The
al-Anfal Campaign , also known as
Operation Anfal, was a campaign against the Kurdish population of Iraq led by the
IraqIraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , also known as Mesopotamia, is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.Iraq shares borders with Jordan to the west, Syria...
i regime of
Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
and headed by
Ali Hassan al-MajidAli Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh is a former Ba'athist Iraqi Defense Minister, Interior Minister, military commander and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service...
. The campaign takes its name from
SuraA Surah is a "chapter" of the Qur'an, traditionally arranged roughly in order of decreasing length...
t
al-AnfalSura Al-Anfal is the eighth chapter of the Qur'an, with 75 verses. It is a Medinan sura, recorded after theBattle of Badr. It forms a pair with the next sura, At-Tawba.-Badr:...
in the
Qur'anThe Qur’an is the central religious text of Islam...
, which was used as a
code nameA code name or cryptonym is a word or name used clandestinely to refer to another name or word. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage...
by the former Iraqi Baathist
regimeThe word regime refers to a set of conditions, most often of a political nature. It may also be used synonymously with "regimen", for example in the phrases "exercise regime" or "medical regime".-Politics:In politics, a regime is the form of government: the set of rules, cultural or social norms,...
for a series of attacks against the
peshmergaPeshmerga, Peshmerge or Armed Forces of Kurdistan is the term used by Kurds to refer to armed Kurdish fighters...
rebels and the mostly
KurdishThe Kurds are an Ethnic-Iranian ethnolinguistic group mostly inhabiting a region known as Kurdistan, which includes adjacent parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey...
civilianA civilian under international humanitarian law is a person who is not a member of his or her country's armed forces. The term is also often used colloquially to refer to people who are not members of a particular profession or occupation, especially by law enforcement agencies, which often use...
population of rural Northern Iraq, conducted between 1986 and 1989 culminating in 1988.
Name
Al-AnfalSura Al-Anfal is the eighth chapter of the Qur'an, with 75 verses. It is a Medinan sura, recorded after theBattle of Badr. It forms a pair with the next sura, At-Tawba.-Badr:...
is the eighth
suraA Surah is a "chapter" of the Qur'an, traditionally arranged roughly in order of decreasing length...
or chapter of the Qur'an which explains the triumph of 319 followers of the new Muslim faith over almost 900 pagans at the battle of
BadrThe Battle of Badr , fought March 17, 624 AD Hejaz region of western Arabia , was a key battle in the early days of Islam and a turning point in Muhammad's struggle with his opponents among the Quraish in Mecca...
in 642 AD. Al Anfal literally means
the spoils (of war) and was perhaps quite fitting for a military campaign of extermination and looting commanded by
Ali Hassan al-MajidAli Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh is a former Ba'athist Iraqi Defense Minister, Interior Minister, military commander and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service...
. His orders informed
jash (literally "donkey's foal" in
KurdishKurdish is the language spoken by Kurds in western Asia. Unlike many other languages it does not have a single standardized linguistic entity with the status of an official or state language...
) units that taking cattle, sheep, goats, money, weapons and even Kurdish women was legal.
Summary
The Anfal campaign began in 1986 and lasted until 1989, and was headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid (a cousin of then Iraqi leader
Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
from Saddam's hometown of
TikritTikrit is a town in Iraq, located 140 km northwest of Baghdad on the Tigris river...
). The Anfal campaign included the use of ground
offensiveOffensive may refer to:* Offensive , a political party* Offensive , an attack...
s,
aerial bombingAerial bombing may refer to:*Short-term air-to-ground attacks known as Airstrikes*Longer-term Strategic bombing campaigns-See also:*Aerial bombing of cities*Aerial bomb, the device used in Aerial bombing...
, systematic destruction of
settlementA town is a type of settlement ranging from a few hundred to several thousand inhabitants, although it may be applied loosely even to huge metropolitan areas; the precise meaning varies between countries and is not always a matter of legal definition...
s, mass deportation, firing squads, and
chemical warfareChemical warfare involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons to kill, injure, or incapacitate an enemy....
, which earned al-Majid the
nicknameA nickname is a descriptive name given in place of or in addition to the official name of a person, place or thing. It can also be the familiar or truncated form of the proper name, which may sometimes be used simply for convenience A nickname (also spelled "nick name") is a descriptive name...
of "Chemical Ali".
