Talk:Anfal campaign/Archive 1

Arbitrary break
I think it's somewhat outrageous that the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfal redirects to here. This is a chapter of the Qur'an as seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal. Surely this is more significant than what some Iraqis named their genocide campaign.Stenen Bijl (talk) 06:25, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Merge
This page should probably be merged with ANFAL, but I don't know enough about the subject to say which name it should be merged under. My guess would be this one, though. Anyone? --Xanzzibar 23:02, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, merge them. - FrancisTyers 20:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

The articles should definitely be merged in some way, but like Xanzzibar, I don't know enough about the subject matter to say anything about the articles name or content. Comment: The 1988 Anfal campaign article appears to be about a particular episode within the timeframe dealt with in the Al-Anfal Campaign article. --Dengo 09:52, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

They should be merged. They're both technically the same thing.

-- Some guy


 * Ok, they've been merged (finally). I merged into this page, because it's more general. I don't think any information was lost during the transfer, but I did remove a lot of the redundancies between the two articles, smoothed things out, and reorganized everything into what seemed the most logical division. This is still a very messy article though, about a very important topic, which should be smoothed out - paying specific attention to sources, which are scattered all over the place. --Jackson 05:50, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Merging
This topic should be merged with the other respective article, the 1988 Anfal Campaign article. This one has some good stats, but I think the other article presents some good facts that will help show the true nature of this genocide. Unfortunately, I can't do this myself as I'm rather terrible in merging topics.MercZ 23:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Spam
I found this under 'See Also'

carly is a butt face... why are we able to edit these sources... it makes them unreliable.... duhhhh

I removed it.

Sign your posts!
Too many people aren't signing their posts here. Discussion is important on articles such as this due to its controversal nature. You can't hide your identity by not signing because people will just dig you out of the history, so just sign your posts please to facilitate easier discussion and make your points appear more valid. Thanks SGGH speak! 11:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

dig you out of history? if that is meant to b a joke it aint funny, mate. Jalal.
 * Er... no it isn't meant to be a joke... it means users will just look in the page history to see who placed the comment, it just saves time and effort if you sign your posts rather than forcing me to look into the history to discover that you are User:Jalalhusseinbradford, use ~, thanks. SGGH speak! 19:19, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

American responsibility
Article makes it seems like these were bunch of innocents being butchered, first off, there was no genocide, second of the Kurds were armed and instructed by the CIA to attack the Iraqi state / police / military and they certainly did so, often murdering or and abbusing any prisoners they got, all in all the Kurds TREASONED, attacked their legal state with acts of terrosim, and we are supposed to feel sorry, and eat up this propaganda cake, dreamed up in Washington. No thanks! So i would suggest, the ARTICLE BE MADE TO REFLECT THE REALITY, AND NOT SOME FAIRYTALE.

Cheers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.154.195.225 (talk) 08:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence for that? The only portion of American involvement in Iraq at the time was providing Iraq with support against Iran, which it also ended up using for the Kurds.

Though it's obvious from the way you made your comment you have some pre-existing prejudice or issue with this article, and wikipedia doesn't welcome that. Get lost. MercZ (talk) 07:14, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

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I like how you "remove offensive wording" everywhere, Kassem.
Then invoke NPOV under false pretenses, while changing words like "expel" to "relocate." Again, you will cease this deliberate editing of NPOV wording into Wikipedia articles, or I will personally take you before mediation and/or arbitration.

Saddam Hussein
I'm not sure "Hussein" should be used wherever his name stands alone. See here Avalon 23:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Figures
This section should be reviewed and updated with better verifiable facts. I just did a quick check of a source and revised the number of churches destroyed during this campaign. I also checked a few other sources that ought to be replaced by better/more trustworthy sources. fno 07:32, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

two articles about the same topic
hi, there is a second article about the anfal campain with the name 1988 Anfal campaign. can anyone put these two articles together? KureCewlik81 15:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


 * There were actually several phases to the Anfal Campaign, which took place between 1986 and 1989... I have read that the events of 1988 were the most deadly during the campaign Garr1984 04:54, 9 July 2007 (UTC)§

Question
I noticed a link at the bottom of the page to the Halabja massacre. Does the Al-Anfal campaign include the Halabja massacre or is it entirely separate?

