February–September 1988

Anfal and Halabja

Saddam Hussein's regime carries out the Anfal campaign against the Kurds of rural Iraq, including the gassing of Halabja, killing tens of thousands of civilians.

Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds — Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch, Human Rights Watch (1993)
A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja — Joost R. Hiltermann, Cambridge University Press (2007)
A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)

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Background

During the Iran–Iraq war (1980–88), both the KDP and PUK cooperated with Iran, and by 1987 Kurdish guerrillas controlled much of Iraq’s mountainous north. Saddam Hussein put his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid in charge of the north with sweeping powers. He began by declaring large rural areas “prohibited zones” in which, under his orders, any person or animal could be killed.

Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds — Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch, Human Rights Watch (1993)
A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)

The campaign

Al-Anfal, “the spoils”, is the name of a chapter of the Qur’an. The regime used it for a series of eight military offensives between late February and early September 1988.

Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds — Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch, Human Rights Watch (1993)

Human Rights Watch, working from captured Iraqi state documents and survivor interviews, reconstructed what happened. Villages were attacked, often first with chemical weapons, then surrounded. Their inhabitants were taken to holding camps, where men and teenage boys were separated, trucked away and shot in mass graves, often in the deserts far to the south. Many women, children and elderly people were also killed, and others died of hunger and disease in the camps.

Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds — Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch, Human Rights Watch (1993)

HRW concluded that at least 50,000 rural Kurds were killed in 1988 alone and “very possibly twice that number”, and called the campaign genocide.

Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds — Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch, Human Rights Watch (1993)

Kurdish authorities give a much higher figure of 182,000, which is widely used in the Kurdistan Region. The broader campaigns of 1987–89 destroyed around 2,000 villages.

Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds — Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch, Human Rights Watch (1993)
A Modern History of the Kurds — David McDowall, I.B. Tauris (2004)

Halabja

Halabja was not formally part of the Anfal offensives, but it became their emblem. On 16 March 1988, after the town had fallen to Iranian forces and Kurdish fighters, Iraqi aircraft bombed it with chemical agents, most likely mustard gas and nerve agents. HRW reports that between 3,200 and 5,000 residents died, most of them civilians, and figures of about 5,000 are commonly cited.

Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds — Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch, Human Rights Watch (1993)
A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja — Joost R. Hiltermann, Cambridge University Press (2007)

Images of families lying dead in the streets were seen around the world, yet there were few consequences at the time. Iraq was then courted by Western governments as a counterweight to Iran, and US officials at first suggested Iran might share the blame. Joost Hiltermann’s study shows that the evidence pointed squarely at Iraq.

A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja — Joost R. Hiltermann, Cambridge University Press (2007)

Justice and memory

After Saddam’s fall, the Iraqi High Tribunal tried the Anfal case. In 2007 Ali Hassan al-Majid, known to Kurds as “Chemical Ali”, was sentenced to death for genocide; he was hanged in 2010 after further convictions, including for Halabja. Saddam himself had already been executed for a different crime before the Anfal verdict.

A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja — Joost R. Hiltermann, Cambridge University Press (2007)
The Cambridge History of the Kurds — Hamit Bozarslan, Cengiz Gunes and Veli Yadirgi (eds), Cambridge University Press (2021)

Survivors still search for remains in mass graves, and 14 April is marked as Anfal remembrance day in the Kurdistan Region, while Halabja is commemorated on 16 March.

The Cambridge History of the Kurds — Hamit Bozarslan, Cengiz Gunes and Veli Yadirgi (eds), Cambridge University Press (2021)
Historical Dictionary of the Kurds — Michael M. Gunter, Scarecrow Press (2011)

For outsiders, the most important thing to understand is that Anfal is not ancient history. Many Iraqi Kurds now in their forties and fifties lived through it, and some lost entire families. It explains why so many Kurds in Iraq are wary of any arrangement that would put their security back in Baghdad’s hands.

Why it matters today

Kurds

Anfal is the defining trauma of Iraqi Kurds, and Halabja is its symbol. Almost every family in the Kurdistan Region knows someone who disappeared. The memory underpins the fierce attachment to self-rule: Kurds there believe that without their own institutions and peshmerga, it could happen again.