Thousands of civilians were killed during the anti-insurgent campaigns stretching from the spring of 1987 through the fall of 1988. The attacks were part of a long-standing campaign that destroyed almost every Kurdish village in areas of northern Iraq where pro-Iranian insurgents were based and displaced at least a million of the country's estimated 3.5 million Kurdish population. Independent sources estimate 100,000 to more than 150,000 deaths and as many as 100,000
widowA widow is a woman whose spouse has died. A man whose spouse has died is a widower. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or viduity. The adjective is widowed.-Economic position of widows:...
s and an even greater number of
orphanAn orphan is a child permanently bereaved of his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan....
s.
Amnesty InternationalAmnesty International is an international secular non-governmental organisation which defines its mission as "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated." Founded in London in 1961, AI...
collected the names of more than 17,000 people who had "disappeared" during 1988. The campaign has been characterized as
genocidalGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
in nature. It is also characterized as
gendercidalGendercide is a neologism that refers to the systematic killing of members of a specific sex, either males or females.-Gendercide:Gendercide is gender-selective mass killing. The term was first used by Mary Anne Warren in her 1985 book, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection...
, because "battle-age" men were the primary targets, according to
Human Rights WatchHuman Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo, Toronto,...
/Middle East. According to the Iraqi prosecutors, as many as 180,000 people were killed.
The campaign
In March 1987, Ali Hassan al-Majid appointed secretary-general of the Ba'ath Party's Northern Region, which included Iraqi
KurdistanKurdistan is an extensive plateau and mountainous area in the Middle East, inhabited mainly by Kurds...
. Under al-Majid, control of policies against the Kurdish insurgents passed from the
Iraqi ArmyThe Iraqi Army is the land army of the Iraqi military, active in various forms since being formed by the British during their mandate over the country after World War I....
to the Ba'ath Party itself. It would be known as "al-Anfal" ("The Spoils"), in a reference to the eighth
suraA Surah is a "chapter" of the Qur'an, traditionally arranged roughly in order of decreasing length...
of the Qur'an.
Anfal, officially conducted between February 23 and September 6, 1988, would have eight stages altogether, seven of them targeting areas controlled by the
Patriotic Union of KurdistanThe Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is a Kurdish political party in Iraq.-Foundation:The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan was founded in June 1975, by coordinations between Jalal Talabani and Nawshirwan Mustafa. Mr...
. The Kurdish Democratic Party-controlled areas in the northwest of Iraqi Kurdistan, which the regime regarded as a lesser threat, were the target of the Final Anfal operation in late August and early September, 1988. For these assaults, the Iraqis mustered up to 200,000 soldiers with
air supportAir Support is a 1992 computer game for the Amiga and Atari ST. It is a top-down strategy game, with a first-person mode available for special missions....
-- matched against Kurdish guerrilla forces that numbered no more than a few thousand.
Concentration camps and extermination
When captured Kurdish populations were transported to detention centers (notably Topzawa near the city of
KirkukKirkuk , , , Kurdish: Kerkûk/کهرکووک , Turkish: Kerkük is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate....
), adult and teenage males viewed as possible insurgents were separated from the civilians. According to Human Rights Watch/Middle East,
With only minor variations ... the standard pattern for sorting new arrivals [at Topzawa was as follows]. Men and women were segregated on the spot as soon as the trucks had rolled to a halt in the base's large central courtyard or parade ground. The process was brutal ... A little later, the men were further divided by age, small children were kept with their mothers, and the elderly and infirm were shunted off to separate quarters. Men and teenage boys considered to be of an age to use a weapon were herded together. Roughly speaking, this meant males of between fifteen and fifty, but there was no rigorous check of identity documents, and strict chronological age seems to have been less of a criterion than size and appearance. A strapping twelve-year-old might fail to make the cut; an undersized sixteen-year-old might be told to remain with his female relatives. ... It was then time to process the younger males. They were split into smaller groups. ... Once duly registered, the prisoners were hustled into large rooms, or halls, each filled with the residents of a single area. ... Although the conditions at Topzawa were appalling for everyone, the most grossly overcrowded quarter seem to have been those where the male detainees were held. ... For the men, beatings were routine. (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 143-45. ISBN 0-300-06427-6)
After a few days in these camps, the men accused of being insurgents were trucked off to be killed in mass executions.