Part of the Anfal I. --HanzoHattori 11:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC) anwser

Halabja was during the Iran Iraq war, Halabja was a scene of battle not part of An-Fal.

There are true evidences that more than 182 000 innocent Kurdish (Kurdistanian) men, women and children were buried alive in the brutal Anfal-campaign that Saddam's dictatorship made in the (Southern) Kurdistan (in Iraq). More than 4500 villages were levelled with the ground - it is simple a GENOCIDE against the KURDISTANIAN people, who are the Kurds, the Turkomen and the Assyrians.


 * History only tells one side of the story... the story they want us to hear... the fact of the matter is that these people were conspiring or at least sympathizing with Iraq's enemies, namely Iran, and Iran was also our enemy at the time. I am not saying that they had it coming, or that it was right for Saddam to commit these atrocities, it was not. It just seems to me that violence is all these people will ever understand... It it even foretold in the bible that as the descendants of Ishmael, Arabs would not be able to get with the descendants of Isaac (Christians and Jews), and that prophecy fulfills itself all over again on a daily basis. They can't even get along with each other. Garr1984 14:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC)§

Can we have articles at least on Sultan Hashem Ahmed and Hussein Rashid Mohammed?
--HanzoHattori 20:25, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

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Reason for the operation?
The article does not mention why Saddam launched this attack, what is the background to it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.24.148.130 (talk) 05:40, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Odd and confusing wording
Under "Name", we learn that Now, I happened by this page by accident and know nothing about this. But this wording seems to imply that "the military campaign of extermination and looting" actually took place in 624 AD ("was used" immediately after the mention of the battle of Badr...), which can't be true, since Ali Hassan al-Majid is a 20th century figure. Or were there two people with the same name? And if "the military campaign of extermination and looting" refers to the actual 20th century campaign this article is about, then that part of the second sentence is completely redundant. It should simply say "Al Anfal literally means the spoils (of war)."
 * 1) Al-Anfal is the eighth sura or chapter of the Qur'an which explains the triumph of 319 followers of the new Muslim faith over almost 900 pagans at the battle of Badr in 624 AD.
 * 2) Al Anfal literally means the spoils (of war) and was used to describe the military campaign of extermination and looting commanded by Ali Hassan al-Majid.

Furthermore, there's another article, jash (which, by the way, looks like a candidate for AfD, unless there's a wealth of information on jash units), linked in the same paragraph, which states that "during the Battle of Badr in 624 AD, a military campaign of extermination and looting was commanded by Ali Hassan al-Majid". So were there two Ali Hassan al-Majids after all? --Jashiin (talk) 22:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

NPOV
This article is deeply one-sided and presents the Kurdish/HRW point of view. A neutral article would also present the Baathist point of view and their reasons for the campaign. In the present form, it is as complete as would be, say, an article about War in Afghanistan (2001–present) if it only focused on the numbers of Afghan civilians and insurgent "massacred" by Americans, without mentioning 9/11. --Itinerant1 (talk) 00:02, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

No mention of Reagan selling Saddam chemical weapons materials
This article doesn't have a word about the Reagan administration selling biological and chemical weapons to Saddam. The shipments to Iraq went on even after Saddam ordered the gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja, in which at least 5,000 men, women and children died. The following article cites investigations by the U.S. Senate's committee on banking, housing and urban affairs: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0908-08.htm Somehow I get the feeling that if Carter or Clinton had done this, Wikipedia would report it in detail. But when it comes to the GOP presidents, Wikipedia always whitewashes the record and gives them a pass. So much for "neutral point of view." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.86.119.173 (talk) 15:03, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

The truth doesn't need to be embellished
I feel the numbers in the second paragraph of the Summary are sensationalist and in part, self contradictory.

