President Nechirvan Barzani issued a statement Friday on the 37th anniversary of the Anfal genocidal campaigns of 1983 against the Barzanis, urging the Iraqi government to compensate victims of Saddam Hussein’s campaign. Part of a much wider genocidal effort, 'Anfal' - the eighth chapter, or Surah, in the Quran - was the codename used by Baathists for the slaughter.
On July 31, 1983, thousands of members of the Barzani tribe were taken to deserts in southern Iraq, and indiscriminately killed on the orders of members of Iraq’s former Baath regime.
Around “8000 people were indiscriminately rounded up from the concentration camps of Qushtapa, Bahrka and Diana in Erbil Governorate on July 31st, 1983, and sent to mass murder sites in the southern deserts of Iraq,” reads the statement.
“A life in utter despair and gruesome hardship awaited the mothers and the girls who lost their men and fathers to the vicious Anfal campaigns. These brave women took the responsibility of raising their deprived children in the absence of their fathers and brothers who never came back from the death camps of southern Iraq,” adds the statement.
“On this day, we salute the role of these honorable mothers and sisters who defied unimaginable adversities and never gave in.”
The Anfal campaign took place over eight phases — beginning in 1986, reaching its peak in 1988 with the Halabja chemical attack that instantly killed 5,000 people and injured 10,000. The massacre intensified in the closing weeks of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88).
The KRG has provided assistance to Anfal survivors and their relatives, including housing and tuition fees for studies.
The Iraqi Supreme Court has officially recognized the Anfal Campaign as constituting genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, however, the international community is largely yet to do so.
Erbil has also made efforts to secure global recognition of the Anfal as an act of genocide, and return the remains of victims from mass graves in Iraq’s southern and central deserts for reburial in the Kurdistan Region.
