Review Edited by Lisa Blaydes and Samuel Helfont, Ba’thist Iraq Through Archives, Reflections, Explorations and Opportunities, Stanford University Press, 2026

  

Ba’thist Iraq Through Archives, Reflections, Explorations and Opportunities was the result of a 2023 conference at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University in California where academics and researchers met to discuss the Baathist archives that were captured after the Gulf War and 2003 invasion. Like most anthologies the chapters are a bit varied but there are some very interesting findings given the talent that was assembled.

Review Lisa Blaydes, State Of Repression, Iraq Under Saddam Hussein, Princeton University Press, 2018

Blaydes, Lisa, State Of Repression, Iraq Under Saddam Hussein, Princeton University Press, 2018

 

Lisa Blaydes’ State Of Repression, Iraq Under Saddam Hussein takes new approaches to analyzing the rule of the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein. Like recent books it argues that the Baath and Saddam ruled through a combination of carrots and sticks. What the author focuses upon is how those two approaches formed political identities in the country. She argues that those parts of Iraqi society that were easily penetrated by the state faced more nuanced acts of repression while those that were more difficult suffered collective punishment which led to new political communities being formed.

JOURNEYMAN PICTURES VIDEO: After Anfal Iraq

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JOURNEYMAN PICTURES VIDEO: Saddam Witness - Iraq Jan. 2007

Mass Graves, Saddam Hussein’s Legacy In Iraq

Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq through a carrot and stick approach. With various groups within the country he would offer positions within the government, development funds, and conduct personal visits to their communities. On the other hand, he had a vast array of security agencies that would detain, interrogate, torture, and kill anyone that was considered a rival or threat to his regime. In the 1980s and 1990s, Kurdish parties in the north and young Shiites in the south challenged Saddam’s authority and were met with his fist. Tens of thousands were killed, many having “disappeared” after being picked up by Saddam’s forces. Many of the regime’s victims were dumped in dozens of mass graves spread throughout Iraq. After the U.S. invasion in 2003, both the Americans and the Iraqis made a concerted effort to find these sites, and detail the crimes contained within them. This history has left a lasting legacy. Many of today’s politicians had to flee in the face of threats by Saddam or lost friends and family members. It has also created a sense of victimization and mistrust, which makes it hard for Iraq’s parties to agree upon many things. Iraq’s mass graves are Saddam’s living legacy within the country.

The Kurds were a prime target of Saddam’s repression. During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, the two leading Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of current Kurdish President Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by today’s president of Iraq Jalal Talabani fought on the Iranian side. At the beginning of the war, the KDP had closer relations with Tehran, and immediately aligned with them in the conflict. The PUK was threatened by the benefits Barzani was gaining from this relationship, and decided to open talks with Baghdad. This provided a perfect chance for Saddam to play his divide and conquer strategies. At the same time, he decided to retaliate against the KDP. In early 1983, the KDP and Iranian forces led an offensive in northern Iraq. In response, Saddam ordered the round up of the Barzani clan in August. Around 8,000 men and boys, some as young as eight years old, were arrested by the security forces in Irbil. Massoud Barzani lost 37 families members as a result. They were then sent to Nugra Salman prison in Muthanna province, southern Iraq where some died of hunger or torture. The survivors were relocated to more remote locations further south where special execution squads killed them in the desert. After 2003, 512 Barzani men were found in a mass grave by the Kuwait and Saudi border. When talks went nowhere with Baghdad, the PUK joined the Iranian side as well. As the war was winding down in 1988, Saddam decided to destroy all the KDP and PUK cadre in northern Iraq with the Anfal campaign. The offensive was broken up into six parts lasting from February to September, and included artillery, bombing, and troop assaults, supported by the use of chemical weapons. The survivors were rounded up and sent to special prison camps created for them. These were spread out between Dohuk, Sulaymaniya, Ninewa, Tamim, Salahaddin, Diyala, and Muthanna governorates. There, hundreds were executed. By the end of it, the Anfal campaign had broken the back of the Kurdish resistance. The PUK and KDP bases had been rolled up, and thousands were forced into Iran and Turkey as refugees. The regime had shown its ruthlessness, and the length it was willing to go to destroy its opponents.

