- This article or section should be merged with ANFAL
Al-Anfal Campaign - The anti-Kurdish campaign lead by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, spanned between February and September 1988. The campaign, which is best known for its killing of thousands of innocent Kurdish civilians consisted of bombing Kurdish villages with poisonous gas, kidnapping of young Kurdish girls by Iraqi soldiers and killing and torturing of Kurdish families, and Arabization. Arabization was a tactic used by Saddam's regime to drive Kurdish families out of their homes in cities like Kirkuk, which are high in oil.
The Anfal Campaign, which takes its name from surat Al-Anfal in the Quran, was used as a code name by the former Iraqi Baathist regime for a genocidal campaign against the Kurdish community of southern Kurdistan. The campaign, which began in 1986 and lasted until 1989, and is said to have cost the lives of 182,000 civilian Kurds by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The campaign was headed by Ali Hasan al-Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Anfal's use of firing squads, mass deportation (Arabization), and chemical weapons earned al-Majid the nickname "Chemical Ali." The campaign included the Halabja poison gas attack, which is thought to have killed 5,000 civilians.
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