Ultimately, Saddam Hussein will be judged for genocide

[Piling]

Very good step.

e Anfal campaign of the late 1980s, for which former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and six co-defendants were charged with genocide Tuesday, was climax of decades of antagonism between Iraq's Kurds and the central government.

Prosecutors are describing the campaign as an act of genocide against the Kurdish people, while the former Iraqi regime defended its actions as no more than a necessary counter-insurgency operation during wartime.

Though estimates vary, it is believed at least 100,000 Kurds died during this period with over 3,000 villages destroyed.

From 1987 to 1989, there were major attacks on the Kurds, including the gassing of the entire population of Halabja in 1988 in which 5,000 people died, but this will not be in counted in the current case.

The gassing of Halabja by Iraqi forces was in retaliation for the capture of the city by Kurdish peshmergas (warriors) backed by Iranian revolutionary guards and did not form part of the eight official Anfal campaigns.

The term "Anfal" comes from the eighth sura of the Koran and means spoils and it involved a systematic bombardment, gassing and then assault of various parts of the Kurdish autonomous region in 1988.

By 1986, under severe strain due to the war with Iran, large swathes of the Kurdish region had become free from the control of the central government.

So starting in 1987, Saddam charged his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, "Chemical Ali" with bringing the area back under control.

Ali began by declaring "prohibited" zones, much like the Vietnam war-era "free fire" zones, where all inhabitants were considered insurgents.

Villagers were moved to defined, easily controlled settlements, while the prohibited areas were first bombarded and then invaded in classic counter insurgency tactics.

According to New York-based Human Rights Watch, what made these campaigns different than just a counter insurgency was a clear plan to exterminate the Kurds as a people.

"Tellingly, the killings were not in any sense concurrent with the counterinsurgency: the detainees were murdered several days or even weeks after the armed forces had secured their goals," said the organization in their extensive report on the campaign.

"Finally, there is the question of intent, which goes to the heart of the notion of genocide," said the report, going on to detail the documents and testimony that make this intent clear.

Central to the case will be al-Majid and accusations he made liberal use of poisonous gas, mass executions and prison camps to subdue the north.

The remaining defendants were the heads of the military intelligence services in the area and the commanders of the armies that carried out the attacks, as well as the then governor of Mosul.