Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

alerting its membership of the dire need to contact government officials where particularly
serious or egregious human rights infractions are taking place. Although AI does not
focus on genocide per se, its efforts to address “extrajudicial killings” (or political killings)
and crimes against humanity are undoubtedly germane to the issue of genocide. Indeed,
much of its work has focused on major human rights abuses in countries where, ultimately,
the government has been found to have committed genocide (e.g., Guatemala in the
1980s and 1990s, Rwanda in the early 1990s, the former Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s,
and Darfur throughout the early 2000s). It is also noteworthy that AI was involved in
pushing for the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Anfal (also referred to as al Anfal and the Anfal Campaign). The al Anfal (the spoils
of war) campaign was the name of a series of military campaigns undertaken by Saddam
Hussein’s (1932–2006) Iraqi Baathist regime against the Kurdish population residing in
northern Iraq. The campaign was named after the eighth chapter of the Koran, which is
titled Surat al-Anfal and is about a battle against “unbelievers” and the need to cut off the
roots of the unbelievers. It was an odd choice of terms, for the Kurds, themselves, are Muslim
and Iraq, at the time, was a secular state.
In early 1987, shortly after Iraqi president Saddam Hussein named his cousin Ali Hassan
al-Majid (a.k.a. “Chemical Ali”; b. 1938 or 1941 [undetermined]) as secretary-general of the
administrative zone called the “Northern Bureau” (the location of Iraqi Kurdistan), al-Majid
promised “to solve the Kurdish problem and slaughter the saboteurs.” The Kurds were perceived
to be a problem by Iraq as they desired their own autonomous area, were hard to control,
often engaged in battle with Iraqi military forces based in northern Iraq, and some were
known to have fought with Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. Indeed, a true understanding of
the campaign cannot be divorced from the protracted Iraq-Iran War, fought between 1980
and 1988.
The prelude to the Anfal began in spring 1987 when al-Majid oversaw the initial
destruction of villages and the resettlement of thousands of Kurds against their will. The
Kurds, whose ancestors had lived in theses villages for centuries, were forcibly moved into
relocation centers where the Iraqi government could easily monitor their movements.
During this same period, the first order to carry out mass killing was made. More specifically,
those Kurds who refused to leave the so-called prohibited zones and relocate in the
newly designated areas were deemed traitors and automatically became targets of extermination.
From that point forward, a series of sieges or Anfals were carried out: (1) the
First Anfal: February 23–March 19, 1988, including a chemical attack on Halabja; (2) the
Second Anfal: March 22–April 1, 1988; (3) the Third Anfal: April 7–20, 1988; (4)
the Fourth Anfal: May 3–8, 1988, including chemical attacks on Goktapa and Askar; (5)
the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Anfals: May 15–August 26, 1988; and (6) the Eighth (and
final) Anfal: August 25–September 6, 1988, which also included chemical attacks
(Human Rights Watch, Genocide in Iraq, 1993). An area comprising over one thousand
villages (possibly as many as two thousand) was designated a “killing zone” by the Iraqi
minister of defense, and, subsequently, thousands of Iraqi Kurd homes were destroyed and
close to one hundred thousand Kurds—men, women, and children—were, variously,
machine-gunned and gassed to death. Generally, the survivors were forced into areas
bereft of water, food, housing, or medical care.
Over 4 million pages (some fourteen tons) of Iraqi government documents have been
gathered by investigators of the Anfal, and such evidence supports the fact that there was
ANFAL
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