VersionsThe Arab Shovel Driver Anfal Who Buried Victims [English, Košice - Slovaquie, 2018]
Faraj the second eyewitness of the Anfal [English, Košice - Slovaquie, 2018]
Ramadan: The First Survivor of the Youth Mass Graves of Anfal [Kurdî, Košice - Slovaquie, 2018]
Taimur: The Only Survivor of Women and Children Anfal [English, Košice - Slovaquie, 2018]
Uzer: an ayawitness of the Anfal [English, Košice - Slovaquie, 2018]
Wahid: An Eyewitness of Anfal Genocidal Crimes [Kurdî, Košice - Slovaquie, 2018]
Wahid: An Eyewitness of Anfal Genocidal Crimes
Arif Qurbany
Karo press
Our friend Wahid Muhammad was taken from his remote village in the south of Chamchamal city to a concentration camp called Topzawa not very far from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, he saw tens of thousands of Kurdish children, women and men gathered at gun point in that horrible camp. Within hours males aged from 15 to 70 years were separated, put into sealed transporters and taken to the firing squad fields of Ar-Ar desert west of the capital Baghdad.
PREFACE
We as (Aram Muhammed, Saud Mustafa and Sleman Jajis) are administration board of Baran Organization for the case of Anfal. We all lost our family members and relatives in Anfal Genocide. We all are working voluntarily in this organization. This is because we have suffered a lot due to losing our family members and relatives in the Anfal Genocide. We also can feel the pain of those people who lost their family members and relatives in the barbaric actions of Saddam's regime in the entire Iraq. And, one of the main objectives of our organization (Baran Organization for the case of Anfal) is to collect more information about crimes that done against people by Saddam's regime and try to documentary those data and information as an evidence. We want to collect information from the victims who suffered a lot by Saddam's regime.
In 2018, in the 30th anniversary of Anfal Genocide, we will try to do something very significant. We will print a book which is written by Arif Qurbany. This book is about those people who survived from the Anfal Genocide in 1988, and they are still alive. The author of this book interviewed with the victims and collected information in a book. This book is also translated to some other languages. Another part of our project that we will do is printing 6 books, and 5 of these books are about those people who survived from Anfal Genocide. And, the 6th book is about a driver who participated in Anfal Genocide by digging a huge hole to put the bodies of people in. We really want to work on Anfal Genocide in order to be known as an international Genocide. We want people around the world be aware of the Anfal Genocide from the victims of this genocide.
Staff of Baran Organization for the case of Anfal
Introduction
Wahid Muhammad Kochani is the eye-witness p number seven to be interviewed among the survivals of Anfal genocidal crimes committed against the Kurds. Four of them (all men) could escape the shooting process at the pits of the mass graves in the heart of Arabia desert in the western and southern part of Iraq occurred in 1988. The other three were all women from Halabja, who were taken with their children to be massacred in the prison of Nugra Salman in the heart of the desert between Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Wahid Muhammad, along with the other survivals of the mass graves, was taken to the United States. As I did not have a chance to see him in Kurdistan I paid him a visit in his new homeland for this interview but he preferred to come back to Kurdistan to remember all the places where he lived, worked and faced the genocidal crimes of Anfal Campaign. He fulfilled his promises, came back and contacted me at his soonest. Luckily after more than 24 years of his heroic escape; he could remember very fine details of what had happened to him and his unfortunate family.
Our friend Wahid Muhammad was taken from his remote village in the south of Chamchamal city to a concentration camp called Topzawa not very far from the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, he saw tens of thousands of Kurdish children, women and men gathered at gun point in that horrible camp. Within hours males aged from 15 to 70 years were separated, put into sealed transporters and taken to the firing squad fields of Ar-Ar desert west of the capital Baghdad.
The anfal victims were taken in special transporters without ventilation or a drop of water to drink. Although the trip took about twelve hours but there was no access to the rest room at all. And when they arrived the death pits the systematic shooting started and the only way for victims to survive was to attack the headsmen with their bare hands taking the last chance to stay alive. Most of the survivals could save their lives by executing such heroic challenges against armed men of the Iraqi regime, including our hero Wahid Muhammad.
Arif Qurbany
Foreword
The campaigns of the overthrown regime of Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish people in Iraq were numerous and included a wide range of genocidal crimes.
The campaigns started with Arabization of inhabited areas in the southern part of Kurdistan including Kirkuk city, and several towns like Khanakin, Makhmur and Shangar. The original Kurdish inhabitants were forced out of their homes without being allowed to take with them their basic necessities, while the Arabs, who were ordered to replace them, were given the Kurdish houses, properties and real-estates for free!
In 1984, around eight thousand Barzanys men were separated from their families and were taken to be killed and buried in the desert near Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Recent reports tell that Saddam Hussein’s Deputy Izat Al-Duri had attended the ceremony of burring hundreds of them alive.
