The Anfal Campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan

INTRODUCTION

The report that follows does not record the full horrors of the 1988 Anfal campaign.' Such an account would describe the destruction of hundreds of Iraqi Kurdish villages and their inhabitants, which this report does not attempt.

Instead this is a case study of the disaster that befell a single Kurdish village, Koreme, and its population during the Anfal campaign. It aims to show, in the greatest detail, the nature of the crimes committed in 1988 by the government of President Saddam Hussein against one remote mountain village in northern Iraqi Kurdistan.

Middle East Watch (MEW), a division of Human Rights Watch, (HRW) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) believe the experience of Koreme is representative of what happened to thousands of Kurdish villages in the northern mountainous provinces of Iraq before and during the Anfal campaign. Subsequent MEW reports will document how the Anfal campaign was carried out across all of Iraqi Kurdistan. These reports will also analyze Iraqi government and army documents captured by Kurdish forces in the March 1991 Kurdish uprising in order to reveal the planning and intentions underlying Anfal:

The importance of Koreme's experience is not only the cruelty that occurred there but also that it was apparently characteristic of the practices against other villages -- large-scale murders, disappearances, forcible relocations, and destruction with the intent to destroy the village population of Kurds as such. If ongoing research confirms this pattern, the destruction of Koreme would emerge as a genocidal act, part of a genocide undertaken against the Kurds across all of Iraqi Kurdistan. Koreme would thus represent a genocide-in-miniature and would stand for the experience of thousands of other destroyed villages, the sufferings of whose inhabitants cannot be reported in such detail.

I "Al-Anfal" is the name of a Koranic Sura, "the eighth sura, The Spoils," a revelation to the Prophet Muhammad in the wake of the first great battle of the then-new Muslim faith at Bad,- (624 A.D.). See The Koran, transl. Dawood, Viking, 1990, at 176. The term "Anfal" refers to the plunder or spoils of the infidel, and was used by the Iraqi government to give a religious justification to its attack against the Kurds of Iraq, although they too are Muslim. This report refers interchangeably to the Anfal campaign or, for brevity, simply Anfal.

Acknowledgements

This report was written by Kenneth Anderson, director of the Arms Project of Human Rights Watch, and edited by Andrew Whitley, executive director of Middle East Watch, a division of Human Rights Watch; Aryeh Neier, executive director of Human Rights Watch; Kenneth Roth, deputy director of Human Rights Watch; and Eric Stover, executive director, Physicians for Human Rights. It was reviewed by Jemera Rone, counsel to Human Rights Watch, and Mostafa Khezry and Joost Hilterman, consultants to Middle East Watch.

This report is based on investigations carried out by a forensic team composed of distinguished international experts in forensic anthropology and archaeology organized by Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights. The forensic team's mission to Iraqi Kurdistan took place between May 26 and June 22, 1992.

Members of the forensic ream were:
Kenneth Anderson, forensic team leader. Mr. Anderson, a New York lawyer, is director of the Arms Project of Human Rights Watch.

Luis B. Fondebrider. Mr. Fondebrider is a founding member of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Argentino de Antropologia), which has conducted exhumations of the graves of the disappeared in Argentina and throughout Latin America. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team's forensic evidence was regarded as crucial in securing convictions of several members of the Argentine police and military. Mr. Fondebrider has also worked on forensic exhumations in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and other places.

James Briscoe, forensic team archaeologist. Mr. Briscoe is an archaeologist with Roberts/Schornik C Associates, Inc. of Oklahoma. He has extensive experience conducting archaeological digs in the Americas. The forensic team is grateful to Roberts/Schornik C Associates, Inc. for making Mr. Briscoe available for an extended period of time in Iraqi Kurdistan. It is also grateful to Roger Burkhalter for his assistance with computer graphics.

Mercedes Doretti. Ms. Doreui is a founding member of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. She has undertaken forensic exhumations in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, the Philippines and, most recently, in El Salvador where she has been engaged in unearthing victims of the El Mozote massacre of December 11, 1981.

Isabel M. Reveco. Ms. Reveco is a founding member of the Chilean Forensic Team (Grupo de Antropologia Forense de Chile). The Chilean Forensic Team has conducted forensic exhumations in cases resulting from the 1973 Pinochet coup against the government of Salvador Allende and subsequent repression by the security forces.

Stefan Schmitt. Mr. Schmitt, a German national residing in Guatemala, is a founding member of the Guatemalan Forensic Team (Grupo Antropologia Forense de Guatemala). The Guatemalan Forensic Team, with the assistance of forensic teams from elsewhere in Latin America, has recently begun work exhuming victims of Guatemala's security forces in the Guatemalan highlands.

Clyde Collins Snow, forensic team scientific leader. Dr. Snow is a faculty member of the Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma, at Norman, Oklahoma. He is internationally famous for his work in Argentina and many other places worldwide. His work has been the subject of many articles, a book, and television documentaries. He has most recently been in Bosnia at the request of the U.S. Department of State to investigate allegations of war crimes there.

Photographs appearing in this report on pages [ were taken by Susan Meiselas and used by permission of Magnum, Inc.

Ballistics and firearms analysis was provided by Douglas D. Scott, Ph.D., of Lincoln, Nebraska, to whom MEW/PHR and the forensic team express their deep appreciation.

Maps were created by Michael S. Miller, a geographer in New York City who provides frequent assistance to Human Rights Watch.

The forensic team gratefully acknowledges the unflagging aid of Jemera Rorie and Mostafa Khezry during its mission in Iraqi Kurdistan. It also thanks its local staff of translators and drivers who provided constant and often round-the-clock services on many occasions, as well as the many Kurds who provided testimony to the forensic team and the community of non-governmental organizations in Iraq that assisted the team with contacts and sources. The forensic team regrets that, for their protection, these persons cannot be identified.

Finally, the forensic team thanks Suzanne E. Howard, staff associate of Middle East Watch for her administrative help to the team before and during its work in Iraq. The forensic team thanks her and Barbara L. Baker, staff associate of the Arms Project of Human Rights Watch, for their work in preparing this report for publication.