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Kurds Finally Get Anfal Reckoning
23.8.2006
By Mariwan Hama-Saeed in Rizgary (ICR No. 191)
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Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan-Iraq ,-- Saddam and his
henchmen go on trial for their role in notorious
military operation nearly 20 years ago.
Rebaz Ghalib Mohammed was just seven years old when
Iraqi forces arrested him and nine of his family,
deporting them from their small village in Germian
province to a detention camp for Kurds in southern
Iraq.
There, he ate only bread and water for nearly nine
months, was beaten and whipped and watched
helplessly as his friends died of hunger and
disease.
The Baathist military operation against civilian
Kurds in 1988, known as the Anfal campaign, left
Mohammed, now 25, without a father and with
psychological scars that will probably never heal.
His father and more than 50 other family members
were taken away by Iraqi forces, never to be heard
of again.
"I don't know what a father's love is," said
Mohammed. “ I was deprived of that."
After the overthrow of Saddam in 2003, Mohammed and
many other victims of the campaign hoped that the
former leader and his henchmen would be brought to
justice - and these hopes were realised earlier this
year when the Iraqi Special Tribunal announced that
Saddam was to face charges of genocide and crimes
against human for his role in the Anfal campaigns.
Six of Saddam’s aides will also be prosecuted for
their involvement, including his cousin Ali Hassan
al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali because he is
widely regarded as having masterminded poison-gas
attacks during the Baathist operation.
The trial began on August 20 in a Baghdad courtroom
with the prosecution`s opening address.
The Anfal campaign lasted from February to September
1988 and took the lives of at least 50.000, possibly
as many as 100.000 Kurds. At least 2000 villages
were destroyed and hundreds of thousands of
villagers were forcibly displaced, according to
Human Rights Watch. The codename, Anfal, taken from
the Koran, refers to the battle against infidels and
was chosen by the former regime in an attempt to
give the operation against the Kurds a semblance of
legitimacy.
"I can only cry to express my happiness," said
Mohammed. “Seeing that Saddam will be tried for the
Anfal case, I feel like we exist."
Today, Mohammad lives in Rizgary, a poor town with
houses built of mud, wood and stone about 200
kilometres northeast of Baghdad. About 27,000 people
reside in this specially-built settlement where the
former regime forcibly accommodated Kurdish Anfal
survivors whose villages had been razed during the
campaign. |
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and six
members of his Baath party.
Photo : AFP| AP |
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Almost everyone in Rizgary has a story to tell about
family members or relatives who were targeted by
Saddam's regime. The atrocities were so widespread
that the operation is used as a verb in Iraqi
Kurdistan to describe the mass arrests and
disappearances of the victims.
Many Anfal victims who disappeared are believed to
have been killed and dumped in mass graves in the
deserts of southwest Iraq, where they were
imprisoned.
The campaign included the systematic destruction of
settlements, mass deportation and killings.
Mohammed is a primary teacher now, and has pledged
to educate his pupils about the Anfal tragedy, "They
should learn about the atrocity that this nation
suffered and how we were suppressed."
But while Rizgary residents are happy that Saddam
will be tried, they are angry at the Kurdish
authorities for neglecting the area and for giving
government posts to former Kurdish collaborators who
worked with the Baath regime during the Anfal
campaign.
Rizgary and other towns in Germian area, an area
badly hit by the Anfal operation, still lack basic
services such as a proper water supply, paved roads
and decent schools. The town's electricity is too
weak to even run refrigerators. Jobs are almost
non-existent: most people rely solely on small
stipends from the Kurdish government.
Because many of their villages were destroyed, Anfal
victims are stuck in this former internment camp.
Eight members of Nazdar Salih Qadir's family,
including her nine-month-old granddaughter,
disappeared during the Anfal campaign. She smokes at
least 20 cigarettes a day to numb her pain. Her only
income is a monthly 100 US dollar government subsidy
of which she has to spend half on rent.
Qadir, 71, said she wishes to see Saddam face to
face, "If I get him I will bite him, " she said.
"Although I don't have teeth anymore, I will manage
to take my revenge."
Halabja is the site of a notorious poison-gas attack
in 1988 that’s considered one of the Baath regime's
worst atrocities against the Kurds - but the case is
expected to be tried separately from Anfal.
One 40-year-old Halabja resident, who did not want
to be named because of security concerns, lost 22
members of his family during the attack, and said he
is prepared to testify against the dictator.
"When Saddam was captured, I was the first one to
dance in Halabja," he said. "I hadn’t laughed that
much since 1988."
For the past eighteen years, he has dressed in black
in mourning for Anfal victims, but when it comes to
testify against Saddam, he says he will wear
traditional Kurdish clothes.
He also said that he’d long dreamt of being called
as a witness to a trial of Saddam, and would relish
the chance to look him in the eye, “I might die of
happiness after testifying."
Qadir said it is painful for her not to know what
happened to her family members.
"I wish they were killed by poison-gas attacks," she
said, "because at least we would have known where
they are buried."
Mariwan Hama-Saeed is IWPR’s Kurdish editor.
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