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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 veiy 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
Foreword
The military attacks perpetrated by the Iraqi army which were called the Anfal operations by Saddam Hussein and lasted from February 1988 to September of the same year had aimed to wipe out the Kurdish people in most parts of Iraqi Kurdistan.
People of different ages and gender, from peaceful towns and villages, were rounded up at gunpoint and taken to the nearest military headquarters for forwarding onto the notorious Topzawa concentration camp where elderly men and women were sent to Nugra-Salman prison situated in the heart of the desert bordering to Saudi Arabia. Children were separated from their families to disappear forever. Boys and young men were swiftly taken by enclosed military transports to readymade pits to be shot dead there and immediately buried by bulldozers. The fate of young girls was even worst: they were sold in the sex-slavery markets of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt.
It is worth mentioning that there was yet another collection camp near Kirkuk called Dubiz which was used to collect families before sending them to their Anfal destinations. It is true that Topzawa was very spacious, but the number of detainees was just too many for one camp.
All these operations, all this mass killing and the torturing of imprisoned Kurds, were kept secret until some hero survivors could escape the mass graves, come back home and speak openly when most parts of Kurdistan were liberated during the people’ uprising of 1991. Unfortunately, the fate of our young girls taken in 1988 is still unknown. Despite the fact that many key positions in the new Iraqi government were and are still held by Kurds they have been too shy and hope-less to investigate their cases.
Despite all this mass-killing, there have been seven survivors: six men and one child. They are witnesses to the biggest crime of the century committed as a war crime against women, children and babies, and against the people of the same country.
One of the victims is called Taimur; he was only 12 years old when he miraculously escaped the mass-killing committed against women and children in separate groups in the middle of a dark night in an isolated desert. Taimur could only return to Kurdistan three years after his heroic escape. The story of the extermination of mass numbers of women and children would have remained one of the great mysteries of history had Taimur not survived.
Uzer, Faraj, Wahid and Taimur have all been interviewed previously and their stories published in Kurdish and English. I first met Ramadan in 2008 and again in 2013 to record his full story. Although his tragedy happened 25 years ago, he could still remember important details of where he was detained, taken to a military barracks, and rounded up with thousands of other civilian Kurds in the horrible camp of Topzawa.
Ramadan tells the story of the genocidal journey that started from Kirkuk and ended at the pits of the mass-graves in the Ar-Ar Desert. As far as the timing is concerned, Ramadan is the first survivor and the first eyewitness to tell the story of ‘Anfal’ and the miracle of a few Kurdish youth who had no weapons but were able to defeat Saddam’s headmen on the eve of the mass-killing of the people of Kurdistan.
Arif Qurbany
Introduction by the Translator
The first eyewitness Uzer, and the last eyewitness Ramadan, were both interviewed by my friend Arif Qurbany and the honour of translating these two books (along with ten others) was given to me. These books include six eyewitness accounts of the Anfal genocide, three eyewitness accounts of the chemical weapon bombing of Halabja and three other books about the overthrown regime of Saddam Hussein attempt to change the demography of Kurdistan.
Uzer and Ramadan are both from the same village east of Kirkuk. They are both about the same age, were detained together and became subject to the mass-killing Anfal campaigns in 1988. They both tell the tragic story of the cruel killing of tens of thousands of innocent people - men, women and children.
Indeed, the genocide committed against the Iraqi Kurds by the regime of Saddam Hussein was one of the most systematic killings of the post World-War 2 era.
These multiple acts of genocide come under the name of Anfal. A name that points to the 114th Sura of the Qur’an. This Sura is composed of 75 verses and almost all of them deal with the extremity one uses to deal with an enemy - how and when to use extreme action, how to forgive, and how to take a peaceful stance when the enemy declares peace.
One of the most forceful verses in this “Anfal Sura” is verse 60 which states, “Prepare whatever force you can to terrorize God’s enemy and your enemy.”
Running alongside this is the Islamic teaching of “Jihad,” which is already known to Western media and concerned experts as “Islamic Holy War.” There is no Sura entitled or dedicated to Jihad, but this concept is mentioned several times in different chapters of the Qur’an. Jihad is understood as going to take part in a war where there is a clear threat against Islam or the Islamic Nation and such participation comes in response to a call to Jihad from a high ranking Islamic leader such as a Mufti, and once a Muslim has decided to undertake Jihad he must be willing to sacrifice himself and whatever he has.
The Grand Ayatollah Khomeini was in a position of being able to declare Jihad during the long-lasting Iraq-Iran War. However, he did not do so because of the expected consequences. In contrast, Saddam Hussein did so on numerous occasions when he felt himself threatened and not Islam! For this reason, he received only a very weak response from the Iraqi people and next to no answer from the Pan-Arab Nations.
