Top Kurdish leaders on Sunday called for Iraqi compensation on the 36th anniversary of the genocidal Anfal Campaign in Badinan.

Iraq’s Ba’ath regime carried out the campaign in 1988 in eight stages against its Kurdish population, resulting in the death of 182,000 civilians. 

A total of 4,500 villages were destroyed between the early 1970s and the end of the campaign.

Between August 25, 1988, and September 6, 1988, the eighth stage of the Anfal campaign was carried out in the Badinan District.

In a post on X, the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace, a research initiative of the School of International Service at American University, said that the “operation included indiscriminate use of chemical weapons and the mass execution of civilians.”

“During this dark period, an estimated 14,000 Kurds, including women and children, lost their lives, and 60,000 others were forcibly displaced from their homes.”

Former Kurdistan Region President and the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Masoud Barzani called on Iraq to “compensate for the genocide, crimes, and all the oppression committed against our nation.”

“Thirty-six years ago, from August 25, 1988, to September 6, 1988, as part of the Iraqi regime’s series of crimes against the people of Kurdistan, most of the areas and villages in Badinan District were subjected to inhumane chemical attacks, killings, arrests, and deportations of innocent citizens,” he said in a statement.

“As a result of these inhuman crimes, thousands of citizens of Kurdistan were martyred, disappeared, and displaced, and hundreds of villages were destroyed. The aim of the crimes of the former Iraqi regime was to break the will of the people of Kurdistan to support the revolution and continue the policy of demographic change in Kurdistan.”

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Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani in a statement underlined that the “aim of committing this atrocity was the extermination and genocide of the Kurdish people. However, the perpetrators of this mass crime were unable to suppress the determination and desire for freedom of the Kurdish people.”

“On this occasion, we reiterate that the Federal Government must fulfill its legal and moral duties by properly compensating the families of the martyrs and the Anfal victims who suffered at the hands of the former Iraqi regime.”

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He also underlined that the KRG must continue its efforts and do everything in its power to further serve the families of the Anfal victims.

Additionally, Kurdistan President President Nechirvan Barzani in a statement said that the Kurds “stand united in remembrance of the 182,000 innocent lives lost to one of the most heinous acts of genocide in modern history by the former Iraqi regime.”

“The brutality inflicted upon our people during those dark days, from Garmian to the farthest reaches of Badinan, is a stain on humanity that will never fade.”

“While the Iraqi High Tribunal has rightly recognized the Anfal campaign as genocide and a crime against humanity, justice remains incomplete,” he added. “We call upon the Iraqi government to take immediate action to provide adequate compensation to the families of the victims, ensuring that their suffering is acknowledged and addressed.”