Kurdistan Region to distribute 11,000 plots of land to families of Anfal victims

Mustafa Shilani 2021/12/14 20:54

KRG officials discuss how to implement a plan to distribute 11,000 plots of land to the families of Anfal victims, Dec. 14, 2021. (Photo: KRG)

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ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The autonomous Kurdistan Region announced on Tuesday that it was going forward with a plan to distribute land to the families of those killed in the anti-Kurd Anfal campaign of the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, widely recognized as an act of genocide.

The regional Ministry of Municipalities and Tourism said in a statement that Minister Sasan Awni and Minister of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs, Abdullah Haj-Mahmood, met to discuss the most appropriate mechanism to streamline the distribution of more than 11,000 plots of land to the families of those who perished in the murderous operation, as well as to those of qualifying political prisoners.

At the end of Iraq’s eight-year-long war with Iran in the 1980s, the government 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.

Last year, Kurdistan Region officials announced their intention to raise international awareness of the Anfal, as many nations have yet to officially declare it as genocide.

The decision was made by Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, who has previously called on Baghdad to compensate the victims' loved ones.

Tuesday's statement added that the two ministers "discussed in detail how to implement the decision effectively as soon as possible" to distribute the land "within a short period."