{"title":"Anfal and Halabja Genocide: Lessons Not Learned","authors":"Ofra Bengio","doi":"10.1080/21520844.2023.2236922","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The 1987–1988 Anfal Campaign during which the Iraqi Baath regime massacred some 180,000 Kurdish Iraqis, 5,000 of whom killed by chemical weapons in the town of Halabja, is considered one of the major traumas in modern Kurdish history. Yet a few decades later, the Kurds appear to have risen from their proverbial ashes, embarking against great odds on an ambitious state building project in northern Iraq. With this story of “trauma and redemption” as background, this paper considers the lessons learned from this Kurdish experiment; lessons drawn not only by the Kurds themselves, but by all those who willy-nilly accompanied them on this journey; the Iraqi state, the international community, and the United States.","PeriodicalId":37893,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Middle East and Africa","volume":"14 1","pages":"277 - 298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of the Middle East and Africa","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21520844.2023.2236922","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT The 1987–1988 Anfal Campaign during which the Iraqi Baath regime massacred some 180,000 Kurdish Iraqis, 5,000 of whom killed by chemical weapons in the town of Halabja, is considered one of the major traumas in modern Kurdish history. Yet a few decades later, the Kurds appear to have risen from their proverbial ashes, embarking against great odds on an ambitious state building project in northern Iraq. With this story of “trauma and redemption” as background, this paper considers the lessons learned from this Kurdish experiment; lessons drawn not only by the Kurds themselves, but by all those who willy-nilly accompanied them on this journey; the Iraqi state, the international community, and the United States.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, the flagship publication of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA), is the first peer-reviewed academic journal to include both the entire continent of Africa and the Middle East within its purview—exploring the historic social, economic, and political links between these two regions, as well as the modern challenges they face. Interdisciplinary in its nature, The Journal of the Middle East and Africa approaches the regions from the perspectives of Middle Eastern and African studies as well as anthropology, economics, history, international law, political science, religion, security studies, women''s studies, and other disciplines of the social sciences and humanities. It seeks to promote new research to understand better the past and chart more clearly the future of scholarship on the regions. The histories, cultures, and peoples of the Middle East and Africa long have shared important commonalities. The traces of these linkages in current events as well as contemporary scholarly and popular discourse reminds us of how these two geopolitical spaces historically have been—and remain—very much connected to each other and central to world history. Now more than ever, there is an acute need for quality scholarship and a deeper understanding of the Middle East and Africa, both historically and as contemporary realities. The Journal of the Middle East and Africa seeks to provide such understanding and stimulate further intellectual debate about them for the betterment of all.