of victims of Anfal.
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