"The attacks were part of a long-standing campaign that destroyed approximately 4,500 Kurdish village in areas of northern Iraq and displaced at least a million of the country's estimated 3.5 million Kurdish population. Independent sources estimate 1,100,000 to more than 2,150,000 deaths and as many as 860,000 widows and an even greater number of orphans."

The first sentence establishes an estimated 3.5m pop, from which up to 2.15m or more are killed, leaving (a remaining?) 860K widows and 860K plus orphans. Applying the lower of two totals leaves only 380K or less in an 'other' category. If the higher of the two death statistics is taken then the combined total exceeds the 3.5m pop background figure. It’s also not clear what portion of the 1m displaced are included or excluded.

Other reputable sources cited within the article are nowhere near these numbers which seem to come from a single source. Exceptional claims should be substantiated by exceptional or multiple sources.

Skeptiod60 (talk) 04:06, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

File:Anfal campaing area.PNG
The map in the infobox which aims to show the areas targeted by al-Anfal operation are wrong.

I know, that at least the areas south of Kirkuk as well as the Makhmur district of Erbil governorate suffered under a heavy destruction during Anfal campaign by the Ba'ath regime. As sources, there is a case study by HRW (https://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/iraq0804/8.htm) as well as visual evidence by https://www.bing.com/mapspreview Many villages north and south of Makhmur are still today little more than dust and ruins.

Either we remove this map, or replace it with a better one.

Regards, Ermanarich (talk) 20:02, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 21 December 2018
Anfal genocide → Kurdish genocide of 1986-1989

The "Kurdish genocide" is probably the second most common name for this event; the yearing format is inspired by the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 article. the "Anfal genocide" titling is odd particularly the lower casing of genocide. It would be more typical to refer to the event as simply "Anfal" or "Kurdish genocide" and mixing them together like that just sounds unnatural. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GoBotsters (talk • contribs) 13:59, 21 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Note: This RM didn't use the correct template, which was why it didn't go through. – Þjarkur (talk) 19:57, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 6 May 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. No prejudice against speedy renomination should any supporting evidence be provided. (closed by non-admin page mover)  SITH   (talk)   09:36, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Anfal genocide → Kurdish genocide of 1986-1989 – See above Adam9007 (talk) 16:49, 6 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. No evidence presented that "Anfal genocide" is not the WP:COMMONNAME, and the article's sources seem to call it variants of that. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 16:09, 13 May 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Requested move 15 May 2021

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The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) ~  (t, e &#124; c, l) 09:13, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Anfal genocide → Anfal campaign – This name is much more common in reliable sources, for instance see NGRAMS Google Scholar results as follows: It is unlikely that there could be separate articles Anfal campaign and Anfal genocide, as the campaign was conducted in such a brutal way that many reliable sources consider it to be genocidal. However, "Anfal genocide" is definitely not the WP:COMMONNAME and should not be the article title. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  17:59, 15 May 2021 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * "Anfal campaign" 2,500
 * "Al-Anfal campaign" 381
 * "Anfal genocide" 292
 * "Al-Anfal genocide" 29
 * Support per nom. The subject was in fact called a "campaign" until 2017, when a now-blocked sock boldly moved it to use the "genocide" name. We should only be using titles like that if they're supported by reliable sources, and are the WP:COMMONNAME though, something which the nom demonstrates is not the case. Cheers &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 11:15, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per nom and per Amakuru. BD2412  T 02:45, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Hamlat or harakat al-anfal?
The Arabic name in the beginning of this entry says حملة “hamlat” but the romanized transcription says “harakat” so that’s inconsistent. 195.169.148.102 (talk) 22:08, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Did Sweden recognise Anfal?
The Pravda source says that a unanimous decision to recognize the Anfal genocide was made December 5th, 2012, together with a decision to recognize West Sahara. However, the Riksdag protocol from the occasion says that the parliament decidet to (exhort the government to) recognize West Sahara, but that all other bills were turned down, including the ones about Anfal.

