IRAQ AND IRAQI KURDISTAN

World Report 2000 Entry

World Report 1999 Entry

World Report 1998 Entry

IRAQ’S BRUTAL DECREES
Amputation, Branding and the Death Penalty
Beginning in June 1994, the government of Iraq issued at least nine decrees that established severe penalties, for criminal offenses such as theft, corruption, currency speculation and military desertion. These decrees greatly impinge on individual human rights and constitute violations of several international human rights conventions and standards.
(E703) 6/95, 16 pp., $3.00/£1.95
Order online

IRAQ’S CRIME OF GENOCIDE
The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds
Iraq’s 1988 Anfal campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living within its borders resulted in the death of at least 50,000 and as many as 100,000 people, many of them women and children. This book, co-published with Yale University Press, investigates the Anfal campaign and concludes that this campaign constituted genocide against the Kurds. The book is the result of research by a team of Human Rights Watch investigators who analyzed eighteen tons of captured Iraqi government documents (10 of these documents are reproduced in the appendix) and carried out field interviews with more than 350 witnesses, most of them survivors of the Anfal campaign. It confirms that the campaign was characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass summary executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants; the widespread use of chemical weapons, among them mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands; the arbitrary jailing and warehousing of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months, in conditions of extreme deprivation and without judicial order; the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers to barren resettlement camps after the demolition of their homes; and the wholesale destruction of some two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations. The book is a searing indictment of the Iraqi government’s carefully planned and executed program to destroy a people, harrowing in its detailed and objective recounting of crimes against innocents. (4276) 5/94, 406 pp., hardcover, ISBN 0-300-06427-6, $35.00
Order online

BUREAUCRACY OF REPRESSION
The Iraqi Government in Its Own Words
In two separate shipments in May 1992 and August 1993, eighteen tons of official Iraqi state documents captured by Kurdish parties in the 1991 uprising arrived in the U.S. for safekeeping and analysis. Our team has conducted research on these documents and catalogued a large percentage. This is the first report that discusses these documents, most of which had never before been made public, and serves the broader effort to provide evidence that the Anfal campaign by the government of Iraq against its population of rural Kurds in 1988 amounted to genocide.
(1274) 2/94, 166 pp., ISBN 1-56432-127-4, $15.00/£12.95
Order online

Background on Human Rights Conditions, 1984-1992
Containing background information about human rights violations in Iraq gathered in mid-1992 from victims, eyewitnesses and family members currently living in exile in Syria and Jordan, this report serves as a supplement to our Human Rights in Iraq (1990) and Endless Torment: The 1991 Uprising in Iraq and its Aftermath (1992). It examines some of the methods used by the regime’s security apparatus to maintain control of Baghdad and southern Iraq after the post-war March 1991 uprisings were crushed, and includes detailed testimonies about other human rights abuses.
(E505) 8/93, 18 pp., $3.00/£1.95
Order online

GENOCIDE IN IRAQ
The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds
A narrative account of the Iraqi government’s organized attempt to eradicate the Kurds living in northern Iraq, this report captures in riveting detail the multiple phases of the Anfal campaign. Anfal, meaning "the spoils," is the name of the eighth sura of the Koran. It is also the name given by the Iraqis to a series of military actions that lasted from February 23 until September 6, 1988. Relying in part on previously unpublished Iraqi government documents captured by Kurdish rebels during the Gulf War, Genocide in Iraq reveals a meticulously organized campaign incorporating prison camps, firing squads and chemical attacks.
   The campaigns of 1987-1989 were characterized by mass summary executions and the mass disappearance of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, including large numbers of women and children, and sometimes the entire population of villages; the widespread use of chemical weapons; the wholesale destruction of some 2,000 villages, including homes, schools, mosques and wells; the looting of civilian property; the arbitrary arrest and jailing in conditions of extreme deprivation of thousands of women, children and elderly people; the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers; and the destruction of the rural Kurdish economy and infrastructure. Genocide in Iraq is the product of almost two years of research, during which we analyzed tons of captured Iraqi government documents and carried out field interviews with more than 350 witnesses, most of them survivors of the 1988 campaign. As a result of this painstaking work, we conclude that the Iraqi regime committed the crime of genocide.
(1088) 7/93, 400 pp., ISBN 1-56432-108-8, $20.00/£14.95
Order online

