ABSTRACT
In 1988, the Kurdish city of Halabja endured a chemical attack that killed thousands of inhabitants. The attack was part of Saddam Hussein’s Anfal Operation, a brutal military operation against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. The primary actors responsible for the Anfal Operation were tried and executed by the Iraqi High Tribunal in what came to be known as the Anfal Trials, but Saddam Hussein was never held accountable for what took place in Halabja. Moreover, the post-2003 Iraqi State has not recognized that what Saddam sought to do in Halabja was genocide. The primary purpose of this chapter is to place the Anfal Operation in the context of post-conflict justice and underlie how justice was not served, particularly in the case of Halabja. Secondarily, this chapter highlights the limits of retributive justice (which is what the Anfal Trials were) and argues that the failure to provide justice for Iraq’s Kurdish population resulted in the continued alienation of the Kurdish Iraqi population. It also emphasizes the politics behind genocide, in that political consideration has largely stymied any recognition of Halabja as a site where genocide was attempted. The chapter promotes the need for a reconciliatory justice approach that involves community-based reparation, which is more attuned to transformative justice, and bettered suited to address Kurdish dissatisfaction with the Iraqi State. Such an approach will ensure that such crimes are unlikely to happen again and the victims of Halabja shall not be forgotten.
