KRI President: Compensating Barzani Anfal families a legal duty
Shafaq News- Erbil
Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) President Nechirvan Barzani on Friday urged Baghdad to compensate families of Anfal victims and others harmed by the former regime, marking the 43rd anniversary of the campaign against the Barzanis.
“The genocide committed against the Barzanis, together with the Anfal campaigns in their entirety, remains an open wound in our nation’s conscience,” Barzani stated, calling compensation “both a moral and a legal duty.”
He honored Barzani women who raised their families after losing relatives, praising their resilience through years of hardship, and thanked residents of Erbil and surrounding areas for sheltering those displaced.
The KRI president also called for the legacy of Anfal to serve as a basis for coexistence among Iraq's communities.
In 1983, 8,000 Barzani men and boys were detained, transferred to southern Iraq, executed, and buried in mass graves.
The killings preceded the broader Anfal campaign carried out by Saddam Hussein’s regime against Kurdish communities in the late 1980s under Ali Hassan Al-Majid, infamously known as “Chemical Ali.” The campaign involved mass killings, displacement, widespread destruction, and the March 1988 chemical attack on Halabja.
The Iraqi High Criminal Court recognized Anfal as genocide and a crime against humanity in 2011. Several senior officials from the former regime were prosecuted after its fall in 2003 for their roles in the atrocities.
