SPOILS

Sho-sho:  What do you know about Anfal?

Ne-nah:  What language is that?

Sho-sho:  Arabic, I presume.

Ne-nah:  Al-Anfal is the title of the eighth sura, section, chapter of the Qur'an.

Sho-sho:  Oh, interesting. And what’s it about, generally?

Ne-nah:  The chapter recounts the Battle of Badr. In year six twenty... four, maybe? Describes God sending a thousand angels to earth. They take the form of soldiers; an army, but clad in white garments, if I remember.

Sho-sho:  An army? Of course. And who were God’s angels making war with?

Ne-nah:  They’re brought down to aid followers of the new faith. Uh, to victory over the disbelievers, naturally. The Qurayshite polytheists of Mecca in this instance.

Sho-sho:  Wild. Right, well, that's interesting. I never looked into the name. But that's not what I'm talking about. I’m talking about the military campaign, Anfal.

Ne-nah:  Don’t know it.

Sho-sho:  So it took place at the end of the brutal Iran-Iraq War.

Ne-nah:  Yeah, I don’t know much about that.

Sho-sho:  It’s an important conflict to learn about. If you want to know anything about the Middle East, that is. Almost eight years long. From ‘80 to ‘88. About the same timeline of the Somali Civil War, or, at least, the first part of that conflict.

Ne-nah:  A bit before my time.

Sho-sho:  Massive deployment of chemical weapons. Something like one or two million dead. Maybe 300,000 civilians wiped out. But I don’t think we really know the numbers. Something I read suggested maybe a trillion dollars was blown. Again, all of that's not unlike Somalia.

Ne-nah:  Terrible.

Sho-sho:  Terrib— oh my God, there’s this book. You should find it. By a journalist. Uh, Wright, Robin Wright. It’s horrifying. I think it’s called Sacred Rage. So wild. You won’t believe it. Maybe you don't want to read it.

Ne-nah:  Sacred rage? 

Sho-sho:  She details some of the tactics of the conflict.

Ne-nah:  Sounds clinical.

Sho-sho:  Oh, it’ll shake you. She writes about, I think it was Iran who just threw waves of human bodies at Iraqi minefields and tank battalions. She talks about the Iranians not wanting to expend their valuable tanks and so they sent little boys, scores of them, as young as nine, tied together in groups so they couldn’t flee. She writes about these kids being sent charging ahead of tanks to clear the way. Alternatively, they would just run at enemy tanks — think kamikaze pilots but without the planes and they're eleven-year-olds — with heads wrapped in white to signify their embrace of death, yelling “martyr, martyr” as they run, before being, one way or another, inevitably blown to pieces.

Ne-nah:  Fucked up. Imagine that’s your enemy?

Sho-sho: That is the enemy. That is everyone's enemy. And Wright mentions walking through whole suburbs of cities in Iran in which every window contained pictures, memorials, of little boys who were eliminated in this way.

Nu-nah:  Fuck, man. 

Sho-sho:  Fuck is right. But most who hear that misunderstand. It was not an act of desperation or bloodthirsty terrorism, as our print and television news would translate it. This was and remains understood, in the Iranian context, as the most honourable and heroic of deeds. Somehow, still today, people refuse to get that. They really have no idea.

Ne-nah:  And how did it start?

Sho-sho:  Tethered kamikaze kids? Or the conflict?

Ne-nah:  Yeah, the war.

Sho-sho:  Well, how do you nail down a single catalyst for a major conflict like this? If I remember Iran was trying to prevent Iraq from developing nuclear weapons and carried out a pre-emptive strike on a nuclear reactor. Maybe? That could be said to be the "start".

Ne-nah:  Oh, interesting. You hear of that sort of thing more as a crazy theoretical. Don’t you? People talk about carrying out a pre-emptive attack against Iran, say, for trying to develop a nuclear program. I had no idea they’d already done the same in the other direction. Damn.

Sho-sho:  Wild, right? Yeah, so, where was I going.

Ne-nah:  Anfal Campaign.

Sho-sho:  Yes. Anfal Campaign. Stage one began in February of '88. The Ba’athist Socialists of Iraq had enlisted the so-called Jash. Which is a Kurdish term for “traitor”.

Ne-nah:  I wonder who gave them the name, then? I presume the Kurds, but—

Sho-sho:  I don't know the origins. I've never seen it used except in modern, post-war reporting. And of course I can't read the source material. Regardless, they, the Jash, were Kurdish collaborators willing to lead Iraqi forces to Kurdish villages and to their mountain hideouts, neither of which featured on Iraqi maps.

