The Kurdish Village that Rose from the Dead

In the 1980s Kulajo gave unstinting support to the Kurdish resistance and for this its people were punished by Saddam Hussein. Villagers were transported to prison camps and many were later executed. Yet some lived to tell extraordinary stories of survival.

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‘Do you know what it’s like to lose a child? I can’t forget’

The death toll in Goptapa from chemical weapons was only exceeded by that of Halabja, which had been gassed seven weeks earlier. A witness to the Goptapa attack was MIRIAM YASEEN MOHAMMED who watched neighbours and relatives run for their lives and drop dead in village alleyways.

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‘Everyone who knew me shut their door in my face’

In the Garmiyan region of Iraq more women and children died in Saddam's Third Anfal than in any other Anfal campaign. FARS AZIZ AHMED survived the attack and describes how he saved his family from certain death.

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‘No one heard me jump from the lorry because of all the screaming’

Kurdish villagers risked their lives to escape the Iraqis. TOOBA HAMID RASUL describes how she leapt from a moving army vehicle with her baby tied to her back.

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‘They wouldn’t let me bury my son’

The Iraqi army's treatment of Kurdish families in prison camps was cruel. Still traumatised by the memory of losing her husband, SEMEN KARIM RAZA recalls the moment they were parted and how she came to lose her son.

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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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‘The Iraqis even killed horses – I’ve never seen such a sadistic military force’

When the Iraqi army blitzed Kurdish peshmerga bases with poison gas in February 1988, AZAD SAGERMA, a senior field commander with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was unaware his forces would face a military catastrophe that could only end in defeat.

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‘My unborn baby died in Dibs prison: I carried him in my womb for a month afterwards’

JWAN ABDULKARIM JABAR of Mahabaram village says her heart is still broken after losing almost all her close relatives during Anfal.

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‘Chemical weapons put fear in the hearts of most people’

The Iraqi army was merciless in pursuing peshmerga fighters with poison gas. Fearing further chemical attacks, OMAR FATAH HUSSEIN, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), ordered his peshmerga to retreat west through a desolate landscape of abandoned villages.

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