The Iraqi secret police files: A documentary record of the Anfal genocide

Archivaria

Volumn 52, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 69-99

  Montgomery, Bruce P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

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EID: 43149115193     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (95)

1. Quotation in published investigative field report, Human Rights Watch/Middle East and Physicians for Human Rights, Unquiet Graves: The Search for the Disappeared in Iraqi Kurdistan (New York, 1992). Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of President Saddam Hussein, served as Iraq's Defense Minister in the late 1980s and was responsible for Iraq's northern regions. The statement is derived from an audio tape found by one of the Kurdish parties after the seizure of the secret police documents. This and other investigative reports are based on field interviews, victim and survivor testimony, examination of forensic evidence, and analysis of other direct evidence.
2. See Kanan Makiya, "The Anfal: Uncovering an Iraqi Campaign to Exterminate the Kurds," Harpers 284, no. 1704 (May 1992), pp. 56-57. Al-Anfal refers to the eighth sura, the seventyfive verse revelation that came to the prophet Mohammad after the first battle of the new Muslim faith at Badr (A.D. 624). Here a group of 319 Muslims defeated nearly 1,000 Meccan nonbelievers. The first Muslims saw their victory as a vindication of their new faith and the result of the direct intervention of God. In this sura, the Arabic word al-Anfal means "spoils," as in the spoils of war.
3. The Human Rights Initiative (HRI) currently located at the Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder was launched in 1992 with the aim of documenting the international human rights movement and human rights affairs. Since that time, the project has evolved into the world's largest collection of human rights archives. The HRI collections include the archives of the American arm of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Physicians for Human Rights, Guatemala Commission for Human Rights, Humanitas International Committee for Human Rights, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and affiliated organizations, Tutela Legal, Socorro Juridico Christiano, the Nongovernmental Commission of El Salvador, the Iraqi Secret Police Files, and many other collections. These archives and collections in other institutions represent an emerging field of international documentation.
4. For a more detailed description and analysis of these archives, see Bruce P. Montgomery, "Human Rights: A Survey of Archival Sources in the United States and Canada," Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 2 (May 2001), pp. 431-63.
5. See Bernard Butcher, "Cracking the Kremlin Files," Hoover Digest 4 (1999), p. 6.
6. In 1983, the President of Argentina, Raul Alfonsin, established a truth commission to investigate "disappearances" during seven and a half years of military rule. Alfonsin also ordered that prosecutions take place for the crimes found by the commission. The commission would thus establish the truth and then assure that justice was done. Although several military leaders, including two former presidents of Argentina, were convicted and sentenced, attempts to carry out justice were soon abandoned, as lower military officials instigated several military rebellions, leading Alfonsin to call off the trials. Truth commissions were also established in El Salvador and Chile, both of which ruled out prosecutions. In Uruguay, a popular referendum upheld a general amnesty for military officers who committed human rights abuses out of fear of destabilizing the country.
7. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission granted amnesty to those on all sides of the conflict who agreed to testify and fully acknowledge their crimes. Although prosecution appeared unlikely in the 1980s, there has been considerable momentum for human rights trials and tribunals in recent years, including the special international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslav Federation, the movement for the institution of the International Criminal Court, and the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London in October 1998 at the request of a Spanish magistrate.
8. See Aryeh Neier, "The Quest for Justice," The New York Review of Books 48, no. 4 (8 March 2001), p. 31.
9. See William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York, 1959), p. ix.
10. See the Web site of the Cambodian Genocide Programme, Yale University,
11. See also Cambodian Genocide Programme, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, "The Cambodian Genocide Programme, 1994-1997. A Report to the United States Department of State Bureau of East Asia and the Pacific" (February 1998) (accessed 29 June 2001).
12. The database constructed by the Cambodian Genocide Program has since been transferred to the Manuscripts Department, Yale University Libraries. For an archival perspective on the project, see Dawne Adam, "The Tuol Sleng Archives and the Cambodian Genocide," Archivaria 45 (Spring 1998), pp. 4-26.
13. Also see Bruce P. Montgomery, "Human Rights: A Survey of Archival Sources in the United States and Canada," op. cit.
14. See the following published investigative field reports: HRW/Middle East and Physicians for Human Rights, Unquiet Graves: The Search for the Disappeared in Iraqi Kurdistan (1992), p. 5.
15. HRW/Middle East, Whatever Happened to the Iraqi Kurds? (11 March 1991), p. 4.
16. These reports may be found in the Human Rights Watch archives, University of Colorado at Boulder. Also see Human Rights Watch, Iraq's Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (New Haven and London, 1995), p. xvi.
