The Anfal massacre 35 years ago was carried out by the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
A systematic planned genocide was carried out against the Kurds in Southern Kurdistan in 1988. About 182,000 Kurds were killed and over one million people were displaced from their homes. Thousands of villages were destroyed to the ground.
The Anfal campaign against people of Kurdistan was in several ways an extension of the previous year’s “Arabization”, the goal was to cleanse the Kurdish areas out of Kurds. The onslaught of the massacre and its persecution of Kurds was more systematic and brutal in its destruction than previous persecutions.
The Anfal campaign consisted of chemical weapons attacks on civilians. Forced displacements, shelling, executions, and destruction of thousands of villages which were leveled to the ground by bulldozers. The campaign was carefully planned by the Saddam regime.
Even the Anfal campaign was officially suspended on 6 September 1988, but the persecution of the Kurds continued.
After the fall of Saddam’s regime in 2003, hundreds of mass graves of Kurds have been found in Iraq and South Kurdistan. Even now, knowledge of mass graves in which tens of thousand of Kurds are buried is lacking. It has been established that many of the victims were buried alive.
As long as the Kurdish people have not achieved their legitimate rights, do not have their own state and sovereignty, they will always be subject to threats like Anfal. Preventing new massacres will only be achieved through unity, mutual respect, and political harmony among all Kurds.
Kurdish Diaspora Confederation – Diakurd