While Jihad has been successfully accomplished at different times in the Islamic era, notably under Salahuddin Ayubi’s leadership, no-one apart from Saddam Hussein has ever used ‘Anfal’ against any group or nation in the known history. He used Anfal operations to exterminate a nation, whom he had called “our people” and “our brothers.”
With the Ba’ath Party coming to power in 1967, a process of Arabization of Kirkuk city and other towns bordering the Arab-speaking region of Iraq commenced and continued without ceasing. This process included the confiscation of Kurdish homes and properties, the deportations of Kurdish families, and the settlement of Arab families into their houses. We could say that Saddam Hussein planned to wipe out the Kurds from their own homeland. He caused the demolition of 4,500 villages in the Kurdish region, forcing many inhabitants into collective towns and into remote areas in the south of the country in order to break their cultural identity; and in so doing, almost all the villagers were deprived of their sources of income and living. Besides this, their children remained without easy access to schools.
In the latter stage of the eight yearlong Iraq-Iran war, when there were no international observers in the region, Saddam Hussein caused the bombing of several Kurdish towns with chemical weapons. In Halabja alone, more than five thousand people were killed and several thousand were badly wounded and diseased from the poison gas released that day, many of whom are still suffering with chronic illnesses as a result.
It is amazing to think that the Anfal genocide operations were carried out in such an open and arrogant fashion. Commanders such as Saddam Hussein’ cousin Ali Hassan (Chemical Ali) were assigned their positions and duties by laws passed in the parliament of the Ba’athist regime.
Local Anfal headquarters were established in almost every Kurdish city and large signs on the buildings that read ‘Anfal Operation Command.’ Tens of thousands of troops were ordered to attack Kurdish towns and villages, to demolish houses, to deprive the local inhabitants of every means of making a living and to detain the inhabitants regardless of age or gender before transporting them to the notorious ‘Topzawa Concentration Camp’ near Kirkuk.
Detainees were kept for days with undrinkable water and very poor quality of food. Babies and children were separated from their families and were taken away to be never seen again. Many babies died from lack of care and feeding, arid dehydration.
Young girls were sold into prostitution against their will through black market deals and were sent to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. All these things happened at a time when Saddam Hussein’ regime regularly put out statements saying, ‘We Arabs are people of chivalry; we do not humiliate human beings, not even our enemies!
Thus, under the direct supervision of Ali Hassan the Anfal operations started on the 14th March 1988 and included eight consecutive stages in which 182,000 men, women and children were rounded up from different areas of Kurdistan and were taken to temporaiy collective camps. In these camps, the men were separated from women and children and the all of them were taken by special military and security forces to the sites of the mass graves in the deserts of central and southern Iraq. They were then killed by firing squad and pushed into the deep pits and finally covered over with sand by bulldozers.
Huge documentary evidence confirms the large number of people who were killed. Actually, many of them had only been injured but they were buried along with the dead. Often there was only a thin layer of sand covering them; so, the bodies were exposed to wild dogs and other wild animals. But a few wounded victims could get out from the graves and make their way to safer places. Our friend Ramadan is one of the survivors and he is going to tell us his story.
We as Kurds have a duty to tell the whole world what the Anfal was all about, why it was carried out, and the depth of the repugnant ways of how these genocide operations were implemented.
Luckily with help of my friend Arif Qurbany we could offer the English readers the stories of most of the survivors, they are all translated into English from Sorani Kurdish. As a translator, I hope that I had been able to shed some lights on the tragic stories that happened to my unfortunate people.
Abdul-Karim Uzeri
The Details of the Interview
- My dear Ramadan, as you know I have already interviewed Uzer. Throughout the interview he mentioned your name several times. You were together from Kirkuk right up to the pits of death by the firing squads. However, if it’s ok with you, we won’t start with that part of the story. I’d rather prefer to start with your childhood and the way you were brought up. Is this ok with you?
- Actually, Uzer and I are from the same village and we were detained together and remained so until the troops started shooting us. Thereafter, we were separated, and I don’t know what happened to him.
- Well then, where shall we start from? Straight from the time when you rounded up at your village or would you like to speak about your early stage of your life?
- As you like, the choice is yours. We can start the way you did with Uzer.
- Can you tell me your full name?
- My full name is Ramadan Ali Suleman Ahmad.
- Can you tell me the year you were born?
- Well during my childhood, years of birth were not recorded in our village. Our time was different from now: there were not many learned people in the countryside.
- Which year is mentioned in your papers?
- You mean in my ID card!
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