The Counterinsurgency Against the Kurds of 1987-1989, with the Anfal Campaign as its Peak (1987 - 1989)

When the Iran-Iraq War was winding down, and increasingly concerned about the erosion of his authority, Saddam saw Kurdistan as an opportunity to demonstrate his power and ruthlessness. He already faced a deteriorating security situation in the north, due to an alliance between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in 1985, which led to more sustained and effective military operations against the Iraqi government. In March 1987, Saddam appointed his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid as his viceroy in the North, who      started, in his words, "to solve the Kurdish problem and slaughter the saboteurs.".  The campaigns started intermittently with Kurdish guerilla members executed, villages demolished, agriculture destroyed, and chemical weapons used  to spread terror. The measures did not succeed in reversing the military situation because they were directed to government-controlled areas. Therefore, Ali Hassan al-Majid, commonly known as 'Ali Chemical' or 'Ali Anfal', developed the Anfal campaign, starting in February 1988. Anfal (the spoils of war) involved a comprehensive plan over eight stages of military operations and chemical attacks that was carefully planned, organised and implemented by military and security entities and the Jahs (pro-governmental Kurdish National Defense Battalion). Seven of the attacks targeted PUK-controlled areas. The final operation targeted the KDP-controlled areas in the northwest.      

The Anfal Campaign, lasting from February to September 1988, included ground offensives, aerial bombing and chemical welfare, combined with mass executions, mass disappearances, forced mass displacements, systematic demolishing of around 2,000 whole villages and at least twelve larger towns and administrative centres, infrastructure and agricultural land, lootings, arbitrary arrests,and jailing under tremendously bad conditions, while men and women and even whole families were divided. The list of brutality is endless. The widespread use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and the nerve agent GB, or Sarin, especially against  the civilian Kurdish groups including women and children, was another hallmark of Ali Hassan Al Majid’s reign of terror. Iran was largely powerless to interfere, aware of 'Ali Anfal's willingness to expand the battlefield beyond Kurdish regions.      For instance, the chemical attack on Halabja was not part of the initial Anfal program, but a sudden reaction to capturing Halabja in the final phase of the Iran-Iraq War by the Kurdish Peshmerga guerillas, supported by Iran. On 16 March 1988, two days after the capturing of Halabja, 'Ali Anfal' conducted a chemical bombardment that moved into a ground offensive, killing at least 5,000 civilians and leaving at least 7,000 people injured. The Halabja Massacre was the largest-scale chemical attack since World War I directed against a civilian population. At the end of the campaign around 80% of all villages in three governorates had been destroyed, much of the agricultural land was declared 'prohibited territory' and possibly 100,000 people had lost their lives. On account of their ethnic and collective identity, rather than their individual status, not only Kurds became targets.

The Anfal campaign and the counterinsurgencies before and after were aimed at the destruction of the Kurdish group in Iraq on account of their ethnic and collective identity, rather than their individual status, and amount to acts of genocide. The campaign was part of the Baath Party's Arabization program starting in 1970. In the aftermath of the first Iraqi-Kurdish War lasting from 1961 until 1970, Vice-President Saddam negotiated with KDP Mustafa Barzani the Iraqi-Kurdish Autonomy Agreement which was signed on 11 March 1970. During the autonomy decree the Baath Party embarked on the Arabization of the oil-producing areas especially Kirkuk and Khanaqin evicting Kurdish farmers and replacing them with poor Arab tribesmen from the south.   The territory dispute and other unfulfilled demands led to the Second Iraqi-Kurdish War (1974-1975) with the military support of pro-American Iranian Shah Pahlavi. After the 1975 Algiers Treaty between the Shah and Vice-President Saddam, Iran withdrew its support and Barzani surrendered. Massive forced relocations started pushing Kurdish and other non-Arab minorities away from the Turkish and Iranian border areas to major cities. Others were transferred to the South of Iraq. An estimated half a million Kurds had been moved from their home villages, to which they were forbidden to return on pain of death. Arab families were encouraged to move to the North by providing very substantial investment in the North's infrastructure by the Iraqi government.

This article was written by Hella Mewis and is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.