On 16th March 1988, the bombardment of Halabja and several other towns and villages in Kurdistan with strong chemical weapons had started. Thousands of innocent defenseless people were killed and injured. Scores of them are still suffering from permanent health defects.
Few weeks after Halabja bombardment the operation of notorious Anfal began in which 182 thousand Kurdish citizens were exterminated in one of the cruelest genocidal crime of the human history. The multiple acts of genocide came under the name “Anfal”; a name that points to the eighth Sura in the Quran; this Sura is composed of 75 verses and almost all of them with the extreme way in which you treat your enemies; how and when to use extreme actions against them and how to forgive them and take a peaceful stand when the other side declares peace. One of the most forceful verses in this Anfal Sura is number sixty that states; “Prepare whatever force you can to terrorize God’s enemy and your enemy”
Vastly enormous was the number of people who have been massacred during the Anfal operations ordered by Saddam Hussein, the chief of Iraqi Ba’ath Regime. Huge was the number of the families that suffered the heartache of the Anfal "tragedies, very small was the number of the victims who could run to the safety. They could survive despite their wounds caused by shooting at the Mass Graves’ sites.
The survivors are now telling us what exactly had happened to them, they tell us stories of the Anfal massacres which were enacted according to a decree by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Al-Majeed. Saddam had authorized his cousin Ali Hassan Al- Majeed (best known as Chemical Ali) to execute the genocide attacks on the Kurdish nation. As for his part, Ali the Chemical had ordered his troops to shoot anything that moves in several areas in Kurdistan; those areas were called “Muharrama or not allowed to live in”
Besides, the Ba’ath leadership had ordered the destruction almost the whole country sides of Kurdistan; accordingly, 4,500 villages and towns were leveled with the ground, burnt down anything green and dried out all the water sources.
Wahid Muhammad and other eyewitnesses tell us how they were taken at gunpoint from their homes to the camps of mass killing in Ar-Ar Desert west of Baghdad. Parents, children, brothers, sisters, lactating mothers and newborn babies were all alike, pushed into sealed vehicles, transferred to the gun-sights of firing squads and covered with sand by bulldozers.
The Anfal genocidal crimes were performed in several stages. There were eight operations in all. Before the international community could stop it; 182,000 innocent victims were shot and buried in mass graves all over Iraq. Some of the victims were still alive when they were pushed to the pits of the graves. Those, who could some way or another, survive are talking about their experiences during the mass killing operations. So far four of them were interviewed by my friend Arif Qurbani. This gentleman Wahid Muhammad Kochani is the fourth one to tell his story, and this is the fourth story to be translated to English. It is worth to mention it, that one of them was an Arab bulldozer driver who was ordered to bury the victims but this driver himself became a victim by the Ba’ath agents who shot him dead in Kirkuk, after his interview was published. Keeping in mind that our friend Arif had also written stories of three women who were taken to horrible prison of Nugra Salman where most of their children had died under the torture or because of starvation and dehydration.
These three stories and three similar books on ethnic cleansing in Kirkuk are also translated into English by me.
Abdulkarim Uzeri
Here Is the Interview of the Eyewitness Mr. Wahid Muhammad Kochani:
- I am very pleased to have this meeting with you. I think that we better begin with your full name and other personal details?
- My full name is Wahid Muhammad Saeed Abdul, bom in a village called (Kani Kadir) in Bnar Gill district, east of Kirkuk on 1st July 1965. I am known as “Muhammad Kochani”
- Where does Kani Kadir belong to, regarding the administrational classification units?
- It belongs to Kadir Karam District in Chamchamal County. However, several demographic changes had taken place.
- Your life time story is quite unusual; you were belonging to several administrations such as Kirkuk, Suleimanya and Saladin!?
- That is true, although we have been living here in that small village but every other day we had to do the routine paper works in different cities; in Kirkuk, Suleimanya or Tikrit “Saladin”
In the Year you were born, Kadir Karam was belong to Chamchamal county of the Kirkuk governorate; so, you born as a Kirukian, but when the Ba’ath party came to power and started changing the demography …
Arif Qurbany
Wahid: An Eyewitness of Anfal Genocidal Crimes
Karo
Karo press
Wahid: An Eyewitness of Anfal Genocidal Crimes
Arif Qurbany
Translated from Kurdish by Abdulkarim Uzeri
The project of Printing a Book of Genocide
Baran Organization for the case of Anfal
Name of the book: Wahid, An Eyewitness of Anfal Genocide al Crimes.
Author: Arif Kareem Qurbanee
Translator: Abdulkarim Uzeri
Designer: Arif Kareem
Designer of the cover: Aram Shwani
Published by: Karo Press
First edition: 2018
Number of copies: 1000
Typing: Mardin & Miran Uzeri
Sponsored by:
Zarya Construction Co.