In the next decade, after the 1991 Gulf War came to an end, returning soldiers and young men took up the gun against Saddam. The precursors were a radio station set up by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Saudi Arabia that called for Iraqis to revolt against the government, and a message by President George Bush broadcast in February saying that Saddam should be overthrown. In March, soldiers straggling back from the frontlines decided to start an uprising in Basra. That quickly spread to other southern cities such as Najaf, Kufa, Karbala, Diwaniya, Hillah, Amarah, Nasiriyah, Kut, Samawa, Zubayr, Kumait, and Qalat Saleh. This became known as the 1991 Shiite Uprising. The leading Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Sayid Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei even gave his approval. Within a few days, Saddam responded by sending in the Republican Guards, which had largely escaped the Gulf War. In Basra, the security forces shelled the city, and went from house to house taking away any young men they found. The revolt didn’t have a chance, because it was unorganized, had no outside support, and did not have the arms to counter the government. Within a few days the whole thing was over. Some stragglers fled into the southern marshes, where Saddam would later carry out a campaign of destroying the echo system there to root out the rebels. The uprising put a scare into the regime, but it had weathered through, and exacted its revenge upon all those that had opposed it. Like in Kurdistan during the Anfal campaign, thousands of young Iraqis went missing after 1991, taken to various locations throughout southern Iraq where they were executed.

No one knew or was willing to talk about where all the victims of the Anfal campaign and the 1991 Uprising were until after the fall of Saddam in 2003. As soon as he was overthrown, reports began to emerge of mass graves. By 2004, 270 sites were allegedly found, and out of those, 53 were confirmed. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) set up a special investigative team to find, categorize, and document each place. There were estimates that 50,000-180,000 Kurds died in the Anfal campaign, and 100,000-180,000 Shiites were killed in the 1991 Uprising. By 2005, graves were found in Mahawil in Babil, Hatra in Ninewa, and one near Samawa in Muthanna with around 10,000-15,000 bodies in them. In Mahawil, 200-300 people were discovered, thought to be from the Shiite Uprising. It appeared that groups of men were shot in the back of the head. At the site near Samawa, almost all the victims were Kurdish women and children who were gunned down by AK-47s. The work of the CPA team went on to help convict Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. There are so many of these killing fields that they are still turning up to this day. In March 2011, Kurdish peshmerga found trenches south of Kirkuk with around 2,300 people in them. In July, another 1,100 bodies turned up in a mass grave near Shanafiya, Qadisiya. In June 2012, a ceremony was held for 730 of them in Chamchamal, Sulaymaniya that was attended by President Barzani. Each of these sites attests to the brutality of the former regime. Saddam used an iron first to maintain his hold upon the country. His actions left a deep scar, which is still felt today. There are thousands of people in Iraq that lost their family members and friends in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of them were never seen after the security forces took them away, and they ended up in these mass graves. The process of identifying all the bodies has been slow, and will probably never be complete. That means the hole in the lives of the survivors will never be filled as they do not know what ultimately became of their loved ones.

The history of Saddam Hussein created widespread mistrust amongst the public. Today’s politicians share many of those feelings, and have also exploited them for their own personal gains. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for instance, fled Iraq in 1979 fearing assassination by the government. Kurdish President Barzani lost thousands of members of his clan, and immediate family. Moqtada al-Sadr’s father and brothers were murdered by the regime. It’s those fears of Saddam’s legacy that allows the government to round up suspected Baathists and use the deBaathification laws to ban people from politics or public sector jobs. It’s the reason why the leading Shiite and Kurdish parties would never allow a Sunni to become prime minister again out of the suspicion that they could bring back the Baath Party. It’s the reason why politicians like Iyad Allawi and Deputy Premier Saleh al-Mutlaq are held into question by others such as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, because both were former Baathists, and the latter has even praised the message of the party, while condemning its excesses. The mass graves themselves have even been hurled about in disputes to condemn political rivals. Iraq is unlikely to overcome these fissures and move on until this generation of leaders passes. Their past still lives deep within them, and shapes how their interact with other elites to this day. This often times hampers compromises, and moving ahead with important issues. Instead of addressing them, they are being pushed down the road. This is what happens in many post-conflict countries, especially ones like Iraq that suffered through decades of brutal dictatorship. 

