" Stages of Genocide Against the Kurds in Iraq 1975 – 1988 Historical study"

Abstract

Following the collapse of the Kurdish revolution in 1975 in the wake of Algiers Agreement1975 between Iraq and Iran, the governing Baath regime in Baghdad found itself free against the National Kurdish Movement, carrying out a series of genocide and ethnic cleansing operations against Kurds in Iraq. The government lunched wide arrest campaign against members of Kurdish opposition and destroyed many border villages in order to create a 20-kilometer security belt alongside the borders with Turkey and Iran with mines planted there. That area was declared to be a military zone accessed only by the Iraqi army. That required evacuating 500 villages which caused thousands of Kurds to seek refuge in Iran in fear of apprehension or murder. These developments were accompanied by a displacement process carried out by the Iraqi government on March 31st 1975 against member of Al-Barzani clan in Barzan area, who were displaced to the desert in Al-Qadisiya province and were only allowed to return to Kurdistan in the 1980 in the condition that they do not go back to their original areas. This was followed by the Anfal campaign which destroyed more than four thousand villages and displaced more than half a million Kurds to the Iraqi southern deserts while other thousands fled to Iran. It was in the Anfal campaign that the tragedy of Halabja occurred where chemical weapons were used on March 16th 1988 causing the death of more than five thousand Kurds and horrible unprecedented scene.