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PREFACE
We as (Aram Muhammed, Saud Mustefa 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 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 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 into 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 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 to be aware of the Anfal Genocide from the victims of this genocide.
Staff of Baran Organization for the case of Anfal
Introduction by the translator
The genocide committed against the Iraqi Kurds by the regime of Saddam Hussein in 1988 was one of the most systematic mass killings from the post World-War two era.
These multiple acts of genocide came under the name, Anfal: a name that points to the eighth of the Qur'an' 114 Suras. This Sura is composed of 75 verses and almost all of them deal with the extremity with which you treat your enemy: how and when to use extreme action and how to forgive and take a peaceful stand 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 Anfal extremity is 'Jihad,' which is already well 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. Jihad is understood as going to take part in a war where there is a threat against Islam or the Islamic nation and such participation comes in response to call to Jihad from a high-ranking Islamic leader such as a Mufti. Once a Muslim decides to undertake Jihad he must be willing to sacrifice himself and whatever he has.
The Grand Ayatollah Khomeini was in the position of being able to declare a Jihad during the Iran-Iraq War; however, he did not do so because of the expected consequences. Saddam Hussein called for Jihad on numerous occasions when he felt threatened and not Islam! For this reason, he only received a 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 Salahadin'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 try and exterminate a nation, whom he had previously called "our people" and "our brothers."
With the Ba'ath Party coming to power, a process of Arabization of Kirkuk City and other
Kurdish towns bordering the Arab-speaking region of Iraq commenced and continued without ceasing. This process included the confiscation of Kurdish homes and properties, the deportation of Kurdish families, and the settlement of Arab families into these houses. We could say that Saddam planned to wipe out the Kurds. He caused the demolition of 4,500 villages in the Kurdish region, forcing many of them into collective towns and into remote areas in. the south in order to break their cultural identity. In so doing, almost all the villagers were deprived of their sources of income and living.
In the later period of the Iran-Iraq 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 poisoned gas released that day, many of whom are still suffering from 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's cousin, Ali Hassan Majid ('Chemical Ali') were assigned their position and duties by laws passed in the parliament of Saddam's regime. Local headquarters were established in almost every Kurdish city and had large signs on the buildings that read, 'Anfal Operations 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 all the inhabitants regardless of age and gender before transporting them to the notorious 'Topzawa' concentration camp near Kirkuk.
Detainees were kept for days with undrinkable water and very poor-quality food. The children and babies were separated from their families and were taken away never to be seen again. The babies died from lack of care and feeding. Young girls were sold into prostitution through black market deals and were sent to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait. All this happened at the time when Saddams' regime regularly gave out statements saying, "We Arabs are people of chivalry; we do not humiliate human beings, not even our enemies!"
The most severe year in the Anfal operations was 1988. Although 182,000 victims have been documented, there are tens of thousands of victims who have not been recorded: the unnamed newborn infants, the unborn children of pregnant mothers, the many people who were shot at and killed by the infantry and the air force as they escaped on foot and those who died through starvation and diseases rather than give themselves up to the tyrant' army.
It is now clear that several areas in central and southern Iraq were used for the mass executions and the mass burials of the Anfal victims. Numerous graves have been discovered since the fall of Saddam's regime in 2003 and what is distressing is the complete disregard for human dignity and social and religious standards in the creation of the mass graves. Graves were routinely not covered over properly allowing the bodies to be exposed to wild animals. Perhaps the greatest disdain for human values practiced by the Ba'athist regime was demonstrated in their burying dogs along with the humans. This is in stark contrast with the 'Anfal-led' Kurds who were keeping the fasting month of Ramadan at the time of their execution - they fasted right up to the time of death by firing squad!
We Kurds have a duty to history to tell the world what the Anfal is all about, why it was carried out and the depths of the repugnant ways of how these genocide operations were implemented.
In translating this book from Sorani Kurdish, I am deeply grateful to my friend, Arif Qurbani, who has authored this and other similar books. He himself is from the city of Kirkuk which was the main center of Anfal genocide operations. Arif has helped me in devoting his valuable time to answer many of my questions in preparing this translation work. I am also much obliged to Dr. Andrew Hyde who spared no effort in making this book acceptable to English readers.