Bones of a Kurdish victim of the Anfal campaign unearthed in 2003 in Hatra, Ninewa (Science Photo Library)

American forensic specialists going through remains at the Samawa site in Muthanna province 2005 (AP

Part of the U.S. team examining bodies outside of Samawa (Ministry of Human Rights)

A woman holding a picture of some of the missing Barzani men (PBS' Frontline)

Iraqi and American officials looking at one of the trenches at the Mahawil, Babil site 2006 (New York Times)

Some of the skeletons at Mahawil (New York Times)

Identification papers of a baby Kurdish girl found at a mass grave site (Evidence Technology Magazine)

Faded ID papers of a Kurdish man killed in the Anfal campaign (Evidence Technology Magazine)

A woman holds up two pictures of missing family members lost during the Anfal campaign at ceremony in Chamchamal July 2012 (Rudaw)

Coffins draped with Kurdish flags at the Chamchamal ceremony (Al Jazeera)

SOURCES

Agence France Presse, “Iraq unearths mass grave of 900 bodies,” 7/6/11

Associated Press, “Expert: 300,000 in Iraq’s Mass Graves,” 11/8/03

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and Bureau of Public Affairs, “Mass Graves of Iraq: Uncovering Atrocities,” U.S. State Department, 12/19/03

Burns, John, “Uncovering Iraq’s Horrors in Desert Graves,” New York Times, 6/5/06

Johns, Dave, “1983 The Missing Barzanis,” PBS Frontline, 1/24/06

Knickmeyer, Ellen, “113 Kurds Are Found In Mass Grave,” Washington Post, 4/30/05

McEvers, Kelly, “Mass Grave Discovery In Iraq Could Fuel Divisions,” NPR, 4/20/11

Moon, Ban Ki, “Second report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 6 of resolution 1936 (2010),” United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, 3/31/11

Sackur, Stephen, “In Saddam’s killing fields,” BBC, 5/14/03

Satkunanandan, Shyamali, “Tears, Grief and Waiting at Chamchamal Burial Ceremony,” Rudaw, 6/1/12

Tripp, Charles, A History of Iraq, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, 2008

U.S. Agency for International Development, “Iraq’s Legacy of Terror Mass Graves,” 2004

UNAMI Human Rights Office and Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report on Human Rights in Iraq: 2011,” May 2012

AL JAZEERA VIDEO: Bodies Of Kurds Killed During Saddam Era Found In Iraq

JOURNEYMAN TV VIDEO: Chemical Ali

The Saddam Tapes, An Inside Look At Saddam Hussein’s Regime In Iraq Based Upon Hundreds Of Captured Audio Files, Part Two Of A Two Part Interview With Co-Editor David Palkki

David Palkki

David Palkki is the deputy director of the Conflict Records Research Center (CCRC) at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. He was the co-editor, along with Kevin Woods and Mark Stout of the recently released The Saddam Tapes. The book was based upon hundreds of captured tapes of Saddam and his inner circle discussing foreign and domestic issues from the 1970s to the 2000s. The first part of the interview covered Saddam’s foreign policy. The second half delves into how Saddam treated Shiites and Kurds, Islamism, weapons of mass destruction, the United Nations inspections, and the defection of his son-in-law Hussein Kamal in 1998. Overall, what The Saddam Tapes revealed was a dictator who spoke his mind both privately and publicly. Rather than a mad man, Saddam held wide-ranging discussions with his top advisors. The problem was he often miscalculated foreign affairs, but was much better at controlling his own people within Iraq.

1. After the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam faced a Shiite and Kurdish uprising. How did he feel about this turn of events?

He described the uprising as the “page of treason and treachery.”

2. One interesting conversation included in the book was of an Iraqi official saying that the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) fought Tehran’s forces in Jalawla, Diyala province. Did you read anything else about their involvement in this period, because there are many Iraqis who think that the group was used to help put down the Shiite revolt?

I haven’t seen anything else on the MEK during this period, and hope to find more. 

3. During the 1980s and 1990s Islamism had a rebirth in the region. What kind of challenges did that pose for Saddam who stood atop a secular, Baathist government?

Iran branded the Iraqi regime atheistic, and tried to delegitimize it on this basis. Saddam took steps to emphasize the importance of Islam to the regime, including adding the phrase “God is Great” to the Iraqi flag in 1991, building mosques, claiming to have descended from the prophet Mohammed, and so forth. Amatzia Baram, one great Iraq scholar, describes Saddam as becoming a “born again Muslim.”  For more on this, click here. 