17. Ismet Sheriff Vanly, People Without a Country (London, 1980).
18. Published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East and Physicians for Human Rights, Unquiet Graves, p. 5; and the Iraq Documentation Project, Harvard University, (accessed 7 March 2001).
19. Also see Ismet Sheriff Vanly, People Without a Country.
20. HRW/Middle East, Whatever Happened to the Iraqi Kurds? p. 4.
21. Published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East and Physicians for Human Rights, Unquiet Graves, p. 6.
22. Ibid., p. 6.
23. The Kurdish rebels had been planning the uprising against the Iraqi regime for months. Dating as far back as July 1990, the PUK high command had directed its fighters to infiltrate Iraqi rank-and-file forces in major Kurdish cities and towns. The infiltration of Iraqi military ranks relied on the critical strategy of winning over Kurdish commanders of the Iraqi militia. This information is contained in transcripts of interviews with Jalal Talabani, PUK leader (28 December 1991), and Ako Mohammed Wahbie, PUK political officer in Sulaymaniyah (27 December 1991), in HRW/Middle East archives.
24. Telephone conversation with Joost Hilterman, Director of the Iraqi Documents Project at HRW/Middle East (April 1997). See also Amy Kaslow, "Documents Give Evidence of Atrocities Against Iraqi Kurds," The Christian Science Monitor (10 June 1992), pp. 1, 4.
25. Barton Gellman and Jonathan C. Randal, "U.S. to Airlift Archive of Atrocities Out of Iraq," The Washington Post (19 May 1992), p. A12.
26. HRW/ Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. xx.
27. See published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East, Human Rights in Iraq, p. 64.
28. HRW/Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. xvi.
29. Telephone conversation with Joost Hilterman, Director of the Iraqi Documents Project, HRW/ Middle East (April 1997).
30. HRW/Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. xvii.
31. Judith Miller, "Iraq Accused," The New York Times Magazine (3 January 1993), Section 6, p. 15.
32. Ibid., p. xvii.
33. Transcripts of interviews with survivors of these chemical attacks may be found in the archives of HRW/Middle East and the Physicians for Human Rights in the archives at the University of Colorado at Boulder. These collections are currently under restriction and may be accessed only with the written authorization of the human rights organizations.
34. Documentation including mission reports, the results of forensic investigations, transcripts of interviews, memoranda, and other materials may be found in the archives of HRW/Middle East and the Physicians for Human Rights.
35. HRW/Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. xx.
36. Letter to Bruce P. Montgomery from Senators Jessie Helms and Joseph Biden, June 1997.
37. See HRW/Middle East, published investigative report, Bureaucracy of Repression, (New York, 1994), pp. 22-23.
38. Ibid., pp. 20, 22.
39. HRW/ME took particular pains to respond to the Iraqi charge that the documents were forgeries: "Apart from the charge that they [documents] are fabrications, the key point in the Iraqi government's position on the documents is the admission that the events in the Kurdish areas in the Spring of 1991 led to 'damage and loss of most of the official documents' there. From this statement, two possible conclusions flow. If 'loss' is meant to denote that the government 'lost' the documents, or 'lost control' of them, this would suggest that these same documents might well have survived the events in the north and could conceivably - and indeed, would in all likelihood - be in the possession of someone other than the Government of Iraq.
40. If this is the correct interpretation, then the government's statement that most of the documents were lost would contradict its accusation that the documents the Kurds claim they captured are all forgeries. The government cannot have it both ways: either the documents represent a 4-million page forgery on a scale previously unseen in history, or they are indeed the documents which the government has admitted losing. In the later case, there can be little question as to the authenticity of these documents in their totality."
41. Telephone conversation with Hilterman, April 1997.
42. Telephone conversation with former PUK member Assad Gozeh, 29 November 2001.
43. Published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East, Bureaucracy of Repression, p. 3.
44. Ibid., p. 4.
45. Ibid., p. 4; telephone conversation with Hilterman, April 1987; and discussions with Director of Documents Division, Defense Intelligence Agency, May 1987.
46. According to HRW/Middle East, before Ali-Hassan al-Majid became secretary-general of the Northern Bureau, he was head of the Amn from 1985 to 1987. In the early 1980s, al-Majid served as the director of the office of the Regional Command of the Baath Party. In this capacity, he was the third ranking Baath official after Saddam Hussein, the secretary-general, and the Izzat al-Durri, his deputy. After completing his assignment in Kurdistan, al-Majid became Minister of the Interior and then Governor of Kuwait during the brief military occupation in 1990-91. He has served as Minister of Defense since 1991. HRW/ME, Bureaucracy of Repression, p. 5.
