Kurds facing reality about massacre in Iraq

By Richard C. Paddock
Los Angeles Times

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SHORISH, Iraq — For 15 years, thousands of Kurdish families waited for their loved ones to return. They believed the day would come when Saddam Hussein would fall, the prisons in the south would open and the missing would come home.

But in the eight months since the Iraqi dictator was deposed, not a single person who disappeared during the Anfal military campaign of 1986-88 has returned alive.

For the first time, many Anfal survivors are facing an awful reality: Their missing family members were the victims of a mass extermination campaign — abetted by Kurdish collaborators — that echoes the Nazi killing machine in its efficiency and brutality. It left an estimated 180,000 people dead.

"We had hoped for 15 years," said Aysha Chachan Salih, 35, who lost her husband, three brothers, her home and all her possessions in the campaign.

"But after Saddam fell, we knew they were not alive anymore."

The word "anfal," taken from the Quran, means "spoils of war." The operation in Iraq's north was designed to wipe out support for Kurdish rebels by eliminating the civilian population. For six months in 1988, Iraqi troops and Kurdish militias arrested the inhabitants of suspected rebel strongholds and destroyed thousands of villages. Males of fighting age were the main target, but many of the victims were also women and children.

In some villages, entire populations were slaughtered. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds fled for their lives, abandoning all they had. Some survivors lost dozens of relatives. Kurdish officials estimate that 182,000 of their region's 3.5 million people were slain during the offensive, but no one knows for sure. Iraq once admitted killing as many as 100,000 in the operation.

The Anfal extermination was headed by Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan Majid, who went on to kill thousands more as Iraq's defense minister. He earned the nickname "Chemical Ali" for his use of poison gas on Kurdish civilians.

The Anfal was compartmentalized so that those involved — the soldiers, bus drivers, bulldozer operators, prison guards and executioners — knew only their own roles. Two Iraqi army corps and thousands of Kurdish militia fighters, known among Kurds as "mercenaries," took part. The militias were essential to the success of the operation because they knew the terrain.

The mercenaries usually entered the villages first and rounded up the victims, often with false promises that they would soon be released. As the remaining villagers fled, soldiers and mercenaries looted the houses and set them on fire, taking the livestock for themselves.

"Without the mercenaries, the Anfal could not have taken so many people," said Arif Qurbani, a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan spokesman and author of "The Witness of Anfal," which contains numerous documents about the campaign. "They knew the area and they deceived people."

Thousands of elderly detainees, along with some younger women and children, were sent to the worst of Saddam's prisons: Nugra Salman in the remote southern desert. The heat was overpowering; the inmates were fed a starvation diet of bread and contaminated water.

Each day, prisoners would carry the dead into the desert for burial. Each night, wild dogs would dig up the bodies and eat them.

In September 1988, Saddam declared an amnesty and the surviving Anfal prisoners were released.

While the survivors struggled to rebuild their lives, many of the Anfal's perpetrators did quite well for themselves — even in Kurdistan. In 1991, the mercenaries switched sides and supported the uprising against Saddam. In exchange, militia members received a blanket amnesty from the autonomous region's government.

"The amnesty was a very wise step," said Sheik Mohammed Basaki, 68, who has long commanded a Kurdish militia force but declined to discuss what he did during the Anfal. "By that amnesty, it gave them a clear heart to come back and fight."

The mercenary soldiers were incorporated into the legendary "peshmerga" — "those who face death" — and the leaders received party positions. Some still hold positions in the Kurdish parties that govern the region.

"Some of them became high officials," said Qurbani, the party spokesman, "but an Anfal widow who had nothing still has nothing."

Some Anfal survivors want revenge, especially against the mercenary leaders they say lied to them.

"If I could, I would pile them all alive and burn them," said Hujara Walid, 30, who lost her four brothers in the Anfal.

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