4. Could you get any insight into what Saddam felt personally about religion and Islam?

He consistently indicated in captured recordings that he was a believer, and would cite the Quran and Hadith, but I’m sure this debate will continue. 

Saddam kissing a Quran at the Samarra shrine in Salahaddin. In the mid-1990s Saddam turned towards Islam to help prop up his regime and co-opt the growth of Islamism within Iraq and the region (Reuters)

5. Do you think Saddam was ever successful in containing or co-opting the Islamists that were growing within Iraq itself?

To some degree, though not to the degree that he would have liked. 

6. A really interesting point that I got from the book was the role of sectarianism under Saddam. It appeared that he really wanted to be a nationalist leader of his country, and stressed that all of its people were Iraqis first, and was reluctant to refer to a group by its sect or ethnicity. Can you give some examples of this?

The best evidence is what you don’t see in the recordings and other captured records – references to Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis. The rareness of such references has surprised many scholars who’ve worked with the captured records. 

7. In turn, some have claimed that Saddam was obviously a sectarian leader because of what he did to the Shiites and Kurds. Others have said that he actually was most interested in keeping his immediate family in power, and then his extended family, which was based upon tribal ties and the Tikrit region of Salahaddin. Did the Iraqi tapes give any insight into which of these views was more realistic?

Different people will certainly take different lessons and insights from the tapes. For Saddam, maintaining power was of paramount importance, and he relied on family and tribe to do this.  His policies certainly tended to favor Sunnis. However, the Shiites and Kurds had risen up in arms against his regime, and Kurdish rebels had allied with Iran in times of war. From Saddam’s perspective, he crushed the Shiite uprising and used chemical weapons against Kurds, because they were traitors to Iraq, and not for reasons related to ethnicity. 

Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor under construction in 1979, which was part of Saddam's covert plan to build a nuclear device  (Wikimedia)

8. Another big issue covered in the book was Iraq’s WMD policies. In the 1970s, before he was running the country, Saddam was put in charge of Iraq’s nuclear program. What did he see as the advantage of Iraq acquiring such weapons?

He thought they could be used to deter attacks and nuclear blackmail by Israel and the United States. He believed that possessing nuclear weapons would bring prestige. He frequently told his inner circle that Israeli nuclear weapons prevented Iraq from liberating the occupied Palestinian territories, but that once Iraq had nuclear weapons, it would liberate these lands in a bloody war of attrition. Hal Brands and I have written more on this here and here. 

9. Iraq obviously never acquired the bomb, but it was able to build a robust chemical and biological weapons arsenal, which was used during the Iran-Iraq War. What did Saddam think about using these weapons during the conflict?

Iraq saw use of chemical weapons as effective and necessary under certain conditions. 

10. Saddam then decided to use WMD on the Kurds. How were they supposed to help in this internal conflict?

By creating terror, softening up resistance, and so forth. 

11. After the Gulf War, Iraq came under United Nations sanctions and weapons inspections. Did the tapes say what happened to Iraq’s WMD stockpiles?

I have seen no evidence in the tapes that casts doubt on the Duelfer Report’s finding that Iraq destroyed the vast bulk of its chemical weapons in 1991.

U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq in 1991 (U.N.)

12. With no actual WMD left, Iraq still ended up arguing with the inspectors. Why did Iraq take such a confrontational approach when it desperately wanted sanctions lifted, which was directly connected to the weapons searches?

There were a variety of reasons, including concerns that the inspectors were collecting intelligence that could undermine regime security, pride and desire not to suffer perceived humiliations of being compelled to allow inspectors and to disarm, and perhaps desire to create “deterrence by doubt” by leaving Iran, Israel, or others uncertain whether Iraq had truly disarmed. 

13. The inspectors seemed to realize that Iraq didn’t have any large stockpiles left, but wanted to know about its suppliers, its equipment, and its paperwork. What kind of problems did Iraq have with these demands?

The Iraqis had unilaterally destroyed WMD-related paperwork, making it hard for them to produce complete and convincing evidence. They also didn’t want to draw unwanted attention to the activities of former suppliers, for fear that the suppliers would not assist them in future acquisition activities in a post-sanctions period, and out of concern that countries friendly to Iraq such as Russia would be angered by such revelations. Some equipment was dual-use, which also created problems. 