47. Published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East, Bureaucracy of Repression, pp. 5-6.
48. Ibid., p. 7.
49. See translated documents in HRW/Middle East archives. One such list, for example, dated 14 June 1989 and marked "Confidential," contains the names of forty-four prisoners, most of whom were executed in 1985. Another such list dated 29 August 1989 and signed by the Security Director of the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, names eighty-seven persons and the dates of their execution.
50. See translated Iraqi documents in HRW/Middle East archives, Directorate of Security of the Sulaymaniyah Governorate to the General Directorate of Security, 14 June 1989; and Director of Erbil Province Security Forces to Erbil Republican Hospital, 24 August 1989. In addition, an Egyptian journalist who visited the Iraqi collection at the University of Colorado in 1998 noted that salary tables contained in the files showed that Iraqi authorities paid Kurdish informants considerably more than lower level secret police officials.
51. See also published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East and PHR, Unquiet Graves, p. 12.
52. The documents are contained in about 3,500 boxes and are in Arabic, mostly handwritten, and in varying states of physical condition. In June 1998, these differing types of files were identified in a two-day survey conducted with a visiting Egyptian journalist and her husband, an Arab linguist. This brief survey merely corroborated the extensive work already performed by HRW/Middle East researchers and DIA documents specialists who worked together in an unusual arrangement in identifying and classifying the documents between 1991 and 1996. All together, about two per cent of the files have been translated.
53. Telephone conversation with Hilterman, April 1997; and discussions with Director of Documents Division, DIA, May 1997.
54. See published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East and PHR, Unquiet Graves, pp. 9-10.
55. This point is amply demonstrated in a handwritten memorandum from the Secretary of the Sersank Division Command to the Socialist Arab Baath Party, Dohuk Branch Command concerning the Iraqi regime's Arabization programme. The memorandum reads: "Concerning the letter of the Sersank Section Command, ref. 1/1679 of 14/6/1987, letter of the Dohuk Branch Command, ref. 1/4776 of 9/6/1987, in reference to the letter of al-Ta'mim Governorate/the Office of Citizen Affairs/ Personal and Confidential/ref. 1347 of 24/5/1987, based on the letter of al-Ta'mim Branch Command, personal and confidential, ref. 55/6312 of 3/6/1987, and according to the directives of the Comrade, member of the Regional Command of the Party, the director of the Northern Bureau Command, of 11 April 1987: It has been decided to include the Arab citizens residing in the governorates in the transfer of their registration records to al-Ta'mim Governorate, and to include them in the agreed benefits (land, the agreed money grants).
56. Please be informed. With our regards. Keep up the Struggle. Signed by Mut'eb Assaf al-Sa'doun, Secretary of Sersank Division Command." This document illustrates the careful referencing of all previous orders for the purpose of evading responsibility and reverting accountability back up the chain of command. The Arabization campaign involved offering inducements to Arabs to move to and settle Kurdish areas in northern Iraq after the original Kurdish inhabitants had been forcibly removed. See translated Iraqi memorandum in HRW/Middle East archives, Secretary of Sersank Division Command Mut'eb Assaf alSa'doun to the Socialist Arab Baath Party, Dohuk Branch Command, 16 June 1987.
57. See also published investigative field report, HRW/ME, Bureaucracy of Repression, p. 9.
58. Discussions with Hilterman, HRW/Middle East, April 1997; U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers, April 1997, and Director of Documents Division, Defense Intelligence Agency, May 1997.
59. DIA screening sheet to Iraqi database of the Iraqi state files, DIA fax to Bruce Montgomery, 13 May 1997.
60. The Iraqi files contain the Revolutionary Command Council Decree 160 of 29 March 1987 signed by President Saddam Hussein. The translated version of the document is in the HRW/ Middle East archives. The decree contains the order issued by President Saddam Hussein to the Revolutionary Command Council authorizing Ali-Hassan al-Majid to assume total control over all affairs in northern Iraq. In the document, Saddam Hussein describes the extent of al- Majid's authority over all security, military, and civil agencies and operations.
