Anfal campaign
Operation targeting rural Kurdish civilians in 1988 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Anfal campaign[lower-alpha 1] was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988 during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds[1] because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate.[2]
Early conflicts Main phase
Later phase |
The Iraqi forces were led by Ali Hassan al-Majid, on the orders of President Saddam Hussein. The campaign's name was taken from the title of Qur'anic chapter 8 (al-ʾanfāl).
In 1993, Human Rights Watch released a report on the Anfal campaign based on documents captured by Kurdish rebels during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq; HRW described it as a genocide and estimated between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths. This characterization of the Anfal campaign was disputed by a 2007 Hague court ruling, which stated that the evidences from the documents were not sufficient to establish the charge of genocide.[lower-alpha 2] Although many Iraqi Arabs reject that there were any mass killings of Kurdish civilians during Anfal, the event is an important element constituting Kurdish national identity.