Kurdistan PM marks 32nd anniversary of Anfal's final phase

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani on Tuesday marked the 32nd anniversary of the final phase of Iraq's deadly Anfal campaign against Kurds in the 1980s, now widely recognized as an act of genocide.

The last stage of the Anfal being recognized were conducted in mostly Kurmanji-speaking areas of the Kurdistan Region known as Badinan.

"Thirty-two years ago today, members of the former Iraqi regime executed the final phase of its Anfal campaign against the Kurdish nation in Badinan, in which thousands of people were martyred, thousands more went missing, and hundreds of villages were flattened," he said in a statement.

The Anfal, Barzani continued, "aimed to wipe out a nation, its people, and its history. The impact of this crime will live on for years to come."

At the end of Iraq’s eight-year-long war with Iran in the 1980s, the government of Saddam Hussien launched a series of comprehensive ethnic cleansing operations. Anfal is the Arabic term used in the Quran for “spoils of war.” 

It was a multi-phase political, military, economic, cultural, and social process of annihilation that resulted in the deaths of as many as 182,000 Kurds and the eradication of some 5,000 villages. 

It was conducted in seven stages that in each stage Saddam’s troops used chemical weapons before raiding the Kurdish countryside. The primary aim of the regime was not only to dislodge Kurdish Peshmerga fighters from the areas, but to also forcefully displace and kill tens of thousands of civilians from the area to limit any kind of support Kurdish villagers were providing to the Peshmerga.

"It is a legal and constitutional right of the families of the victims of the Anfal campaign to be compensated in accordance with the verdict of the Iraqi High Tribunal," Barzani said. 

Read More: Baghdad must compensate families of Anfal genocide victims: President Barzani

"The memory of this tragic event should encourage us further to defend our nation's rights, and to remember the victims of crimes committed against the Kurdistani nation." 

Editing by John J. Catherine