The Tragedy of the Missing Barzanis

The Barzani tribe had long been a thorn in the flesh of the Iraqi central government. Hostilities reached boiling point during the Iraq-Iran War when Saddam Hussein accused them of collaborating with the Iranians. Soon afterwards between 5,000 and 8,000 Barzani tribesmen were abducted and never seen again.

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‘The Iraqi National Guard stole everything of value in our houses’

In the early 1960s the Iraqi authorities confiscated Kurdish lands north of Kirkuk. To this day, legal title has yet to be formally restored to its original owners. MAJID MOHAMMED ISMAEL describes how Arab militia looted his family home in Qara Dara and killed one of his neighbours.

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‘There’s a fire still burning inside me: my family died but I survived’

Yazidis who fought the government of Saddam Hussein were shown no mercy. ALI HAWER BAKO, a communist peshmerga, lost 27 of his extended family in the 1980s after they surrendered to the authorities.

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‘“You betrayed your nation,” I told Saddam Hussein at his trial’

During Saddam's trial in Baghdad, Kurdish Anfal survivors confronted the former Iraqi leader. One of them was MAHMOUD RASUL MUSTAFA, who last saw his wife, three sons and two daughters in a prison camp near Kirkuk.

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‘Prisoners were forced to cover corpses with sand, yet the dogs dug them up’

Villagers from JALEMORT, located in the Lesser Zab valley, remember how they were attacked by the Iraqi army and then imprisoned in the southern deserts where many died.

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‘The Iraqis used to say, “Even your donkeys are peshmerga”’

Those living in the rural areas of Kurdistan risked imprisonment for being suspected “saboteurs.” A farmer, HAMAD AMIN MOHAMMED was jailed for four years by Saddam's regime because he lived in the peshmerga stronghold of Haladin.

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