In its book
Iraq's Crime of Genocide, Human Rights Watch/Middle East writes: "Throughout Iraqi Kurdistan, although women and children vanished in certain clearly defined areas, adult males who were captured disappeared en masse ... It is apparent that a principal purpose of Anfal was to exterminate all adult males of military service age captured in rural Iraqi Kurdistan." (pp. 96, 170). Only a handful survived the execution squads. Even amidst this most systematic slaughter of adult men and boys, however, "hundreds of women and young children perished, too," though "the causes of their deaths were different -- gassing,
starvationStarvation is a severe reduction in vitamin, nutrient, and energy intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage, and eventually death...
,
exposureExposure may refer to:* Publicity, an activity designed to rouse public interest* Outing, exposure of someone's secret sexual orientation* In climbing, the state of openness with relation to the distance of a fall -Biology:...
, and willful
neglectNeglect - leave uncared for or to leave undone. Neglect may also refer to:*Neglect , in English law a term used in inquests into causes of death...
-- rather than bullets fired from a
KalashnikovThe AK-47 is a selective fire, gas operated 7.62mm assault rifle developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov in the 1940s. Six decades later, the AK-47 and its variants and derivatives remain in service throughout the world...
." (
Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 191.) Nevertheless, on September 1, 2004, U.S. forces in Iraq discovered hundreds of bodies of Kurdish women and children at the site near al-Hatra, believed to be executed in early 1988 or late 1987..
The focus of the Iraqi killing campaign varied from one stage of Anfal to another. The most exclusive targeting of the male population occurred during the final Anfal (August 25-September 6, 1988). This was launched immediately after the signing of a
ceasefireA ceasefire is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be declared as part of a formal treaty, but they have also been called as part of an informal understanding between opposing forces.-World War I:On December 24, 1914,...
with
IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
, which allowed the transfer of large amounts of men and
matérielMateriel is a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management....
from the southern battlefronts. The final Anfal focused on "the steep, narrow valleys of
BadinanBadinan is a district in the north of Southern Kurdistan region in Iraq. It was the center of the Kurdish principality of Badinan from 14th to 19th century. The primary Kurdish dialect spoken in Badinan is a form of Northern Kurmanji, also referred to locally as Badini.-External links:* Kurdish...
, a four-thousand-square mile chunk of the
Zagros MountainsThe Zagros Mountains are the largest mountain range in Iran and Iraq...
bounded on the east by the Greater Zab River and on the north by
TurkeyTurkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey
, is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in Western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe...
." Here, uniquely in the Anfal campaigns, lists of the "disappeared" provided to Human Rights Watch/Middle East by survivors "invariably included only adult and teenage males, with the signal exception of
AssyrianThe Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people are an ethnic group whose origins lie in the Fertile Crescent, their homeland today being divided between Northern Iraq, Syria, Western...
and
CaldeanThe Chaldean Christians , are adherents of the Chaldean Catholic Church....
Christians and Yezidi Kurds," who were subsidiary targets of the slaughter. Many of the men of Badinan did not even make it as far as "processing" stations, being simply "lined up and murdered at their point of capture,
summarily executedA summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial. Summary executions are practiced by police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, terrorism and counterinsurgency.According to international law,...
by firing squads on the authority of a local military officer." (
Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 178, 190, 192; on the fate of the Christians and Yezidi Kurds, see pp. 209-13.)
On June 20, 1987, directive SF/4008 was issued under al-Majid's signature. Of greatest significance is clause 5. Referring to those areas designated "prohibited zones," al-Majid ordered that "all persons captured in those villages shall be detained and interrogated by the security services and those between the ages of 15 and 70 shall be executed after any useful information has been obtained from them, of which we should be duly notified." However, it seems clear from the application of this policy that this referred only to males "between the ages of 15 and 70." Human Rights Watch/Middle East takes this as given, writing that clause 5's "order [was] to kill all adult males," and later: "Under the terms of al-Majid's June 1987 directives, death was the automatic penalty for any male of an age to bear arms who was found in an Anfal area." (
Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 11, 14.) A subsequent directive on September 6, 1987, supports this conclusion: it calls for "the deportation of ... families to the areas where there saboteur relatives are ..., except for the male [members], between the ages of 12 inclusive and 50 inclusive, who must be detained." (Cited in
Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 298.)
