Editing Saddam Hussein (section)

==== Anfal campaign: 1986–1989 ====
{{Main|Anfal campaign|Halabja massacre}}
[[File:Saddam Hussain Duty Uniform.jpg|thumb|244x244px|Saddam in duty uniform|left]]The [[Anfal campaign]] was a campaign that took place during the war against the [[Kurds|Kurdish people]] and many others in Kurdish regions of Iraq led by the government and headed by [[Ali Hassan al-Majid]]. The campaign takes its name from [[Qur'anic chapter 8]] (''al-ʾanfāl''), which was used as a [[code name]] by the administration for a series of attacks against the ''peshmerga'' rebels and the mostly Kurdish civilian population of rural Northern Iraq, conducted between 1986 and 1989 culminating in 1988.<ref name=":11">[https://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2006/08/14/genocide-iraq-anfal-campaign-against-kurds] The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds. A Middle East Watch Report: Human Rights Watch 1993.</ref> The campaign was in retaliation to Kurd's support for Iran and their rebellion.<ref name=":11" /> This campaign also targeted [[Shabak people|Shabaks]] and [[Yazidi]]s, [[Assyrian people|Assyrians]], [[Iraqi Turkmen|Turkoman people]] and many villages belonging to these ethnic groups were also destroyed.<ref name=":11" /> Human Rights Watch estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed.<ref>{{cite web |title=Iraqi Anfal, Human Rights Watch, 1993 |url=https://hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/ |access-date=20 September 2013 |publisher=Human Rights Watch}}</ref> It considers the campaign as an act of genocide.<ref name=":11" /> Some Kurdish sources put the number higher, estimating that 182,000 Kurds were killed.<ref>{{cite web |date=15 May 2005 |title=Ethnic Cleansing and the Kurds |url=http://www.jafi.org.il/education/actual/iraq/4.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081202235943/http://www.jafi.org.il/education/actual/iraq/4.html |archive-date=2 December 2008 |access-date=20 September 2013 |publisher=Jafi.org.il}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Burns |first=John F. |author-link=John Fisher Burns |date=26 January 2003 |title=How Many People Has Hussein Killed? |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/weekinreview/the-world-how-many-people-has-hussein-killed.html |access-date=20 February 2022 |work=[[The New York Times]] |quote=The largest number of deaths attributable to Mr. Hussein's regime resulted from the war between Iraq and Iran between 1980 and 1988, which was launched by Mr. Hussein. Iraq says its own toll was 500,000, and Iran's reckoning ranges upward of 300,000. Then there are the casualties in the wake of Iraq's 1990 occupation of Kuwait. Iraq's official toll from American bombing in that war is 100,000—surely a gross exaggeration—but nobody contests that thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians were killed in the American campaign to oust Mr. Hussein's forces from Kuwait. In addition, 1,000 Kuwaitis died during the fighting and occupation in their country. Casualties from Iraq's gulag are harder to estimate. Accounts collected by Western human rights groups from Iraqi émigrés and defectors have suggested that the number of those who have 'disappeared' into the hands of the secret police, never to be heard from again, could be 200,000.}}</ref><ref name="250k" />

On 16 March 1988, the Kurdish town of [[Halabja]] was [[Halabja massacre|attacked]] with a mix of [[mustard gas]] and [[nerve agent]]s, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people, and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more, mostly civilians.<ref name="Halabja">[https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/18714.htm Saddam's Chemical Weapons Campaign: Halabja, 16 March 1988]&nbsp;– Bureau of Public Affairs</ref><ref name="die">{{cite news |title=BBC ON THIS DAY &#124; 16 &#124; 1988: Thousands die in Halabja gas attack |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/16/newsid_4304000/4304853.stm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180210230111/http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/16/newsid_4304000/4304853.stm |archive-date=10 February 2018 |access-date=28 August 2013 |work=BBC News}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Halabja, the massacre the West tried to ignore |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6991512.ece |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://swap.stanford.edu/20100128200211/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article6991512.ece |archive-date=28 January 2010 |access-date=28 August 2013 |work=The Times}}</ref> The attack occurred in conjunction with the Anfal campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish [[peshmerga]] rebel forces. Following the incident, the [[United States Department of State|U.S. State Department]] took the official position that [[Halabja massacre#Allegations of Iranian involvement|Iran was partly to blame]] for the Halabja massacre.<ref name="mind">{{cite web |last=Hiltermann |first=Joost R. |date=17 January 2003 |title=Halabja – America didn't seem to mind poison gas |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/17/opinion/17iht-edjoost_ed3_.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120724051247/http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/17/opinion/17iht-edjoost_ed3_.html |archive-date=24 July 2012 |access-date=26 March 2025 |work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref> A study by the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] held Iran responsible for the attack,<ref name=":3">{{cite web |title=FMFRP 3-203 – Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War |url=http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120504002439/http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/ |archive-date=4 May 2012 |access-date=28 August 2013 |publisher=Fas.org}}</ref> an assessment that was subsequently used by the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] for much of the early 1990s.<ref name=":3" /> Despite this, few observers today doubt that it was Iraq that executed the Halabja massacre.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hiltermann |first=Joost R. |author-link=Joost Hiltermann |title=A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-521-87686-5 |page=183 |quote=Today, few observers question the assertion that it was Iraq that gassed Halabja.}}</ref> According to [[Joost Hiltermann]]: "Analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S. government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, show (1) that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja, and (2) that the United States, fully aware it was Iraq, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack."<ref name="mind"/>