Ne-nah:  Super interesting. That seems like its own story.

Sho-sho:  For sure. Too, it's said the Jash, like Iraqi soldiers, were assured the pilfering of any and all Kurdish property (weapons, money, beasts and, naturally, women, that time-honoured possession) was all perfectly halal.

Ne-nah:  Of course. ‘God says it’s fine.’

Sho-sho:  Exactly. Yeah, I'd like to go re-read Al-Anfal now. I'll have to remember to do that. Anyhow, on the morning of the 23rd of February, the Iraqis launched a full-on assault. The air force struck Kurdish targets at the same time the army launched an artillery barrage. 

Ne-nah:  As you do.

Sho-sho:  Indeed. And, well, the villages weren’t just attacked with conventional explosives but were bombarded by poison gas. Like, straight out of WWI or something. And then in retaliation the Kurds, those not collaborating with Iraqi forces, worked with the Iranians to rout Iraqi forces from the city of Halabja.

Ne-nah:  And where is that? I know the name. Halabja. Probably from the War on Terror.

Sho-sho:  Sure. Yeah. It’s in the northeast of Iraq. The Kurds are all over that area. In the fertile foothills next to Lake Darbandikhan. Near the border with Iran, on the way from Tehran to Baghdad. Kinda right in the middle of things.

Ne-nah:  Oil and pomegranates, is all I really know about the region.

Sho-sho:  I think pomegranates are a new thing, but I could be totally wrong about that.

Ne-nah: Yeah, I wouldn't know.

Sho-sho: Anyway, in the middle of March the Iraqis finally responded to the takeover of Halabja by bombarding that town with nerve gas, too.

Ne-nah:  Wow, what the fuck.

Sho-sho:  Yeah, they killed maybe 5,000 civilians. Something like that. And the Ba’athists offered celebratory headlines like “Heroic Anfal Operation.” Stuff like that. I think I read a translation of a newspaper declaring their delight at "severing of the head of the snake.”

Ne-nah:  Actually, I did think that was all done with.

Sho-sho:  What do you mean?

Ne-nah:  After the horrors of the Great War, I thought we got over using chemical weapons. Why did I have that impression? Isn't that the kind of thing we're told? Aren’t there UN conventions and stuff around chemical weapons?

Sho-sho:  Well, as with everything, or almost everything, all we have is moral suasion.

Ne-nah:  The wagging of fingers.

Sho-sho:  Yeah, that's about it. Nothing's ever binding around human rights. Only with commerce, international trade, do you get forceful, binding agreements with serious repercussions for violations. But that's not my assessment, I think I'm plagiarizing Stephen Lewis there, if I recall.

Ne-nah: Sounds about right.

Sho-sho:  Yeah, so, if you drop nerve gas on a city, the world community just asks if you were signed on to the pertinent treaty prior to doing so. Worst case, you might have Slovenia and Namibia not returning your emails for some time. China will formally object, while signing a $90 billion mega project with you the same day.

Ne-nah:  Right. Yeah, that comports with what I understand about international relations and criminal justice.

Sho-sho:  Indeed. So, Anfal had many more stages. That was just the start. Stage two of Anfal was launched in the rural mountainous region northwest of Halabja, in late March. More poison gas took out the villages of Belekjar, Meyoo, Safaran, Serko, and Sewsenan. Those fleeing the attacks who went east into Iran most likely escaped; others who went west didn't know they were settling into the regions that would be attacked next; otherwise, folks were detained by the Ba’athists, with the women split off and taken to camps and the men, well, they were never seen again. That was pretty typical throughout the war and this campaign.

Ne-nah:  Again, a classic move.

Sho-sho:  Yeah. Humans. The third and fourth stages of Anfal, beginning in April, targeting the region of Garmyan. That’s the regions whose economic centre is Kirkuk. That’s another name you’ll recall from America’s recent misadventures. It was really the Kurdish stronghold at the time, from what I've read. The Kurds in Kirkuk were always the main target of the Iraqis.

Ne-nah:  It rings a bell. Baghdad and Feluja are the two that stick out most, though. Mosul, too.

Sho-sho:  For sure. Yeah, the whole world got to know those names. So, Anfal three and four saw helicopters and tanks supporting the capture of villagers throughout the region. Garmyan. People were detained and delivered to desert detention camps, en masse. Uh, Dibs, Nugra Salman, and Topzawa are the notorious camps. Think gulags but in the desert.