Arabization
"
ArabizationArabization describes a growing cultural influence on a non-Arab area that gradually changes into one that speaks Arabic and/or incorporates Arab culture...
," another major element of al-Anfal, was a tactic used by Hussein's regime to drive pro-insurgent populations out of their homes in villages and cities like
KirkukKirkuk , , , Kurdish: Kerkûk/کهرکووک , Turkish: Kerkük is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate....
, which are in the valuable
oil fieldAn oil field is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over a large area, possibly several hundred kilometres across, full exploitation entails multiple wells scattered across the area...
areas, and relocate them in the southern parts of Iraq. The campaign used heavy
population redistributionPopulation transfer is the movement of a large group of people from one region to another by state policy or international authority, most frequently on the basis of ethnicity or religion...
, most notably in
KirkukKirkuk , , , Kurdish: Kerkûk/کهرکووک , Turkish: Kerkük is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate....
, the results of which now plague negotiations between Iraq's Shi'a
United Iraqi AllianceThe National Iraqi Alliance transliterated: is an Iraqi electoral coalition that is contesting the Iraqi legislative election, 2010. The Alliance is mainly comprised of Shi'ite Islamist Arab parties...
and Kurdish
Democratic AllianceThe Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan is the name of the electoral coalition first presented as a united Kurdish list in the January 2005 election in Iraq. Elections were held simultaneously for the assembly of the Kurdistan Regional Government...
. Hussein's Ba'athist regime built several
public housingPublic housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Social housing is an umbrella term referring to rental housing which may be owned and managed by the state, by not-for-profit organizations, or by a combination of...
facilities in
KirkukKirkuk , , , Kurdish: Kerkûk/کهرکووک , Turkish: Kerkük is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate....
as part of his "Arabization," shifting poor Arabs from Iraq's southern regions to
KirkukKirkuk , , , Kurdish: Kerkûk/کهرکووک , Turkish: Kerkük is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate....
with the lure of inexpensive housing.
Iraq's Kurds now strongly resent Arabs still residing in Ba'ath-era
KirkukKirkuk , , , Kurdish: Kerkûk/کهرکووک , Turkish: Kerkük is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate....
housing, and view them as a barrier to
KirkukKirkuk , , , Kurdish: Kerkûk/کهرکووک , Turkish: Kerkük is a city in Iraq and capital of Kirkuk Governorate....
's recognition as a Kurdish city (and regional seat) in an increasingly
sovereignSovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
Kurdish Autonomous Region.
Statistics
According to the HRW during the Anfal campaign, the Iraqi government:
- massacred 50,000 to 100,000 non-combatant civilians including women and children;
- destroyed about 4,000 villages (out of 4,655) in Iraqi Kurdistan. Between April 1987 and August 1988, 250 towns and villages were exposed to chemical weapons;
- destroyed 1,754 schools, 270 hospitals, 2,450 mosque
A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. Muslims often refer to the mosque by its Arabic name, masjid, —...
s, 27 churches;
- wiped out around 90% of Kurdish villages in targeted areas.
Violation of human rights
The campaigns of 1987-1989 were characterized by the following gross human rights violations:
- a) mass summary executions and mass disappearance of many tens of thousands of non-combatants, including large numbers of women and children, and sometimes the entire population of villages;
- b) the widespread use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and the nerve agent
Nerve agents, also referred to as nerve gases though these chemicals are liquid at room temperature, are a class of phosphorus-containing organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanism by which nerves transfer messages to organs...
GB, or SarinSarin, also known by its NATO designation of GB, is an extremely toxic substance whose sole application is as a nerve agent. As a chemical weapon, it is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations in UN Resolution 687...
, against the town of Halabja as well as dozens of Kurdish villages, killing many thousands of people, mainly women and children;
- c) the wholesale destruction of some 2,000 villages, which are described in government documents as having been "burned", "destroyed", "demolished" and "purified", as well as at least a dozen larger towns and administrative centers (nahyas and qadhas); Since 1975, some 4,000 Kurdish villages have been destroyed by the former Iraqi regime.