Saddam greeting Russian diplomat Nikoli Kartouzov in 1998. Saddam hoped that friendly countries like Russia would help end the United Nations sanctions imposed in 1990 (Reuters)

14. With the inspections and sanctions dragging on for years, Iraq seemed to take a three pronged approach to undermine them. First, they went to their friends like the French and Soviets. What did Baghdad want these countries to do for them at the United Nations?

It wanted France and Russia to speak out on Iraq’s behalf, to call for an immediate end to the sanctions and inspections, and other such measures. It wanted them to ignore the sanctions, to sell weapons to Iraq, to purchase Iraqi oil, and to otherwise be supportive of Iraq.  

15. The second approach was using bribes. Who was that aimed at?

UN inspectors, UN Oil-for-Food officials, key politicians in a variety of countries, and others. 

16. Finally, in 1995 Saddam moved several Republican Guard divisions to the Kuwait border. What was that plan, and how did it work out?

It appears from captured audio files that the plan was never to invade Kuwait; rather, the plan was to create a crisis that Saddam believed would serve to undermine support for the UN sanctions.

 

17. Ultimately, Saddam and his inner circle came to lose faith in the inspection process. What did they think the inspectors were really after in Iraq?

They thought that U.S. and U.K. inspectors wouldn’t take yes for an answer, and were looking for any excuse they could find to extend the economic sanctions. Saddam suspected that inspectors were collecting intelligence to share with the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, and that they would plant WMD materials at inspection sites and then claim to have found evidence that Iraq was violating its obligations. 

18. Was that why Iraq ended up stopping its cooperation with the U.N. in 1998?

This was certainly a big part of it. 

19. Hussein Kamal who was Saddam’s son-in-law had a major role in this entire drama. Could you give a little background as to who Kamal was, and what position he played in the regime.

Hussein Kamal had overseen Saddam’s WMD programs, and he and his brother were intimately familiar with the inner workings of the regime. 

The defection of Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamal (far left) in 1988 caused chaos within the Iraqi regime (Reuters)

20. Kamal ended up defecting to Jordan in 1998, which seemed to cause chaos within the Iraqi government. Why were they so concerned when he left?

It showed that someone who’d been at the very heart of the regime had defected, and Saddam had not suspected it. Saddam had trusted him, and had been burned. 

21. What kind of affect did his defection have upon the inner workings of the regime?

It made Saddam even more distrustful.

22. Kamal ended up telling the U.N. inspectors that Iraq had destroyed all of its WMD, but that Iraq had also worked on several programs like nuclear weapons it had not revealed. What did Iraq end up doing about Kamal’s revelations?

It “discovered” a large amount of WMD-related documents, which it said Hussein Kamal had been concealing from the regime, and turned these over to UN inspectors. 

23. Amazingly, Kamal ended up returning to Iraq. Why did he end up doing something that looked so obviously suicidal? 

It seems that he had had a brain tumor that had been operated on in Jordan prior to his defection, and that the operation may have led to depression and suicidal behavior. He may have thought Saddam would forgive him, and he was quickly wearing out his welcome in Jordan. 

24. The end of the book had some interesting conclusions about how Saddam operated. What can you say about how Saddam conducted meetings, and used his advisors?

The meetings were generally fairly unstructured. At times, Saddam would do most or even virtually all of the talking. In other meetings, Saddam’s advisers would expound on topics at length. Advisers generally seem to have told Saddam what they thought he wanted to hear, but not always. Nizar Hamdoon, a senior Iraqi diplomat, once wrote Saddam a scathing letter in which he called on him to democratize, cooperate with UN inspectors, and respect human rights. Saddam’s written response to this letter, and a translation of it, is available to scholars at the Conflict Records Research Center. Such boldness was very rare. 

25. Does this fit the “mad man” image that the West created of Saddam during the Gulf War and the lead up to the 2003 invasion?

Saddam wasn’t insane. He was very risk acceptant, and often perceived things idiosyncratically, but he wasn’t crazy. 

26. The final conclusion was about what Saddam said publicly, and what Iraq’s actual policy was. Can you explain that point?

Saddam’s general worldview came out pretty clearly in his public rhetoric.  In terms of how he saw the world, his public discourse differed little from his private rhetoric. 

27. Finally, are there any other major lessons you came away with from putting this book together?

I think your previous questions have done a great job of covering the main lessons. 

