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Middle East Review of International Affairs
Operation "Termination of Traitors": Iraq's Anti-Kurdish Campaign
by Robert G. Rabil
*
Abstract
This article examines the Iraqi regime's policy toward its Kurdish population during the Iran-Iraq War, which culminated in a military operation codenamed Termination of Traitors. Executed in a methodical and systematic fashion, this operation shows that the regime was not just trying to quell the Kurdish insurgency but had a plan for altering irreversibly the life of the Kurds in northern Iraq. Equally significant, this operation shows the regime's views and methods in general as well as attitudes toward human rights.
This article, based on official Iraqi documents, examines the Iraqi regime's policy vis-a-vis its Kurdish population during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988).(1) The long, conflicted Iraqi-Kurdish relationship led to the government's decision to launch a major campaign against the Kurds at the war's end. Harsh methods were employed in an operation codenamed Termination of Traitors, personally ordered by President Saddam Hussein and leading into the better-known Anfal campaign. The three-phase effort was designed not only to deal a final blow to the Kurdish rebellion but to ensure no such uprising took place in the future.
The campaign's aim was also the conscious and deliberate murder of large numbers of Kurds regardless of their gender, age, or civilian status. Even chemical weapons were to be used against them. A special bureaucracy was created to carry out this operation and to meticulously detail every action taken. These activities spanned a gamut from "collectivizing" the families of "saboteurs", to detaining them, creating dossiers on them, and marking them for death. For this purpose, the regime mobilized a wide range of officials from the lowest- to highest-ranking. All this is sketched in minute detail in the mass of official documents examined by this research to open a window into the regime's inner workings, nature and modus operandi.
In its definitive study of the Anfal campaign, Human Rights Watch (HRW) concluded that the Iraqi regime committed the crime of genocide. While seeing no master plan to exterminate the Kurds, HRW emphasized that Anfal was the culmination of the Iraqi regime's "anti-Kurdish drive [which] dated back fifteen years or more, well before the outbreak of hostilities between Iran and Iraq."(2) Whether or not this campaign will some day be internationally recognized as genocide, the documentation shows that the regime's effort to quell the Kurdish insurgency was based on a deliberate plan to exterminate large numbers of Kurds.
Full PDF Document, 14 pages, 67.5 kbs
Endnotes
Note *: Dr. Rabil served with Red Cross in Lebanon, taught at Suffolk University and currently is the project manager of Iraq Research and Documentation Project at the Iraq Foundation, Washington, DC. He is the author of the forthcoming book Embattled Neighbors: Lebanon, Syria, Israel and the Elusive Peace by Lynne Rienner Publishers. The author extends his thanks to IRDP research team.Back