My friend and I plan to publish a number of other books about the notorious genocide operations known by the title, 'Anfal.' We try to collect all the truth by interviewing both the victims and the perpetrators. In this small volume, we will discover the Anfal story through the eyes of Uzer, a direct eyewitness and victim of these events when he was in his mid-20's: a young man who survived in a miraculous way!
Abdulkarim Uzeri
Uzer: a living eyewitness of the Anfal massacres
One of the characteristics of my work concerning the Anfal is that I have always tried to record the Anfal events according to the most accurate sources and get the best evidence, which in my opinion are the eyewitnesses of the Anfal, those who were directly in the furnace itself. They themselves are the best and most accurate sources of the stories of the Anfal. From another side, my work speaks of the Anfal as an act, a disaster, a barbarian process that is unique in human history. It hasn't been recorded as it should have, but in the period of 18 years since the last Anfal operation, it has been neglected to such a degree that many truths and Anfal events have become hazy and confused. The lack of an academic research center for recording the details of the Anfal and proper archiving has meant that many of its secrets and details have literally gone into the ground with the death of each 'Anfal'-ed person. I believe that this neglect of the Anfal should never ever have happened and a day is coming when a greater and more faithful sense of compassion will appear and a more scientific and expert documentation will result. The necessity of studying the Anfal requires that many centers for academic study and documentation be established, where the most useful sources and the most necessary subject for the renewed teaching of Anfal will be the words of the Anfal eyewitnesses themselves, those who were in the events whether as executioners or as victims. Therefore, our task in writing at this level, where it is not possible to study the various sides of the Anfal, is nothing other than to record the history for our future generations so that they can get benefit from the writing down of our people's bloody history.
As the author of this book, and other similar books, I want to faithfully and honestly recite what the Anfal eyewitnesses are telling me. In the meantime, it is my professional task to ensure that all the information given is correct. Therefore, it is vitally important to get as many documents together as possible before these eyewitnesses leave us forever and to accurately set them onto the pages of historical texts for that future day when Kurds will need to reach for them and I believe for today as well it should be one of the necessary subjects in Kurdish libraries!
This interview is with Uzer, one of the living eyewitnesses of the Anfal operation massacres, who himself was one of the many young Kurds that were caught up in the Anfal and was forced at gun-point towards an unknown fate and he was one of those thousands of adolescent Kurds who was subject to a firing squad process and buried in mass collective graves. However, he is one of the few, which one can count with the fingers of one hand, that by chance was saved from the hail of bullets hitting the victims and could make his way back to Kurdistan bringing back the most information and the most detailed account of one of the most hidden events of the Anfal ... and he has held that information until this day when he could tell all the details ... that which you read here is product of his complete recollections as recorded in a seven-hour journalistic interview.
This if it were not for these eyewitnesses, most of the information and details of the Anfal, would remain hidden forever. My hope is that with writing down the experiences of this eyewitness will be useful now for Kurds and Kurdish libraries and that I will be considered as having done a small service for my nation. I am certain that for the future as well it will be one of those golden and necessary books for the libraries of Kurdistan.
Arif Qurbany
The Interview:
- Mr. Uzer, welcome back again and you have made the way shorter for me on behalf of the Kurdish folk.
- Thank you very much.
- You know that this book, the fourth in the Anfal series was delayed for a year waiting for this interview. In the end, you have borne the burden of travelling and attending here to make the meeting possible. I really appreciate it.
- Dear God, Mr. Arif, I ask your pardon, for a time I was very busy and for the way that I spoke with you on the telephone to refuse the interview... I have been quite a bit disgruntled by the little work that has been done to relieve the Anfal tragedy.
- Anyway, as I have said, I thank you and I am pleased that we can have this meeting here in Kurdistan. If this were not so, I would have had to come to America. Luckily, Kurdistan has become the setting for this interview. So are you ready, let's begin.
- The important thing is that I agree, and I do agree. However, I will only answer the questions where I know the answers.
- So, let's start with your full name and your place and date of birth?
- My full name? Let’s start according to the name I am known by.
- What do you mean?
- I am known as Uzer.
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