SOURCES

Woods, Kevin, Palkki, David, and Stout, Mark, The Saddam Tapes, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Iraq’s Anfal Campaign And The Destruction Of The Kurdish Opposition

From February to September 1988 Saddam Hussein launched the most repressive campaign of his rule. This was the time of the Anfal, when the government temporarily destroyed the two main Kurdish opposition parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). This was accomplished through the leveling of thousands of villages by conventional and chemical weapons. The survivors were put into camps, where many were killed and the others dispersed into government controlled areas. This was a much more vicious and systematic offensive than previous ones against the Kurds.

Areas attacked during the Anfal campaign. Click on image for larger view (Rights Maps)

The 1^st Anfal lasted from February 23 to March 19, 1988, and targeted the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (PUK) command center in the Jafati Valley of Sulaymaniya province. It started with Iraqi forces opening a 40-mile front in the valley in Sulaymaniya province. On February 23, the villages of Yakhsamar, Sergalou and Bergalou were shelled. The PUK’s pershmerga were able to hold off the government forces for a few weeks, but eventually gave way by early March. Several towns fell, and each one was bulldozed and dynamited. Some of the displaced fled to neighboring Iran, which had a large population of Kurdish refugees from previous government attacks. In these opening weeks, Middle East Watch estimated that 28 people were killed, and 300 wounded. This was the opening salvo of the government’s plan to destroy the popular base of the Kurdish parties. While many PUK fighters were killed, the real target was the rural towns and population that the opposition relied upon.

Click on image for larger view (Rights Maps)

The 2^nd Anfal went from March 22 to April 1, and revealed the true outline of the Baath Party’s plans. Government forces targeted PUK held areas of Qara Dagh, Sulaymaniya, which had fallen to it in the early 1980s. The region had been attacked and gassed by the army in January and February, and Iraqi intelligence said that the peshmerga militia had been dispersed, but by March they had moved back in. On March 22, Qara Dagh was hit with chemical filled artillery shells. The next day, a neighboring village that was a PUK base was attacked. On March 24, another hamlet that was used by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) for its operations against Kirkuk was gassed. As people fled from these villages, chemical weapons hit them as well. The survivors that were rounded up were taken away to detention centers, where they were split up by gender. Many of the men were taken away, and never seen again. The operations in March revealed some of the main tactics of the Anfal campaign. Villages would be attacked, sometimes with gas, and then the people captured would be sent away to camps. The goal was to eventually empty out the rural areas, to deny any kind of support to the Kurdish resistance.

Click om images for larger view (Rights Maps)

The 3^rd Anfal lasted from April 7 to 20, and focused upon the Germian area of Sulaymaniya. This was a place where peshmerga and refugees from previous attacks were gathering. They were set upon by a large pincer attack by Iraqi forces, which funneled people into collection points where they were arrested. In the process some 120 villages were destroyed. The 3^rd Anfal was also noteworthy because women and children who were captured and placed into camps began being taken away and killed. Some were taken to Hatra in Ninewa province and executed, while others were transported as far as southern Iraq to be killed and buried. In April 2005 for example, a mass grave was found near the city of Samawa in Muthanna province that held as many of 1,500 Kurds most of which were women and children killed during this period. This marked a new level of brutality as before only men were killed in the camps. The government was initially targeting anyone that could be considered a peshmerga or someone who might become one in the future. Now, the authorities were going after everyone, no matter what their age or gender in a brutal campaign to destroy the civilian population.

Mass grave found at Samawa containing up to 1,500 Kurds killed during the Anfal (Associated Press)

The 4^th Anfal started on May 3, and occurred along the Lesser Zab River, Sulaymaniya. On the first day, the town of Kogtapa was hit with chemical bombs. Another massive multi-pronged assault was then begun in the area. As before, towns were destroyed, refugees were rounded up, and put into camps.

Click on image for larger view (Rights Maps)

The 5^th Anfal marked the end of the PUK’s presence in Iraq. It focused upon the Balisan Valley in Sulaymaniya from May 15 to August 26. By then, the campaign had forced the PUK from most of their strongholds, and they were on the run. On May 23, the 5^th Anfal began with a chemical attack upon villages in the valley, followed by infantry attacks. In the middle of the offensive on July 17, Iran told the United Nations they would accept a cease-fire with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. This was a major blow to the Kurds, because Iran was their main supporter. Having lost most of its base, its foreign support, and being faced with more and more infantry and chemical attacks, the PUK decided to withdraw from Iraq into Iran. By the end of August, the party was devastated. Its fighters and supporters were dispersed along the Iranian border or within Iran itself. It had ceased to be a fighting force, and had no real camps or villages to go to anymore within Iraq.