I have no explanation to the seemingly false statements of the Pravda source, and where similar claims on the web originates from. The other source gives a security warning when I try to access it. The same claim is on the Swedish Wikipedia, and I will raise the same question there. --St.nerol (talk) 21:48, 24 April 2019 (UTC)


 * The MoM from Riksdagen (link above) is clear. Sweden did *not* recognize Anfal as a genocide. Howcome the source mentioned (Pravda) falsely claimed this one can just speculate. The MoM from Riksdagen is the authorative source. V29 (talk) 09:41, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
 * The current replacement source provided from "gulanmedia" is worse than the Russian Pravda. Given this has been proven with the Swedish government's records that Sweden did not make an official legislative recognition or any recognition, I agree we can remove that. The claim for South Korea is a website peyamner.com that no longer exists. We should consider that for removal later. The recognition from Norway as claimed by a poor source was not a legislative action either, but a statement from a minister in "a parliamentary debate". Saucysalsa30 (talk) 19:55, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
 * The only other source for South Korea other than the defunct peyamner.com site is a copy and paste a day later to gulanmedia.com . I asked Korean speakers to see if they could find anything regarding this from Korean media or government records and minutes, but nothing. This claim seems to only originate from a relatively unknown local Iraqi Kurdish group. The KRG website does not report such an event either.
 * Norway did not recognize it either. While the source provided is admittedly very biased and uses incorrect wording, what it does claim, assuming if true, is not a formal recognition or legislation, but that it was mentioned in a debate with no further detail on any vote, legislation, or other: "The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, in a recent parliamentary debate recognised the judgement of the Iraqi High Court that Saddam Hussein’s’ Anfal campaign, including the chemical weapons attack on Halabja, constituted genocide."
 * Fair warning against future circular reporting. There are news articles that got their information from this Wikipedia article that Anfal was recognized by 4 countries, as seen in this 2019 MEE article, with no reference and no further detail.
 * To date, the UK is the only country to recognize it and news and reports on this abound, unlike in the other 3 cases. The other cases have been single disproven or unsupported claims, or an editor's good faith misinterpretation of a poorly-written KRG website release. I'll leave this comment up for some time, but if we can't find reasonable claim to support these, then I or someone else can take the action of removing them. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 22:02, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Only one side of the story
This article, and the other similar article, only quotes sources from the Kurdish side of the story. What is the context of these killings? How do the Ba'athists explain themselves when questioned on this topic??--84.12.185.56 09:28, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I know that at Saddam Hussein's Arraignment, he said regarding the Anfal Campaign and more specifically the poison gas attack on Halabja, that he had "Heard about it" but had no further knowledge of it. I also know that there is an audio tape that has Chemical Ali talking about killing the kurds, saying, and I quote: "We will kill them all. We will kill them with chemical weapons. Who is going to do anything about it? The International Community?!? Fuck Them! Fuck Them And All Who Listen To Them!!! I will not attack them with chemicals just one day, but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days." " and Saddam's voice can be heard on the tape saying something along the lines of "Yes, The Poison is Very Effective". I also know that, at any rate, Saddam thought the Kurds were in league with Iraq's Enemies, namely Iran, but I don't know how best to integrate this information into the article, or if it's even a good idea to do so. Garr1984 15:02, 2 July 2007 (UTC)§


 * Yes there is no context here whatsoever. Saddam Hussein acted within the context of an open rebellion against the central government in Baghdad. A better comparison would be what General Sherman did to the South during the American Civil War, rather than the Nazis' extermination of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)


