The author argues that a part of the history of nation building in Iraq through addressing its political characters, different communities, agreements and pan Arab ideology, including the Baath ideology and its attempts to seize power through nondemocratic methods. It is an attempt to approach the essence of the exclusion mentality of the ruling elite in order to understand the process of genocide against the Kurdish people, including all existing religious minorities. This essence of the process has been approached in the framework of the civilizing and de-civilizing process as a main theory of the German sociologist, Norbert Elias. Thus, this book may be considered as one of the comprehensive books to present a study of state-building in Iraq, along with identifying some of the political figures that had an essential impact on the construction. On the other hand, it is a comprehensive study of the genocide, in the sense of searching for the causes and roots of the genocide. The Anfal campaigns took place in 1988, but the process started as far back as the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies of the last century.

The PUK's last stand.

Saddam Hussein's execution for his crimes against Iraq's Shia not only brought an end to his reign of oppression, but also to the justice that was to be served to the Iraqi Kurds. The unspeakable atrocities visited by Saddam upon the Kurds of Iraq are explored here, together with the trials of Saddam by the Iraqi High Tribunal. However, this work is more than a litigation history. It is also an exploration of the motivations behind and the depths of organized evil in the context of a single, brutal despot at the helm of an artificially created multi-ethno/religious state lying atop massive oil wealth. Saddam's background and the context of his rule explain much about his actions, but not all. He remained an unpredictable tyrant to the end of his reign. The Kurds have continually been subject to adversity since the end of World War I, when they were denied their own homeland, splitting them among three countries: Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. During Saddam's 24-year reign, the Kurds of Iraq were frequently under the knife of injustice. Between 1987 and 1989, Saddam unleashed genocide, razing over 2,000 villages and murdering at least 50,000 Kurds. As his dictatorship came to an end, the Kurds long-awaited opportunity to hold Saddam responsible for the atrocities against them seemed to have come, only to be sidetracked by the Iraqi High Tribunal, the Iraqi government, and the U.S. government. While the Shia rejoiced in their victory, the Kurds continued to be left behind. Saddam's death freed him of the charges against him by the Kurds. The world had turned its back on the Kurds in their age of genocide, and now appeared to turn a blind eye to the justice that was denied. The unspeakable atrocities visited by Saddam upon the Kurds of Iraq are explored here together with the trials of Saddam by the Iraqi High Tribunal—both the completed prosecution for the Dujail massacre against the Shites and the incomplete one for the Anfal Campaigns against the Kurds. However, this work is more than a litigation history. It is also an exploration of the motivations behind and the depths of organized evil in the context of a single, brutal despot at the helm of an artificially created multi-ethno/religious state lying atop massive oil wealth, but situated in the most dangerous part of the world. Saddam's background and the context of his rule explain much about his actions, but not all. He remained an unpredictable tyrant to the end of his reign.

"Iraq's 1988 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 from Human Rights Watch investigates the so-called 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/Middle East investigators who analyzed eighteen tons of captured Iraqi government documents (ten of these documents are reproduced in an 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 disappearance 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."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This book considers different stages of Kurdish history, oppression, and genocide through a critical lens, offering an historiography of Iraq and colonialism. Divided into two parts, the first part conceptualizes the coined term “genocide culture” and examines dominant Iraqi cultural practices that fostered genocide. The second part contextualizes the experiences of the Kurdish community to examine the effects of cultural practices and the role of “civilian actors” in fueling the extermination of targeted groups. Through semi-structured interviews, primary archival documents, and nonparticipant observation, the author studies the links between everyday cultural practices and microaggression in general and the nexus between the state and the general population in the implementation of macroaggression and genocide. The audience will include scholars and students interested in genocide studies and the relation of both genocide and culture to histories of colonialism, as well as those working in the fields of violence and cultural psychology, sociology, history, international relations, ethnic conflict, and Middle Eastern studies.

Between February and September 1988, the Iraqi government destroyed over 2000 Kurdish villages, killing somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians and displacing many more. The operation was codenamed Anfal which literally means 'the spoils of war'. For the survivors of this campaign, Anfal did not end in September 1988: the aftermath of this catastrophe is as much a part of the Anfal story as the gas attacks, disappearances and life in the camps. This book examines Kurdish women's experience of violence, destruction, the disappearance of loved ones, and incarceration during the Anfal campaign. It explores the survival strategies of these women in the aftermath of genocide. By bringing together and highlighting women's own testimonies, Choman Hardi reconstructs the Anfal narrative in contrast to the current prevaling one which is highly politicised, simplified, and nationalistic. It also addresses women's silences about sexual abuse and rape in a patriarchal society which holds them responsible for having been a victim of sexual violence.