Click on image for larger view (Rights Maps)

The final Anfal was from late August to the beginning of September. With the PUK defeated, the Iraqi government then focused upon the KDP in Dohuk province. The cease-fire with Iran allowed Baghdad to deploy new divisions to the north as reinforcements. In total, 200,000 troops were deployed against 6,000-10,000 KDP peshmerga. The assault started with artillery and aerial bombardments. The KDP headquarters was attacked on August 24. On August 25, chemical weapons were used against villages throughout the area. Like the PUK, the KDP eventually ordered its followers to withdraw in face of the overwhelming onslaught by the government. The Army tried to block their escape, but failed. 65,000-80,000 people ended up fleeing towards Turkey. Others hid in the mountains. The situation was made worse when Turkey blocked the border. It was afraid that the Iraqi Kurds would enflame its own Kurdish situation. Eventually, under international pressure, Turkey allowed the refugees to enter, but they were only given minimal aid, and Ankara tried to force most of them into Iran. The effective end of the Iran-Iraq War, not only eliminated the Kurds’ main military supporter, but also sent more troops to the north. The PUK’s presence in Iraq had already been eliminated by the end of August. By the beginning of the following month, the KDP had fled Iraq as well.

Click on image for larger view (Rights Maps)

The Iraqi government was so confident that it had finally defeated the PUK and KDP that it issued an amnesty in September. The order said that all Kurds within and without Iraq, except for Jalal Talabani who was labeled a traitor, had until October 8 to turn themselves in. Those that did were sent to two camps. In total, some 45,000 Kurds ended up returning. Some were held as late as 1990, but the majority was dispersed to different areas away from the Iranian-Turkish border. Many ended up settling in the major cities and towns of Kurdistan or just outside of them. Baghdad thought it had finally gotten rid of the Kurdish parties, so it allowed those that wanted to return to Iraq, but under the watchful eye of the authorities.

Saddam Hussein wanted to make an example out of the Kurds for challenging his power. The Kurds were pushing to create their own country, which would require the dismantling of part of Iraq. The Iraqi government had gone back and forth with the Kurds previously, offering them talks while wiping out villages and settling Arabs in the north at the same time. In 1975 it actually drove the KDP out of the country, and into Iran. There the peshmerga re-grouped, and made a return during the Iran-Iraq War. By 1986 however, Saddam had enough as the Kurds were in control of most of rural Kurdistan. In 1988 he launched Anfal. Human rights groups believe that 50,000-100,000 people were killed as a result, the Kurds claimed 182,000, while Ali Hassan al-Majid, the man in charge of the campaign, claimed he had done away with around 100,000 people. After the Anfal there were only 673 villages left in the three Kurdish provinces of Iraq. 4,049 had been destroyed. 1.5 million people had been displaced or resettled by the government. The KDP and PUK were smashed, and the rural areas of northern Iraq were devastated. The government believed that it had done away with its Kurdish problem, and was in control of the country. That proved transitory as the PUK and KDP would eventually regroup in Turkey and Iran, and continue the fight another day. In the meantime, the Kurdish countryside was left deeply scared with the ruins of most of its villages, and the bodies of thousands of people. Anfal showed the extent to which Saddam was willing to go to ensure his rule of Iraq.

SOURCES

Agence France Presse, “Kurdish mass grave with 900 corpses found in Iraq,” 7/7/11

BBC, “Babies found in Iraq mass grave,” 10/13/04

Hayes, Harry, “Genocide in Iraq: Further Reasons for a Criminal Tribunal,” International Review, 1/14/03

Human Rights Watch, “Whatever Happened To The Iraqi Kurds?” 3/11/91

Knickmeyer, Ellen, “113 Kurds Are Found in Mass Grave,” Washington Post, 4/30/05

Marr, Phebe, The Modern History of Iraq, Colorado, Oxford: Westview Press, 2004

McCarthy, Rory, “Hundreds of Kurds found buried in Iraq mass graves,” Guardian, 10/14/04

Middle East Watch – Human Rights Watch, “Genocide In Iraq, The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds,” July 1993

Iraq’s 1988 Assault Upon Halabja, And Its Conflation With The Anfal Campaign

In early 1988, Iraq opened its Anfal Campaign against the Kurdish opposition. Right at the beginning of that offensive government forces launched a chemical attack upon the town of Halabja killing thousands. Since the two happened during the same time, histories have conflated them together. In fact, Anfal and the Halabja assault were two separate events. The latter was an attempt to destroy the rural base of the Kurds, while the former was a retaliatory strike against an Iranian-Kurdish peshmerga offensive in northern Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War.

