The Past Explains the Present: Dealing with Anfal in the Kurdistan Region

Abstract

Abstract “Transitional justice” refers to a set of strategies for promoting reconciliation in societies that have been ravaged by conflict and human rights abuses in the recent past. In some cases, however, the political leaders of post-conflict societies choose not to pursue transitional justice, instead preferring to keep the status-quo peace. This essay explores the situation in the Kurdistan region of Iraq after the genocidal Anfal campaign of the late 1980s. The Kurdish political authorities at the time did not use any transitional justice measure against the Kurds who collaborated in the persecution and killing of their fellow Kurds. Instead, they declared a unilateral amnesty for all collaborators, without the consent of the victims’ families. This paper argues that this grant of “blanket amnesty,” which protected the accused from legal liability at the expense of victims’ right to justice, brought neither justice nor peace. Conversely, it negatively affected the process of democratization, rule of law, and social reconciliation in the region. The paper concludes that justice and lasting peace will not be realized in the region if the abuses of the past are left unaddressed.