THE ANFAL CAMPAIGN IN IRAQI KURDISTAN
The Destruction of Koreme
Just as the Iran-Iraq War was coming to an end in 1988, the Iraqi government and army embarked on a vengeful campaign against Kurdish villagers living in Iraqi Kurdistan. Taken from a Koranic verse, Anfal refers to "the plunder of the infidel," and evidently was intended to give the campaign the veneer of religious justification, though the Kurds are Muslim, and Iraq is a secular state. Using a similarly destructive pattern throughout northern Kurdistan, the Iraqi army first attacked a chosen village — often with chemical weapons — captured the villagers as they tried to flee, then pulverized their dwellings. Many villagers were later killed. The Kurdish village of Koreme serves as a case study of this campaign, showing how the policies of Saddam Hussein’s government were implemented. Some of Koreme’s captured men and boys were executed on the spot, the remainder were taken to a local army fort or Ba’ath Party office where they disappeared while in the hands of security agents. Surviving Koreme villagers — starving women, children and the elderly — were transferred by truck to bleak camps. Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights conclude that the Iraqi government’s Anfal campaign, constituting murder, forcible disappearance, involuntary relocation, the refusal to provide minimal conditions of life to detainees, chemical weapons attacks against civilians, and the physical destruction of Kurdish villages, are at a minimum, crimes against humanity. Ultimately, they may form the basis for a case of genocide.
(091X) 12/92, 160 pp., ISBN 0-300-05757-7, $15.00/£12.95
Order online

ENDLESS TORMENT
The March 1991 Uprising in Iraq and its Aftermath
Endless Torment spotlights the quelling of the March 1991 uprisings led by Iraq’s Kurdish and Shi’a populations. Based on extensive field interviews with refugees in Iran shortly after their exodus and on continued monitoring of ethnic groups still being persecuted by the Ba’ath regime, this report emphasizes the precarious human rights situation that remains in Iraq today.
(0693) 6/92, 60 pp., ISBN 1-56432-069-3, $7.00/£5.95
Order online

HIDDEN DEATH
Landmines and Civilian Casualties in Iraqi Kurdistan
Decades of internal conflict with the Kurds and another nine years of international strife — first with Iran and then with the U.S.-led coalition — have left much of northern Iraq littered with millions of unexploded landmines. Hidden Death documents this neglected tragedy, a clear breach of international humanitarian law, which has already produced thousands of casualties among innocent civilians trying to return home and rebuild their lives.
(0677) 6/92, 60 pp., ISBN 1-56432-067-7, $7.00/£5.95
Order online

UNQUIET GRAVES
The Search for the Disappeared in Iraqi Kurdistan
In Unquiet Graves, Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights charge that a forensic investigation conducted by the two groups in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq, as well as documentary evidence they have collected, indicate that Iraq has committed crimes against humanity in Kurdistan. Both the government of Saddam Hussein and his Ba’ath party are responsible for gassing, deporting and massacring Kurds, as well as destroying some 4,000 villages. Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights call on the international community, and particularly the United Nations to recognize their moral responsibility to help the Kurds conduct a thorough and impartial investigation of the gross violations of human rights described in this report.
(057X) 2/92, 50 pp., ISBN 1-56432-057-X, $5.00/£2.95
Order online

HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAQ
A comprehensive investigation of brutal human rights violations told in chillingly dispassionate style, Human Rights in Iraq describes how the Ba’ath regime subjects Iraqi citizens to forced relocation and deportation, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, “disappearance,” and summary political execution. The book reveals the methods used by the Iraqi government to impose its rule and examines its treatment of the Kurds.
(9595) 1990, 170 pp., ISBN 0-300-04959-5, $19.95
Order online
 
 

Email Human Rights Watch