Anfal campaign

Anfal campaign
Part of the Iran–Iraq War
LocationKurdistan Region, Iraq
DateFebruary–September 1988
TargetPeshmerga
Kurdish civilians
Iranian Armed Forces
Attack type
DeathsSee Death toll:
PerpetratorBa'athist Iraq
MotiveCounterinsurgency, Anti-Kurdish sentiment, Arabization
ConvictedSaddam Hussein
Ali Hassan al-Majid
Hussein Rashid

The Anfal campaign[a] 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[3] because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate.[4] The Ba’athist regime committed atrocities on the local Kurdish population, mostly civilians.[5]

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 the eighth chapter of the Qur'an (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.[b] Although many[specify] Iraqi Arabs reject that there were any mass killings of Kurdish civilians during Anfal,[6] the event is an important element constituting Kurdish national identity.

  1. ^ Black 1993, p. 345.
  2. ^ Makiya, Kanan (1994). Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 163–168. ISBN 9780393311419.
  3. ^ Hiltermann 2008, Victims.
  4. ^ Kirmanj & Rafaat 2021, p. 163.
  5. ^ Beeston, Richard (18 January 2010). "Halabja, the massacre the West tried to ignore". The Times. Archived from the original on 23 January 2010. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  6. ^ Hiltermann 2008, Interpretation of facts.


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