 * There's no body of evidence showing that General Sherman tolerated rape or murder, though I'd suspect that rapes and murder occurred at a somewhat higher level than in civilian life. That's virtually inevitable, and absolutely nothing like a true rape atrocity or true massacre. He destroyed tons of property, and I mean tons. There doesn't seem to be a consensus that this led to the death of many civilians, though I'm sure it contributed to the death of at least a few dozen. In short the General was a proud and honorable soldier, clean as a whistle and no commiter of atrocities, whatever your view of his cause (I view it negatively). There can be no serious doubt that his ferociousness against civilian property shortened the war. He did invent 'total war', but only a fool could maintain that it would not have been invented soon anyway. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.125.162.72 (talk) 22:06, 15 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, this article is very one-sided and historically speaking the "information" about Anfal to date are uncorroborated claims from Kurdish officials, in particular from the PUK group and militia, and militia-organized interviews, using HRW and US Senator Galbraith as their soapbox. To my understanding there have been works in the Mideast, but are reserved to universities and libraries. In Western academia and journalism, there have been challenges to the Anfal claims, originating from the Kurdish officials -> HRW claims that form the basis of alleged "knowledge" on Anfal.
 * If "the other similar article" you refer to is the Halabja chemical attack Wiki article, then yes, it is in equally bad shape. The death counts it has originate from the Iranian government and the PUK militant group, which is very unreliable.
 * To add to this, another item is that the Iraqi government said some of the documents/recordings were unverifiable or forged. Even prominent Iraq War advocates, like Kanan Makiya, who of his own admission is responsible for making up many "rumors and stories without firmer basis in fact" regarding the Iraqi government, have doubted the authenticity of the more provocative records and more said there isn't evidence of genocide. Also, the alleged tape is without context.
 * The tape referred to by Garr is problematic for a number of reasons, and doesn't actually prove anything if you read the snippet provided by HRW, whether it is legitimate or not. Assuming this tape from May 26, 1988 is both real and not a convenient forging (the only evidence we have is a translation of a part of it in the HRW report), and that such presumably top secret records would be floating around outside Baghdad that militants could take in the late 80s or in 1991, even what is claimed does not say, what little they got translated for them by the PUK militants and reproduce from the tape, validity aside, is still bizarre for a number of reasons.
 * The recording is from May 26, 1988; there are no known (only claimed with no corroboration) chemical attacks on civilians after or before for that matter March 1988 at Halabja, whose article is as one-sided and controversial as Anfal claims.
 * The disparate parts quoted by Garr, and the sections in the text around it, are framed as a threat to people not leaving villages in the specific conflict area, not as something that was done or will be done. Considering there is no evidence of chemical attacks around the time or after May 26, 1988, the recording, real or not, is not useful as evidence to any such point.
 * Translations for all of the PUK-selected "interviews", documents, recordings were not made by HRW, but rather by the "Kurdish interpreters", which would point to the PUK militant group that they closely worked with in developing the reports in particular supplying many of the "numbers" and the hand-picked "interviews".
 * The alleged recording is in some sourcing used as "proof" of Halabja specifically, but HRW claims it is proof of 1987 attacks. This is inconsistent.. Even if the recording is legitimate, it's proof of neither.
 * Majid claims to have made a chemical attack on the large city of Suleimaniyah, which never happened nor had ever been alleged.
 * The Sherman analogy from 2007 is apt, except in the Iraqi case there was much heavier fighting against Iranian forces and KDP+PUK militants than what Sherman faced against Confederates. The 2010 IP comment following it is very wrong. Even in patriotic American accounts of Civil War history, rape, murder, and widespread destruction by Sherman are well-established. Not sure what is meant in the IP reply above of "death of at least a few dozen" and other strange claims, unless meaning to claim that the Iraqi forces were "clean as a whistle" like Sherman, which is not true in either case.
 * "only quotes sources from the Kurdish side of the story"
 * To be specific, the bulk of claims are by a Kurdish militant group's, PUK (also repeated by the other main Kurdish militant group KDP), leaders and the "interviews" they selected for HRW, along with HRW's story-telling and extreme interpretations of any data or statement. Let's not make sweeping generalizations about a whole ethnic group, most of whose fighting men fought for the Iraqi government during the conflict at that. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 20:45, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Correcting the record
I'm concerned that two statements above, for whatever reason, are extraordinarily false or misleading, and need to be corrected:
 * Statement 1 "Tangentially related, the Halabja massacre is equally bad in this respect. The oft mentioned number of 5,000 dead came from other Iranian government at the time, ... Reporters at the time flown into the city by Iran reported around 100 or 'more than 100', and noted the lack of verification of the Iranian claims. The culpability of the massacre is a whole other issue, and the Western narrative actually changed without new evidence or details following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and suffers from many of the same issues that the general HRW Anfal claims do."—Saucysalsa30, 22:25, 29 July 2022 (UTC).
 * As a source, the editor links (twice) to a March 24, 1988 article in The Washington Post titled "POISON GAS ATTACK KILLS HUNDREDS". For context, the Halabja massacre occurred on March 16, and the WaPo article documents that an entire week later "More than 100 bodies of women, children and elderly men still lay in the streets, alleys and courtyards of this now-empty city". Contrary to what the editor leads others to believe, neither this reporting, nor any other contemporary reporting, nor more recent retrospective sources, suggest that the entire death toll in Halabja could have possibly been as low as 100. Fully authenticated Iraqi archives declassified after 2003 put the death toll in Halabja in the vicinity of 2,000–3,500 (mostly civilians but including military casualties as well). The WaPo report continues:
 * "Iraq denies responsibility for what happened in this valley 150 miles northeast of Baghdad last Wednesday at 2 p.m. when, according to survivors, a single warplane appeared from the west and dropped one or more chemical bombs that dispersed a deadly yellow-and-white cloud through the Kurdish city, killing hundreds and perhaps thousands of residents. Iran has estimated that 4,000 civilians died in Halabja either from gas poisoning or from the intensive Iraqi bombing that followed. The figure could not be independently verified. ... [Contrary to Iraq's denials,] [e]vidence is plentiful that the Iraqi Army was here in strength. ... Halabja survivors said in interviews that they were certain the gas attack was launched from an Iraqi warplane because it came after the battle for the city was over and Iraqi ground forces had withdrawn or surrendered."


