ANFAL

"Was it possible to leave those goats (Kurds) in peace? Looking after them? Serving them? No! Never! The best way was to bury them by bulldozers" Ali Hussan Al-Majeed, Commander in Saddam Hussein's army

The Anfal attacks on the Kurds were a series of eight campaigns (3 major, 5 minor) to destroy the heartland of Kurdish cultural during the 1980s. Systematic and brutal, the campaigns destroyed 4500 villages and left over 180,000 dead. Mass graves from the Anfal campaigns are still being discovered and the bodies of 10,000 children under five have never been found.

This monument to the victims is Slemani is part of the Amra Sakura museum and is especially moving. One hall is lists the names of the known dead and the other displays photos of just a small proportion of those who died.  Part of this memorial is a long corridor. One the ceiling are lights, each light representing a destroyed village. The walls are densely lined with a mosaic of broken pieces of mirror glass, at total of 182,000 pieces, one for each of those who died. 

Many of the villages have never been rebuilt.