Families of victims revisit Anfal atrocities at notorious desert prison in southern Iraq

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Relatives of Anfal campaign victims visited the ill-reputed Nugra Salman prison near the Iraq-Saudi borders, along with a recently uncovered mass grave site in the southern Iraq desert, to honor loved ones who were killed during the genocidal Anfal campaign.

In the late 1980s, the Saddam Hussein-led Ba’ath regime launched the brutal eight-phase military campaign across the Kurdistan Region. The genocidal operation claimed the lives of more than 182,000 Kurds.

Located in the Arar desert along the Iraq-Saudi borders, the Nugra Salman prison became a symbol of this suffering for its role in the Anfal campaign. The prison housed between 6,000 and 8,000 Kurdish prisoners, many of them women, children and elderly, who were detained under inhumane conditions. Some died from disease, physical abuse and starvation, while others were executed or buried alive in the surrounding desert.

On Monday, cries of anguish filled the air in Nugra Salman as the relatives of Anfal victims, who had long heard stories of the horrors that unfolded behind the prison walls, were able to feel the pain and suffering their loved ones had endured, now more deeply than ever.

Sharmin Ikram, lost three of her sisters, two of her brothers and 16 other relatives in 1983 during the Anfal campaign. She traveled to Nugra Salman from her hometown of Kifri, south of Sulaimani province, to remember her slain kin.

"They were buried alive, but what sin did they commit for them to deserve such a fate?" Ikram told Rudaw.

Mohammed Ali, a relative of Anfal victims who traveled from the Kurdistan Region’s capital Erbil, told Rudaw, "I have lost all feeling in the night, and I have no feeling during the day either.”

Another relative, Nazem Jawhar, asks: "How did they [Anfal victims] reach this place? They were hungry, afraid.. What state were they in?”

For his part, Ahmed Ali told Rudaw, "We come every year, whether the graves are exhumed or not.” Meanwhile, Jaza Salih reflected with heartbreak, "Eight of my relatives were buried here alive. I just know that this soil covered their faces. I will take some of it back home."

The visit to Nugra Salman came only days after thousands across the Kurdistan Region marked the anniversary of the genocidal Anfal campaign, once again calling for justice.

In Baghdad, families of the victims gathered to demand the Iraqi government accelerate efforts to exhume the remains of their loved ones, many of whom are believed to lie in unmarked graves in Iraq’s southern deserts.

Nearly four decades after Anfal, dozens of mass graves remain undiscovered or unexcavated. On December 22, satellite imagery helped reveal a new site in Iraq’s southern Muthanna province, believed to hold the remains of around 150 Kurdish women and children.

The most recent discovery was made on December 22, when satellite imagery revealed several mass graves in Muthanna province. It is believed that around 150 Kurdish women and children were executed and buried at the site.

Despite its brutality, the Anfal campaign was not an isolated atrocity but part of a broader pattern of ethnic cleansing and genocide adopted by the Ba’ath regime against the Kurdish people. This history also includes the forced demographic changes in Kirkuk during the 1960s, the disappearance of Faili Kurds in the 1970s, and the chemical weapons attack on Halabja in 1988.

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