 * Statement 2 "Another intriguing statement from HRW is that the name 'Anfal' was not used by Iraq, according to HRW, which calls into question who made up the name 'Anfal'."—Saucysalsa30, 18:30, 30 July 2022 (UTC).
 * Even a cursory examination of "Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds" would show the above statement to be false:
 * "Anfal—'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 which lasted from February 23 until September 6, 1988. While it is impossible to understand the Anfal campaign without reference to the final phase of the 1980-1988 Iran–Iraq War, Anfal was not merely a function of that war. Rather, the winding-up of the conflict on Iraq's terms was the immediate historical circumstance that gave Baghdad the opportunity to bring to a climax its longstanding efforts to bring the Kurds to heel.—Page 3"
 * "The Iraqi regime may have selected this sura to legitimize its war on the Kurds by invoking a battle between two regular armies, and against a numerically stronger adversary.—Page 31"
 * "All of the tendencies that had been implicit in earlier phases of Iraq's war on the Kurds reached their culmination in 1987-1988 with the endgame of the Iran–Iraq War and the campaign known as al-Anfal. In the captured Iraqi documents that are now being studied by Middle East Watch, the term crops up with great frequency: villages are 'purified' in the course of 'the Heroic Anfal Operation'; the reason for the flight of villagers into neighboring countries is given as 'Anfal'; an 'Anfal' oilfield is inaugurated and a special 'Anfal Section' of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party created in commemoration of the event; one of the government contractors hired to work on the drainage of Iraq's southern marshes is the 'Anfal Company.' It is evident from the documents, and from the supporting testimony of those who survived Anfal, that the resources of the Iraqi state were deployed and coordinated on a massive level to assure the success of the operation.—Page 51"

