Iraq's Kurdish population lived in a nightmare throughout the Iran-Iraq War. Caught between two rival states, the Kurds' own aspirations for autonomy made them targets for both governments. Iraqi Kurds allied with Iran to gain leverage against Baghdad; in response, Saddam Hussein conducted a campaign of genocide.

The Peshmerga-Iran Alliance

The Kurdish guerrillas, known as the peshmerga, had been fighting against Arab nationalism and Saddam's Baathist regime since the 1960s. When the Iran-Iraq War began, some Kurdish factions saw an opportunity. They allied with Iran, accepting Iranian support in exchange for allowing Iranian forces to operate from Kurdish territory.

This alliance made strategic sense from a Kurdish perspective. By supporting Iran, they could weaken their primary enemy, Iraq. Iranian support meant weapons, training, and sanctuary. Several thousand peshmerga fought alongside Iranian forces, particularly in northern Iraq.

Saddam's Anfal Response

Saddam's response was not merely military retaliation. Beginning in 1986 and intensifying through 1988, the Iraqi government conducted the Anfal campaign—a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide targeting Iraqi Kurdish civilians. The campaign was ostensibly a counter-insurgency operation, but in practice it was an effort to depopulate Kurdistan.

The Anfal consisted of a series of sweeps in which Iraqi forces—army units, secret police, and militias—would enter villages, kill adult males, and force women and children into detention camps. Tens of thousands of Kurds were executed. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. The campaign destroyed the social and economic fabric of Kurdish society.

The Chemical Weapons Component

The Anfal's worst atrocity was the chemical attack on Halabja in March 1988, where Iraqi aircraft dropped poison gas on a town that had briefly fallen under Iranian and Kurdish control. The attack killed thousands of Kurdish civilians, including women and children.

For Kurds, the Anfal was not a military action with civilian casualties as an unfortunate side effect. It was a deliberate campaign of genocide targeting Kurdish identity and Kurdish nationalism. The chemical weapons attack on Halabja was the worst single incident, but it was part of a broader policy.

The Long-Term Consequences

The Anfal left scars on Kurdish society that persisted for decades. Families were destroyed. Entire villages were erased. The psychological trauma of genocide—the knowledge that your own government targeted you for extermination based on ethnicity—created deep grievances.

Yet the Anfal also crystallized Kurdish nationalism. The experience of genocide unified Kurdish political movements and created a shared narrative of victimization and survival. In the post-Cold War era, when Iraq's authority weakened, Kurdish autonomy movements grew directly out of the experience of the Anfal.