A (Very) Brief History of the Middle East Part 4

I left off on Friday with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. I’ll get back into that, but first I’m going to backtrack a few years to a significant event that I previously overlooked.

The Anfal Campaign

Before I get into the details, the Anfal (The Spoils) Campaign was a genocidal and gendercidal effort by Saddam’s regime to wipe out battle-age men in the Kurdistan region. Now on to the specifics.

I found this description of the Kurds most concise: “The Kurds are considered the world's largest nation without a state of their own. Numbering approximately 20-25 million people, their traditional territory is divided among the modern states of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, with a small number in the states of the former Soviet Union. Just over four million of these Kurds live in Iraq, constituting about 23 percent of the population.” (http://www.gendercide.org/case_anfal.html)

The trouble between Kurdistan and Saddam’s Ba’ath Party started in 1970, when the regime began evicting Kurdish farmers and replacing them with Iraqis from the south, guarded by government troops. In 1974 the Kurdish Democratic Party revolted and a full-scale war ensued. The KDP lost and 130,000 Kurds fled to Iran. In 1975 tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers remaining in Iraq were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to the harsh desert of southern Iraq. It was these villagers that fell victim to the Ba’ath Party’s first gendercidal campaign.

In 1983 all 8,000 relocated male villagers were taken by government troops, never to be seen or heard from again. Diplomatic attempts to discover the fate of the men (including those by European nations) were met with silence. Rumors circulate that the group was used to test the effects of various chemical agents. In 1993 Hussein finally hinted at the fate of the men: “They betrayed the country and they betrayed the covenant, and we meted out a stern punishment to them, and they went to hell.”

The lack of international outrage only served to embolden Hussein and he continued to use chemical raids and mass abductions to terrorize the Kurdish villagers. This came to a horrific conclusion in 1987-88, when the official Anfal campaign took place.

In March of 1987 Hussein’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid was appointed secretary-general of the Ba’ath Party’s Northern Region (which included Iraqi Kurdistan). Al-Majid was known as being particularly brutal, even by Ba’ath standards. In June of 1987 Al-Majid issued the directive SF/4008, which calls for the relocation of villagers to detention centers “except for male members, between the ages of 12 and 50 inclusive, who must be detained.” The men were interrogated for useful information, then executed and buried in mass graves.

Conservative estimates figure the number of Kurds killed to be between 60,000-110,000.

If nothing else, this shows that Saddam Hussein was an insane, brutal despot and it is a travesty that the international community turned a blind eye for so many years. How is a man like that allowed to stay in power, how does he dodge war crime convictions and justice for nearly three decades? I’ve spent countless hours trying to develop a personal stance on the death penalty from perspectives of morality, faith, ethics, and justice. I still don’t know where I stand, but if ever a man was deserving…

It makes me think about global conflicts taking place as we speak, most notably the genocide in Darfur. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his government are currently backing the Arab janjaweed militia, which has killed at least 200,000 villagers as it rapes, slashes and burns its way through the countryside. The international community is reacting diplomatically. Diplomatic retaliation is weak by nature, but efforts to date are so ridiculously pussy-footed (pardon the vernacular) that they are laughable. And President al-Bashir knows it. China is reluctant to issue sanctions because it has extensive economic ties (oil) to Sudan, and for some reason the rest of the world can’t blow its own nose without China’s permission. Since when is China our political guide? More importantly, since when is China our moral guide?

Let's give China no option but to get involved. Threaten to take away the 2008 Beijing Olympics. That’ll get China off their asses. Tell them that al-Bashir needs to be removed from power, the janjaweed militia needs to be disbanded, and Darfur’s villagers must be allowed to return to their land without fear, or the 2008 summer Olympics will be held in Minneapolis, MN, and Chinese athletes will not be welcome. Then I guarantee we’ll see some action. Who’s got the balls to make it happen?

Sorry for the tangent.

I apologize, readers. I’ve dumped quite a load on you today (I pray it wasn’t entirely thankless). I think it would be best to hold off on the invasion of Kuwait. It may be too much for one post. Look for it in days to come, as well as the who’s who, the activities of the rest of the Middle East in the ‘90s, etc. When I started this thing I thought it was going to be a three, maybe four part series. I was way off. Oh well.

Thanks for reading.