Ne-nah:  I bet.

Sho-sho:  Anfals five, six, and seven lasted from May until August, taking place in the mountain valleys of Balisan, Malakan, and Smaquli, northeast of Erbil. The “Final Anfal” started with the bombardment of villages throughout the region with, you guessed it, more nerve gas.

Ne-nah:  Do I even want to hear about this?

Sho-sho:  You know me, I only have the numbers.

Ne-nah:  Right.

Sho-sho:  I have no gory details. We can leave that up to your imagination.

Ne-nah:  Oh thanks.

Sho-sho:  And, like I say, the numbers of dead still remain unknown. We just know the figure's probably huge. I think Kurdish authorities have claimed just shy of 200,000 dead in total. 180 is what's often written. The most recent analysis I saw — you know, this stuff is reviewed and reanalysed every so often, when new details come to light or a new crop of grad students are drawn to it for some reason — showed independent human rights organizations suggesting roughly half that number was the safest bet.

Ne-nah:  That’s still a huge fucking number. 100,000! 90,000!

Sho-sho:  For sure. I think I've seen 70,000 mafqudin (disappeared), as a somewhat official number. Most of those were likely civilians.

Ne-nah:  70 to 200 thousand civilians. In just this one campaign! Which, you said, the whole war lasted, what, eight years or so? And how long was this campaign? Anfal. A year? Six months? February. To what?

Sho-sho:  Roughly August. Roughly seven months.

Ne-nah:  Ten thousand a month. At least.

Sho-sho:  At least. Yeah, not— not less than that.

Ne-nah:  Much of that by nerve gas, too. Fuck me.

Sho-sho:  Yeah. Too, the numbers I’ve seen for deaths by gas attacks in WWI was something around 80,000 to 100,000. I think. If I remember.

Ne-nah:  And that was over four years.

Sho-sho:  It was. And that’s chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas combined. Don't ask me how I remember this shit.

Ne-nah:  Oh I know, this is what men sit around thinking about and researching. I was on this date recently and the guy started talking about conscription. I didn't know what he was on about at first. I must have heard the term before. But it just doesn't come up regularly in female discourses. Apparently men are sitting up at night worrying about it.

Sho-sho:  For good reason. Yeah, I've always contended, as an adult at least, as offensive as it appears to be, that we, males and females, occupy wholly different worlds. Twenty years ago I wrote something on both, about how many young men's minds are occupied by prison and conscription in the way pregnancy and sexual assault appear to occupy the young minds of many women. But that's a whole other thing. I mean, not really: it's all connected, of course; but none of that is nerve gas.

Ne-nah: Right. Nerve gas. You could see and smell it, mustard gas, right? And pretty quickly they developed gas masks. Didn’t they? To my mind the gas mask is as much a symbol of that war as the trench.

Sho-sho:  Yeah. Even with masks it was pretty lethal. But in Iraq it wasn’t just gas, either. Survivors of the camps, mostly women, talk of killing fields; men 15 to 60 being separated from the women and elderly and hauled off to remote locations. Mostly in western Iraq, I think. Out in the desert. To be exterminated. Like I was saying, we keep learning more about these events all the time. Eventually what had only been rumours was supported by the discovery of mass graves around 2003, by US and Allied troops, after the fall of Saddam.

Ne-nah:  But nothing came of that? No tracking down of the culprits? No charges? No International Criminal Court? Nothing?

Sho-sho:  Not as far as I know. I think there are good records. The campaign was a planned and well-coordinated effort to exterminate the Kurds, particularly those in this one main region. There’s reports of there being written government and military plans intentions to “de-Kurdify” the region surrounding Kirkuk.

Ne-nah:  Where’s, like, Human Rights Watch or Amnesty on this?

Sho-sho:  Actually, I think they were the ones, Human Rights Watch, who brought a case to the International Court of Justice seeking a genocide designation. 

Ne-nah:  Nothing materialized?

Sho-sho:  Correct. Support for the claim never materialized. Other nations were just not interested, if I recall.

Ne-nah:  Wild. And why was that? A unanimous hatred for the Kurdish people? The universal love for Saddam Hussein and the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party? What?

Sho-sho: Their concerted targeting of military aged males, maybe? The US was selling Iraq helicopters. So maybe they're partially complicit? Maybe they baulked? I don't know.

Ne-nah: Or maybe people just don't actually care about genocide?

Sho-sho: Except—

Ne-nah: Except what?

Sho-sho: Oh, nothing.