It is extremely difficult to square these misrepresentations as being consistent with the conduct expected of good faith contributors to our encyclopedia.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:01, 31 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Bludgeoning when proven wrong on a topic you've shown not to be familiar with, and right after making a terribly slanderous comment full of personal attacks is a very poor approach to Talk page discussions.
 * Your Statement 1 is proving my point. The (ironically inconsistent) high numbers of deaths originate from the Iranian government. You were not aware of that before I pointed it out, so I set your flawed record straight previously. As buidhe put it, "I completely disregard any purported death toll that comes from a government, lobby group or non-academic website—it is not a reliable source for that type of information."
 * Why are you implying that the Iranian government making up numbers on the spot against their enemy in a war, without yet the slightest clue what had happened at that, is a reliable source? Didn't you just say in your PA comment that Iraqi officials quoted by WaPo cannot? Why are you now fine with it? And why are you always fine when it's Iranian officials' propaganda? That is the mark of very poor editing. Please review WP:NPOV because you demonstrate enormous bias on many occasions in these matters.
 * Further, you're misframing the source which is not good faith editing, your claim is from a on March 20, 4 days after the event,. The Iraqis weren't in Halabja in March 20 to know anything so the memorandum is conjecture and as "useful" as the Iranian claims. In fact, we know that both sides used chemical weapons in the area of Halabja, and the full document in question that the source you mention cites accuses Iran as well, which is strange Murray/Woods don't point that out and prefer to be deliberately vague.
 * Why did you leave out the part that the source of the information is: "The source of the information was a Kurdish informant" and the part "Due to the bombing of Halabjah city by the airplanes and our artillery, the casualties of the enemy were large and reached around 3,000 slain guards and Iranian volunteers, whose bodies were transported to Alvar City." Your point, then, is that casualties were mostly military, contrary to your previous claim. Also in neither of the passages is the use of chemical weapons mentioned. Sure, they used both conventional and chemical explosives, but neither is specified. Your original research here is not needed. This, again, is not including the bombings and artillery by the Iranian side. This is not good faith on TheTimesAreAChanging's part. Your claims are self-contradicting with other claims you've made in this same Talk page.
 * You add in your own original research with claims like "fully authenticated" (no, it's not necessarily, and has been criticized, eg. ), and you claim that Iraqi sources are not valid in one comment calling it "Saddam-era Ba'th Party propaganda", then here claim they are valid when only a few days after the event and have no data except a "Kurdish informant". This is not excluding Iran's attacks, including chemical, on civilians, in the events as well. It was a random note with no investigation, data, and even the full note accuses Iran too of attacks on civilians, which is curious why Murray/Woods left that out.
 * "[e]vidence is plentiful that the Iraqi Army was here in strength" - Yes, because there was a battle between Iraqi and Iranian forces. This is not an evidence in any way to support the outlandish Iranian claims, or even to assign culpability for civilian victims of chemical weapons as you're stating. Please stop misrepresenting sources.
 * With regards to Statement 2, I've already addressed this shallow analysis and HRW's contradictions and inconsistencies above.
 * Unfortunately, you didn't correct any record, as already proven by your very slanderous comment full of personal attacks earlier in the Talk page, where you even claimed that user-generated content blog websites count for good sources among many other failed assertions. That among many other things made it clear that your contributions are neither WP:GF nor demonstrate WP:COMPETENCE. It's unfortunate when aggressive users who slander and make personal attacks on editors, calling them "small children" and "Holocaust deniers" (on matters having nothing to do with the Holocaust) when proven wrong are full-time on this website. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 19:26, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

2007 appeal ruling on van Anraat case
After the initial 2005 ruling in which a court in the city of The Hague (not to be confused with the ICC) convicted van Anraat of complicity in genocide and considered Anfal as genocide, the Hague Court of Appeal made a following ruling on van Anraat's case in 2007. They removed his complicity with regards to genocide and rejected that Anfal was a genocide. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 19:07, 31 July 2022 (UTC)


 * english text The court admitted genocidal intent and only rejected the term genocide because of insufficient evidence. That's a bit more nuanced. Semsûrî (talk) 19:40, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
 * This is from 2006. It's not an English text of the 2007 appeal case. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 20:14, 31 July 2022 (UTC)