61. In part, the document reads: "The Revolutionary Command Council decided in its meeting on 29/3/1987 the following: First, The Comrade Ali-Hassan al-Majid, member of the Regional Command of the Baath party will represent the Regional Command of the Party and the Revolutionary Command Council in implementing their policies in all of the northern region, including the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan, in order to protect security and order and guarantee stability and the implementation of the Autonomy Law in the region. Second, the Comrade, member of the Regional Command, will have authority over all the state's civil, military, and security apparatuses to carry out this decree, in particular the authorities of the National Security Council and the Northern Affairs Committee.
62. Third: The following authorities in the northern regional fall under the Comrade's authority and must implement all the decisions and directives issued by him" Immediately after al-Mahjid's appointment, chemical attacks against Kurdish civilians began and the campaign of village destruction was accelerated. See translated Iraqi document in HRW/Middle East archives, President of the Revolutionary Command Council Saddam Hussein to the Revolutionary Command Council, 29 March 1987.
63. Also see published investigative field report, HRW/ME, Bureaucracy of Repression, p. 64.
64. HRW/Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 1. "Saboteurs" is the term typically used by the Iraqi regime to describe Kurdish rebels and their supporters.
65. DIA screening sheet to Iraqi database of the Iraqi state files, DIA fax to Bruce Montgomery, 13 May 1997.
66. For example, a highly important document contained in the Iraqi files and translated and analysed by HRW/Middle East provides an interesting illustration in the use of these euphemisms. In paragraph one of a memorandum from Ali-Hassan al-Majid, secretary general of the Northern Bureau, to the commands of his armed forces, al-Majid orders that "all villages in which the saboteurs - the agents of Iran [i.e., the PUK], the offspring of treason [i.e., the KDP], and similar traitors to Iraq - are still to be found shall be regarded as prohibited for security reasons." Further, the document reads: "The presence of human beings and animals is completely prohibited in these areas, and shall be regarded as operational zones in which the troops can open fire at will, without any restriction, unless otherwise instructed by our headquarters."
67. See translated document in HRW/Middle East archives, Ali-Hassan al-Majid, Secretary-General of the Northern Bureau to First, Second, and Fifth Corps Commands, 20 June 1987. Also, in 1998 an Egyptian journalist who visited the Iraqi collection at the University of Colorado at Boulder found several documents referring to "Iranian Zionists," which was later verified to mean members of the PUK.
68. Translated Iraqi document in HRW/Middle East archives, Brigadier-General Bareq of Special Forces Abdullah al-Haj Hunta to Directorate of Security of al-Ta-mim, 14 April 1988. The translated version of this document may also be found in the appendix of Bureaucracy of Repression, Document 23, p. 100.
69. Several other lists also exist in the Iraqi files. These lists have proved to be highly significant as HRW/Middle East was able to match the names contained in the lists with the names of people who, according to interviews conducted by HRW/ Middle East researchers during investigative field research in the Kurdish areas, never returned home after their arrest by the Iraqi armed forces. Matching the names of missing individuals contained in the lists with the names collected systematically by human rights researchers in Iraqi Kurdistan has proved to be important in corroborating those who disappeared at the hands of the government.
70. Judith Miller, "Iraq Accused," The New York Times Magazine (3 January 1993), Section 6, p. 13.
71. HRW/Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 1-2. There are many documents in the Iraqi files, some of which have been translated by HRW/Middle East, pertaining to village destruction and the forced expulsion of Kurdish inhabitants. These documents describe a scorched earth policy towards Kurdish inhabited areas. See translated Iraqi documents in HRW/Middle East archives.
72. Translated Iraqi document in HRW/Middle East archives, Ali Hassan al-Majid, secretary general of the Northern Bureau to First, Second, and Fifth Corps Commands, 20 June 1987. The original handwritten document contained in the Iraqi files and translated by HRW/Middle East East constitutes one of the smoking guns concerning the Iraqi regime's disposition towards the Kurds. The document sets the context of the Anfal campaign in 1988 by ordering the conversion of the "prohibited areas" into free fire zones, by ordering the arrest, interrogation and summary execution of all those aged fifteen to seventy who are found in the "prohibited areas," and by giving permission to the pro-government Kurdish militias to loot personal property. This pivotal document, however, is predated by another smoking gun decree by al-Majid on 3 June 1987 ordering that the "armed forces must kill any human being or animal present within these [prohibited] areas." This specific document represents the first explicit reference to the Iraqi regime's blanket shoot-on-sight policy.
