|
Mass Graves, Saddam Hussein’s Legacy In
Iraq
12.6.2012
By Joel Wing —
Ekurd.net |
|
|
|
June 12, 2012
Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq through a carrot and
stick approach. With various groups within the
country he would offer positions within the
government, development funds, and conduct personal
visits to their communities. On the other hand, he
had a vast array of security agencies that would
detain, interrogate, torture, and kill anyone that
was considered a rival or threat to his regime. In
the 1980s and 1990s, Kurdish parties in the north
and young Shiites in the south challenged Saddam’s
authority and were met with his fist. Tens of
thousands were killed, many having “disappeared”
after being picked up by Saddam’s forces. Many of
the regime’s victims were dumped in dozens of mass
graves spread throughout Iraq. After the U.S.
invasion in 2003, both the Americans and the Iraqis
made a concerted effort to find these sites, and
detail the crimes contained within them. This
history has left a lasting legacy. Many of today’s
politicians had to flee in the face of threats by
Saddam or lost friends and family members. It has
also created a sense of victimization and mistrust,
which makes it hard for Iraq’s parties to agree upon
many things. Iraq’s mass graves are Saddam’s living
legacy within the country.
The Kurds were a prime target of Saddam’s
repression. During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s,
the two leading Kurdish parties, the Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) of current Kurdish President
Massoud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) led by today’s president of Iraq Jalal
Talabani fought on the Iranian side. At the
beginning of the war, the KDP had closer relations
with Tehran, and immediately aligned with them in
the conflict. The PUK was threatened by the benefits
Barzani was gaining from this relationship, and
decided to open talks with Baghdad. This provided a
perfect chance for Saddam to play his divide and
conquer strategies. At the same time, he decided to
retaliate against the KDP.
In early 1983, the KDP and Iranian forces led an
offensive in northern Iraq. In response, Saddam
ordered the round up of the Barzani clan in August.
Around 8,000 men and boys, some as young as eight
years old, were arrested by the security forces in
Erbil. Massoud Barzani lost 37 families members as a
result. They were then sent to Nugra Salman prison
in Muthanna province, southern Iraq where some died
of hunger or torture. The survivors were relocated
to more remote locations further south where special
execution squads killed them in the desert. After
2003, 512 Barzani men were found in a mass grave by
the Kuwait and Saudi border. When talks went nowhere
with Baghdad, the PUK joined the Iranian side as
well. As the war was winding down in 1988, Saddam
decided to destroy all the KDP and PUK cadre in
northern Iraq with the Anfal campaign. The offensive
was broken up into six parts lasting from February
to September, and included artillery, bombing, and
troop assaults, supported by the use of chemical
weapons. The survivors were rounded up and sent to
special prison camps created for them. These were
spread out between Duhok, Sulaimaniyah, Ninewa,
Tamim, Salahaddin, Diyala, and Muthanna
governorates. There, hundreds were executed. By the
end of it, the Anfal campaign had broken the back of
the Kurdish resistance. The PUK and KDP bases had
been rolled up, and thousands were forced into Iran
and Turkey as refugees. The regime had shown its
ruthlessness, and the length it was willing to go to
destroy its opponents.
In the next decade, after the 1991 Gulf War came to
an end, returning soldiers and young men took up the
gun against Saddam. The precursors were a radio
station set up by the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) in Saudi Arabia that called for Iraqis to
revolt against the government, and a message by
President George Bush broadcast in February saying
that Saddam should be overthrown. In March, soldiers
straggling back from the frontlines decided to start
an uprising in Basra. That quickly spread to other
southern cities such as Najaf, Kufa, Karbala,
Diwaniya, Hillah, Amarah, Nasiriyah, Kut, Samawa,
Zubayr, Kumait, and Qalat Saleh. This became known
as the 1991 Shiite Uprising. The leading Shiite
cleric Grand Ayatollah Sayid Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei
even gave his approval. Within a few days,www.ekurd.net
Saddam responded by sending in the Republican
Guards, which had largely escaped the Gulf War. In
Basra, the security forces shelled the city, and
went from house to house taking away any young men
they found. The revolt didn’t have a chance, because
it was unorganized, had no outside support, and did
not have the arms to counter the government. Within
a few days the whole thing was over. Some stragglers
fled into the southern marshes, where Saddam would
later carry out a campaign of destroying the echo
system there to root out the rebels. The uprising
put a scare into the regime, but it had weathered
through, and exacted its revenge upon all those that
had opposed it. Like in Kurdistan during the Anfal
campaign, thousands of young Iraqis went missing
after 1991, taken to various locations throughout
southern Iraq where they were executed.