In the beginning of 1988, the Iran-Iraq War was waning, which allowed Baghdad to focus upon the Kurds. With the backing of Iran, the Kurdish peshmerga militia was able to rest control of most of rural Kurdistan from the government by 1986. In 1987, Saddam Hussein had enough with the northern rebels, and put his first cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid in charge of the region. He began more intensive military campaigns, which sometimes involved chemical weapons, to destroy Kurdish villages, and issued a series of repressive orders taking away the rights of Kurds in areas not controlled by the authorities. By early 1988, Iraq could free up some of its forces from the southern part of the country that had been fighting Iran, and redeploy them to Kurdistan. Al-Majid put them to work in his Anfal campaign, which was a massive military assault upon the popular base of the Kurdish parties.

The first Anfal offensive began in February 1988. It was characterized by the deployment of massive military formations against the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani. Hamlets were destroyed, chemical weapons were used, and thousands of people fled to the Iran-Iraq border. The plan was to push the peshmerga and civilian population out of the region’s hamlets, then destroy all the buildings and farms, capture the fleeing refugees, and relocate them to government controlled areas. This was meant to destroy the Kurdish opposition.

The PUK decided to retaliate against these attacks, supported by Iran. In March, Iranian Revolutionary Guards and peshmerga forces swept into Sulaymaniya province capturing a large number of villages. By March 13, they were outside of Halabja, a town of 40,000-60,000 people, and began shelling it. The Iraqi forces eventually gave way and the Iranians and Kurds were in control of Halabja by March 15. It looked as if the drive was going to be a success as the Iranians and Kurds had not only captured a large swath of the countryside, but a government held hamlet as well.

(BBC)

On March 16, Iraq counterattacked. At first, the security forces used air strikes and artillery. The assault drove many residents into their bomb shelters, which were common throughout Kurdistan because of all of the conflict there. Later that day, Iraqi aircraft flew overhead and dropped chemical bombs on Halabja. Many of those in their underground redoubts got the worse of it. Others were able to flee. On March 17, around 6,000 refugees fled to ruined villages outside of Halabja, and then to the Iranian border. The Iraqi forces then entered the town and began leveling it. The soldiers then left, and conceded the area to Iran and the peshmerga. Afterward, Tehran bused in journalists to report on the massacre. It was immediately seen as a propaganda tool Iran could use against Iraq. Halabja seemed to follow the pattern of the Anfal operation with shelling, bombing, the use of chemical weapons, and then the town being destroyed, but in fact it was part of the Iran-Iraq War.

Halabja became a poster-child for the Iraqi government’s use of weapons of mass destruction against the Kurdish population. An estimated 5,000 people died in the attack, and thousands were displaced. The story was broadcast around the world, thanks to Iran, who wanted to exploit it for all that it was worth to tarnish the image of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. Since it occurred during the Anfal campaign, many thought it was part of it, but it was not. Halabja was a major town that was in government hands before the peshmerga and Iranian Revolutionary Guards captured it. Anfal largely involved small towns out in the countryside. The attack upon Halabja was aimed at the Iranians, and their PUK allies. Anfal was mostly about driving civilians out of the rural regions to deprive the Kurdish parties of their support. That in no way lessons the brutality of the raid or the massive loss of life, but Halabja was retaliation for the PUK and Iranians capturing it, and not part of the Anfal. The two together will go down in history as one of the most brutal acts committed by Saddam Hussein during his 24-year rule of Iraq.

SOURCES

Human Rights Watch, “Whatever Happened To The Iraqi Kurds?” 3/11/91

Marr, Phebe, The Modern History of Iraq, Colorado, Oxford: Westview Press, 2004

Middle East Watch – Human Rights Watch, “Genocide In Iraq, The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds,” July 1993

Tripp, Charles, A History Of Iraq, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2008