- d) Human Rights Watch/Middle East estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed. Some Kurdish sources put the number higher, estimating 182,000 Kurds were killed.
- e) Army engineers destroyed the large Kurdish town of Qala Dizeh (population 70,000) and declared its environs a "prohibited area," removing the last significant population center close to the Iranian border.
Genocide
Article 2 of the 1949
United NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and the achieving of world peace...
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of GenocideThe Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260. The Convention came into effect in January 1951...
defines
GenocideGenocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of...
as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". In December 2005 a
courtA court is a body, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes and dispense civil, criminal, or administrative justice in accordance with rules of law....
in The Hague ruled that the killing of thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s was indeed an act of genocide. The Dutch court said it considered "legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets requirement under Genocide Conventions as an
ethnic groupAn ethnic group is a group of humans whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage that is real or presumed.Ethnic identity is further marked by the researcher Seng Yang in the recognition from others of a group's distinctiveness and the recognition of common cultural,...
. The court has no other conclusion than that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq."
Trial of Saddam Hussein
In an
interviewAn interview is a conversation between two or more people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Employment-related :* Job interview* Case interview...
broadcastBroadcasting is the distribution of audio and/or video signals which transmit programs to an audience. The audience may be the general public or a relatively large sub-audience, such as children or young adults....
on Iraqi
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
on September 6, 2005, Iraqi president
Jalal TalabaniJalal Talabani is the current President of Iraq and a leading Kurdish politician. He is the first non-Arab president of Iraq....
said that
judgeA judge, or arbiter of justice, is a lead official who presides over a court of law, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is like an umpire in a game and...
s had directly extracted
confessionThe confession of one's sins is a religious practice important to many faiths, e.g., Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.- Christianity :...
s from Saddam Hussein that he had ordered mass killings and other "crimes" during his regime and that he deserves to die. Two days later Saddam's
lawyerA lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person licensed to practice law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain stability, and deliver...
denied that he had confessed.
Anfal trial
In June 2006, the Iraqi Special Tribunal announced that Saddam Hussein and six co-defendants would face trial on August 21 2006, in relation to the Anfal campaign. In December 2006 Saddam was put on trial for the genocide during Operation Anfal. The trial for the Anfal campaign was still underway on December 30, 2006, when
Saddam Hussein was executedThe execution of Saddam Hussein took place on December 30, 2006. He was sentenced to death by hanging, after being found guilty and convicted of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in 1982, in retaliation for an...
for his role in the unrelated
DujailDujail is a small Shiite town in the Salah ad Din Governorate. It is situated about 65 kilometers north of Iraq's capital, Baghdad, and has approximately 10,000 inhabitants. It is the site of the 1982 Dujail Massacre....
massacre.
The Anfal trial recessed on December 21 2006, and when it resumed on January 8 2007, the remaining charges against Saddam Hussein were dropped. Six co-defendants continued to stand trial for their roles in the Anfal campaign. On 23 June 2007 Ali Hassan al-Majid, and two co-defendants Sultan Hashem Ahmed and Hussein Rashid Mohammed were convicted of genocide and related charges and sentenced to
death by hanging* hanging* Death by Hanging, a 1968 film by Nagisa Oshima...
. Another two co-defendants (Farhan Jubouri and Saber Abdel Aziz al-Douri) were sentenced to
life imprisonmentLife imprisonment is a sentence of imprisonment for a serious felony crime where the convicted person is to remain in prison for the rest of his or her life...
, and one (Taher Tawfiq al-Ani) was acquitted on prosecution's demand.
See also
- Assyrian victims of the al-Anfal Campaign
The Ba'ath regime's al-Anfal campaign severely weakened the Assyrians' presence in northern Iraq. The al-Anfal campaign occurred in northern Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Currently, this campaign is widely recognized as a campaign which targeted Kurds exclusively. However, current research is...
- Halabja poison gas attack
The Halabja poison gas attack occurred in the period March 16–17 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War. Chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government forces in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja....
- Human rights in Saddam's Iraq
Iraq under Saddam Hussein had high levels of torture and mass murder.Secret police, torture, murders, deportations, forced disappearances, targeted assassinations, chemical weapons, and the destruction of wetlands were some of the methods Saddam Hussein used to maintain control...
External links