No one knew or was willing to talk about where all
the victims of the Anfal campaign and the 1991
Uprising were until after the fall of Saddam in
2003. As soon as he was overthrown, reports began to
emerge of mass graves. By 2004, 270 sites were
allegedly found, and out of those, 53 were
confirmed. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
set up a special investigative team to find,
categorize, and document each place. There were
estimates that 50,000-180,000 Kurds died in the
Anfal campaign, and 100,000-180,000 Shiites were
killed in the 1991 Uprising. By 2005, graves were
found in Mahawil in Babil, Hatra in Ninewa, and one
near Samawa in Muthanna with around 10,000-15,000
bodies in them. In Mahawil, 200-300 people were
discovered, thought to be from the Shiite Uprising.
It appeared that groups of men were shot in the back
of the head. At the site near Samawa, almost all the
victims were Kurdish women and children who were
gunned down by AK-47s.
The work of the CPA team went on to help convict
Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. There
are so many of these killing fields that they are
still turning up to this day. In March 2011, Kurdish
peshmerga found trenches south of Kirkuk with around
2,300 people in them. In July, another 1,100 bodies
turned up in a mass grave near Shanafiya, Qadisiya.
In June 2012, a ceremony was held for 730 of them in
Chamchamal, Sulaimaniyah that was attended by
President Barzani. Each of these sites attests to
the brutality of the former regime. Saddam used an
iron first to maintain his hold upon the country.
His actions left a deep scar, which is still felt
today. There are thousands of people in Iraq that
lost their family members and friends in the 1980s
and 1990s. Many of them were never seen after the
security forces took them away, and they ended up in
these mass graves. The process of identifying all
the bodies has been slow, and will probably never be
complete. That means the hole in the lives of the
survivors will never be filled as they do not know
what ultimately became of their loved ones.
The history of Saddam Hussein created widespread
mistrust amongst the public. Today’s politicians
share many of those feelings, and have also
exploited them for their own personal gains. Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki for instance, fled Iraq in
1979 fearing assassination by the government.
Kurdish President Barzani lost thousands of members
of his clan, and immediate family. Moqtada al-Sadr’s
father and brothers were murdered by the regime.
It’s those fears of Saddam’s legacy that allows the
government to round up suspected Baathists and use
the deBaathification laws to ban people from
politics or public sector jobs. It’s the reason why
the leading Shiite and Kurdish parties would never
allow a Sunni to become prime minister again out of
the suspicion that they could bring back the Baath
Party. It’s the reason why politicians like Iyad
Allawi and Deputy Premier Saleh al-Mutlaq are held
into question by others such as Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki, because both were former Baathists, and
the latter has even praised the message of the
party, while condemning its excesses.
The mass graves themselves have even been hurled
about in disputes to condemn political rivals. Iraq
is unlikely to overcome these fissures and move on
until this generation of leaders passes. Their past
still lives deep within them, and shapes how their
interact with other elites to this day. This often
times hampers compromises, and moving ahead with
important issues. Instead of addressing them, they
are being pushed down the road. This is what happens
in many post-conflict countries, especially ones
like Iraq that suffered through decades of brutal
dictatorship.
SOURCES
Agence France Presse, “Iraq unearths mass grave of
900 bodies,” 7/6/11
Associated Press, “Expert: 300,000 in Iraq’s Mass
Graves,” 11/8/03
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and
Bureau of Public Affairs, “Mass Graves of Iraq:
Uncovering Atrocities,” U.S. State Department,
12/19/03
Burns, John, “Uncovering Iraq’s Horrors in Desert
Graves,” New York Times, 6/5/06
Johns, Dave, “1983 The Missing Barzanis,” PBS
Frontline, 1/24/06
Knickmeyer, Ellen, “113 Kurds Are Found In Mass
Grave,” Washington Post, 4/30/05
McEvers, Kelly, “Mass Grave Discovery In Iraq Could
Fuel Divisions,” NPR, 4/20/11
Moon, Ban Ki, “Second report of the
Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 6 of
resolution 1936 (2010),” United Nations Assistance
Mission for Iraq, 3/31/11
Sackur, Stephen, “In Saddam’s killing fields,” BBC,
5/14/03
Satkunanandan, Shyamali, “Tears, Grief and Waiting
at Chamchamal Burial Ceremony,” Rudaw, 6/1/12
Tripp, Charles, A History of Iraq, Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge, New York, Melbourne,
Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi, 2008
U.S. Agency for International Development, “Iraq’s
Legacy of Terror Mass Graves,” 2004
UNAMI Human Rights Office and Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights, “Report on Human
Rights in Iraq: 2011,” May 2012
Joel Wing, with an MA in International Relations,
Joel Wing has been researching and writing about
Iraq since 2002. His acclaimed blog, Musings on
Iraq, is currently listed by the New York Times and
the World Politics Review. In addition, Mr. Wing’s
work has been cited by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, the Guardian and the
Washington Independent. You may visit his Blog
Musings On Iraq at musingsoniraq.blogspot.com
Copyright © 2012 ekurd.net
Top |
Kurd Net
does not take credit for and is not responsible for the
content of news information on this page
|
®
