The first issue this year of Tema Kurdistan, the Norwegian Council for the Rights of the Kurds (RKR) is out, entitled ´Al Anfal – a forgotten genocide?´ Per Thorsdalen, right, has taken over from Liv Kjølseth as editor and explains that this issue is RKR´s contribution to a more wide-reaching debate on the Al Anfal campaigns and the legal dispute as to whether or not this qualifies as genocide. To read the whole issue, click here . (28-MAR-07)

This article is written and has been prepared for publication by HRHF / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

In his editorial, Thorsdalen elaborates that the ongoing process against the leadership of the former Baath regime of Iraq brings the Al Anfal story back into question, almost 20 years after the mass killings actually took place. General Ali Hassan al-Majid, aka ´Chemical Ali,´ for his alleged pivotal role in the chemical attacks on the Kurdish parts of Iraq, is currently in court in Baghdad. Meanwhile, the execution of Saddam Hussein may have jeopardised the opportunity to find the answers to certain parts of the Al Anfal story, and, thus, made the court proceedings against those still alive unnecesarily difficult.

Al Anfal was the result of a conscientious and carefully planned policy
It is RKR´as ambition, says Thorsdalen, that this issue of Tema Kurdistan will contribute to keeping up the pressure for the responsible for the Al Anfal mass killings to be brought to justice. Bearing in mind all even the current chaotic situation in Iraq, marked by secterian violence, terrorisme and a full-scale civil war, Al Anfal still represents something rather unique not only within the Iraqi context, but also internationally. Al Anfal was the result of the conscientious and carefully planned policy of the previous regime to carry out the first chemical attacks in history against with the aim to eliminate a group of one´s own citizens.

Setting the record straight: The historical overview – and context
Starting out from an overview of Saddam Hussein´s warfare aganst the Kurds, written by Morten Tjessem, Secretary General of Norwegian Organisation for Asylum Seekers (NOAS), Tema Kurdistan moves into a discussion, written by Hawdam Salih Jaf, adviser at NOAS, about what it is, if anything, that sets it apart and makes Al Anfal unique. The next article is by Abdollah Hejab, a political scientist and freelance journalist, who, since 1984, has worked for Kurdish media in Kurdistan an in exile. Hejab, who has also translated two of the Norwegian novelist Thorvald Steen´s novels into Kurdish, is a member of the editorial board of Tema Kurdistan. His article, setting the Al Anfal attacks into a wider historical context, is entitled ´The brutal campaign´.

Was this really a genocide?
Thorsdalen himself then contributes with an article called ´Halabja – the town where time does not move,´ addressing the many needs that have to be met in this hard-hit town for the wounds to heal and its people to be able to move on and put the tragic events of March 1988 behind them. Erik Thorstensen, education officer at the Centre for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Oslo, then further elaborates on the question of whether or not Al Anfal qualifies in legal terms as a genocide. Any conclusive answers to this question will have immediate consequences for how the court cases against those accused of being responsible will proceed.

The afterlife, the burden of survival
The two last articles deal with the long-term consequences on the people affected, both medically and mentally, of Al Anfal. Dlawer Ala´Aldeen, Professor of microbiology at the University Hospital of Nottingham, and himself of Kurdish descent, has dedicated much of his research and published extensively on this issue. Finally, the psychologist Karin Mlodoch addresses various aspects of the after-life, so to speak, of Al Anfal, the mental burden to be carried by the survivors, and particularly, the women. Thomas Frantsvold, a board member of RKR, has translated these two articles from English. The entire magazine is only available in Norwegian.