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The Anfal Campaigns and the Geopolitics in the Middle East

The Anfal Campaigns and the Geopolitics in the Middle East. The strategic environment in the 1980s. The super-powers Ascent of the US influence in the Arab-Israeli conflict after the Camp David peace agreement Weakening of Soviet influence Regional powers

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The Anfal Campaigns and the Geopolitics in the Middle East

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  1. The Anfal Campaigns and the Geopolitics in the Middle East

  2. The strategic environment in the 1980s • The super-powers • Ascent of the US influence in the Arab-Israeli conflict after the Camp David peace agreement • Weakening of Soviet influence • Regional powers • Iran in revolution: an unpredictable player • Saddam in Iraq “responsible” regional player. • Saudis and Gulf monarchies uneasy about Islamic revolution contagion • Non-state actors • The PLO in retreat in Lebanon • The Kurdish movement in Iraq struggling after the Algiers agreement between Iraq and Iran (1975)

  3. The Iran-Iraq conflict, the war and the Kurdish issue Saddam’s plan against Islamic Revolution: • The 517 sq. km zone in the strategic Shat al-Arab that has been ceded to the Shah (Algiers 1975) • Regional hegemony as the “Shield of the Arabs” against Iranian Islamist expansion. • A unique opportunity to “resolve” once and for all the so-called Kurdish “problem”.

  4. The Iran-Iraq War 1980-88

  5. The Anfal Campaigns (1987-1988) • Eight Campaigns: an ethnic cleansing targeting the rural areas • Thorough strategic plan of the Iraqi regime under Ali Hasan al-Mejid ( Saddam’s cousin)with main aims: • Counter-insurgency against mainly PUK resistance which were in alliance with Iran • Driving wedge in Kurdish population by creating jahsh paramilitaries • Ethnic cleansing of the rural prohibited areas through mass killings by gassing and death squads • Forced arabisation through massive deportation, relocation and exile of the Kurdish population.

  6. The ‘Killing Areas”

  7. The role of major powers The USA • No intervention despite information about use of chemical weapons • Saddam’s Iraq was the lesser evil in the face of the Iranian threat to Gulf security and the flow of oil. • The status quo of the Middle East nation-states and frontiers was sacrosanct The USSR • Iraqi Kurds, unlike other national liberation movements, were never able to count on consistent Soviet support. • Close military alliance between Baath and the Soviets Iran • Abandonment of the Kurds after the 1998. Breach of the agreement with PUK of no unilateral deal with Saddam

  8. Results of Anfal campaigns • 100,00 to 200,00 lives according to various estaimates • 4049 villages were levelled (destroyed, burned, demolished or “purified” according to Iraqi docs) • 1,5 million Kurds forcibly resettled. Wide arabization of the areas • Peshmergas no longer a security threat. • Halabja: a tragic exemption to the rural targeting of the campaigns. At the beginning of the campaigns (March 16, 1988)

  9. Some comparisons • Ethnic cleansing in relative obscurity and compliance more difficult, in a uni-multipolar system with powerful non-state actors. • International community’s threats more convincing after the post 1990s interventions, in the Middle East, despite their neo-colonialist motives and their catastrophic results in state-building. • The region’s state-system not sacrosanct, after the US occupation of Iraq and the recent Arab uprisings.

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