73. See translated Iraqi document in HRW/Middle East archives, Ali-Hassan al-Majid, secretary general of the Northern Bureau Command to the Commands of First, Second, and Fifth Corps and Directorates of Security of the Autonomous Region, Security of Erbil Governorate, Foreign Intelligence, and Military Intelligence, 3 June 1987. Also see published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East, Bureaucracy of Repression, pp. 68-73.
74. In December 1991, shortly after the Gulf War, HRW/Middle East and the Physicians for Human Rights led a forensic team consisting of forensic anthropologists and archeologists to Iraqi Kurdistan to investigate graves believed to contain the remains of victims of extra-legal killings. This medico-legal investigation produced the first in a series of definitive forensic evidence of mass atrocities carried out by the Iraqi regime against the Kurdish minority population. The findings of this investigation were made public in a 1992 joint investigative report by HRW/Middle East and the Physicians for Human Rights, Unquiet Graves: The Search for the Disappeared in Iraqi Kurdistan.
75. Among the findings of this report, which is substantiated by transcripts of testimony and interviews in the files of HRW/Middle East and the Physicians for Human Rights, was that the poison gas attacks of March 1988 were by no means the first against the Kurds. According to interviews with Kurdish sources, chemical assaults on Kurdish villages took place in April, May, June, and September of 1997. These attacks, however, received little attention because few victims lived to bear witness. It was only when pictorial evidence became available, portraying the horror of the poison gas attacks on helpless civilians in the Kurdish town Halabja of 16 and 17 March 1988 that the world took notice. A copy of a video tape of this attack is included in the archives of Amnesty International USA at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
76. Also see A. Hay and G. Roberts, "The Use of Poison Gas Against the Iraqi Kurds: Analysis of Bomb Fragments, Soil and Wool Samples," Journal of the American Medical Association 262 (1990), pp. 1065-66.
77. Translated Iraqi document in HRW/Middle East archives, Captain Kifah Ali Hassan, Director of the Intelligence Centre of Kalar to the Subdirectorate of Military Intelligence, Eastern Sector, 27 June 1988.
78. Published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East, Bureaucracy of Repression, p. 11. Also See translated Iraqi letter from Military Intelligence Directorate in Suleimaniyeh, 27 March 1988, HRW/Middle East archives.
79. th [PUK] division."
80. According to HRW/ME, this document demonstrates that the military assault must have been a chemical attack since the victims lost their eyesight. After discovering this document, HRW/Middle East located and interviewed the named victim, Kamal Haji Khidr, in Kurdistan in March 1993. He confirmed that he and his family had been temporarily blinded by the chemical attack, and that a short while later, his eighteen-month-old nephew died of the effects of the chemical assault in a hospital in Europe. See translated Iraqi document, Director of General Security of Erbil Governorate to Security Directorate of Shaqlawa, 11 June 1987, in HRW/Middle East archives.
81. HRW/Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 5-6.
82. Also see Peter Galbraith and Christopher Van Hollen, Jr., Chemical Weapons Use in Kurdistan: Iraq's Final Offensive - A Staff Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate (Washington, D.C., October 1988).
83. Physicians for Human Rights, Winds of Death: Iraq's Use of Poison Gas Against its Kurdish Population (Somerville, February 1989).
84. HRW/Middle East, Human Rights in Iraq (New Haven, 1990), pp. 69-96.
85. Published investigative field report, HRW/Middle East, Bureaucracy of Repression, p. 12.
86. Kanan Makiya, "The Anfal: Uncovering an Iraqi Campaign to Exterminate the Kurds," Harpers Magazine 284, no. 1704 (May 1992), p. 58.
87. Ibid, p. 57. This document is also found in the Iraqi secret police files.
88. See Miller J, "Iraq Accused," p. 28.
89. Ibid., p. 31.
90. The precise details of how the Iraqi's disposed of their Kurdish captives are derived primarily from testimony of survivors of such incidents. Transcripts of such testimony are contained in the archives of HRW/Middle East and the Physicians for Human Rights at the archives of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
91. See published field report, HRW/Middle East and Physicians for Human Rights, Unquiet Graves, for the findings of Kurdish testimony and forensic investigations.
92. Translated Iraqi document in HRW/Middle East archives, Director of Security of the Erbil Governorate to the Directors of Security Branches, 22 November 1988.
93. HRW/Middle East, "Iraq's Crime of Genocide," p. 15.
94. Norman Kempster, "U.S. Accuses Iraq Regime of Atrocities Against Foes," Los Angeles Times (Thursday, 3 August 2000), Section A6.
95. E-mail communications from Indict to Bruce P. Montgomery, 28 and 30 November 2001 and 2 December 2001.