Kurdistan “Land of the Kurds” also formerly spelled Curdistan; ancient name: Corduene is a roughly defined geo-cultural region wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population, and Kurdish culture, language, and national identity have historically been based.
Contemporary use of Kurdistan refers to parts of eastern Turkey (Turkish Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan), northwestern Iran (Iranian Kurdistan) and northern Syria inhabited mainly by Kurds. Kurdistan roughly encompasses the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountain ranges,and covers small portions of Armenia.
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Four young Kurds under 18 were executed at the hands of the Baath Party in Saddam Hussein’s rule in 1986
Four young Kurds under 18 were executed at the hands of the Baath Party in Saddam Hussein’s rule in 1986 in Arbil, were taken from their families the cost of bullets, and destruction of their homes, including the furniture, in front of the eyes of the people there party officials.
Barzani Anfal 1983
Kurdish Exodess (Koraw-کۆڕەو) in 1991
The mass exodess of kurdish refugees (nearly 3 millions) to the borders of Turkey and Iran after the failed uprising in 1991 against the dictatorship rule of Iraq, followed by the rutheless forces of the regime. Never forget the genocide and the brutality of 4 countries against Kurds. Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria,
Kurdish Exodess in 1991
The mass exodess of kurdish refugees (nearly 3 millions) to the borders of Turkey and Iran after the failed uprising in 1991 against the dictatorship rule of Iraq, followed by the rutheless forces of the regim
The use of the word Anfal
al-Anfal from the Quran
The word “Anfal” is taken from the eighth chapter (Sura) of the Quran; “al-Anfal” which contains 75 verses (Aia). Some of the 75 verses are about war and its spoils.
The use of the word Anfal
The Sura calls upon the prophet Muhammad and his followers to fight against the non-believers, until the final triumph is reached. The final victory was to either eliminate the enemy or forcing them to accept the Muslim faith and rituals, and thereby making them, give up their own faith and religious rituals.
Anfal is known as the liberation battle against the non-believers and justifies the Islamization of the non-Muslims and was first used in the year of 624, during the battle against the non-Muslim Arabs.
Saddam’s use of the Quran
Even though the name of the campaign against the Kurds is taken from the Quran, Muslims say that Saddam’s version of this chapter differentiate from the Qurans version.
The Iraqi police adopted the name Anfal in their genocidal campaign against the Kurds in the Northern Iraq, using the verse to justify their battle from an Islamic view, claiming it to be a battle against the non-believers even though a large number of the Kurds are Muslims.
This was a way to gain the support of the Iraqis, and by claiming to fight a so called “Muslim war” he would also gain the support of other Muslim countries in the Middle East.
The old Anfal from the seventh century demanded victory over non-believers and encouraged the destruction of their faiths and religious culture. It also encouraged the looting and possession of the enemy’s articles, items and other material goods.
The Baath regime conducted a similar attack against the Kurds in the areas referred to as the “forbidden areas”. They looted the villages for any items and other material goods. They killed or prowled house animals, destroyed and burned the villages to the ground.
The habitants of these villages were sent to complexes, jails or straight to death. This death could be in terms of starvations or mass graves.
Saddam and his military had prior to the “al-Anfal campaign” against the Kurds used Islamic names for their wars. This had been seen previously, in a battle against Iran “The battle of saad bn al-Waqass” and again during the eight year war against Iran from 1980 – 1988, “al-Qadissiat al-saddam”.
Qadiddia is the name of a battle against the non Muslims during the early islamization in the seventh century.
By http://www.kurd-anfal.com
the Anfal survivor, Taimour
Halabja’s lost son is still torn between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran
Halabja, Kurdistan region ‘Iraq’, — Ali’s life is like a shattered mirror. After twenty years of separation he finally found the warm embrace of his real mother. However, when he was 17 he lost his adoptive mother, an Iranian widow. Probably Ali is the only person who can say, “The compassion of each mother feels different.”
Halabja’s lost son Ali
Like any other child, Ali’s mind was always filled with imaginary tales and he never thought about his family’s tragic end.
“Now when I think about it, I understand that my stories are more painful than the ones of other children,” he said. “Whenever something happened to me, I would say why fate has chosen me for this.”
Those events have now become memories of the past for Ali. He is now at home in Halabja.
Zimnako Mohammed [Ali Asmin pour] his mother in Halabja, Kurdistan region of Iraq. Photo: Ayub Nuri
“On March 16th, you were on my lap. I told your dad that we would go to the basement until the shelling is over. Your father went up to the rooftop and your brother Sarteep followed him. I heard Sarteep crying as he fell. I rushed to him with a soaked piece of cloth, but there I collapsed too. When I opened my eyes I found myself in an Iranian hospital and you were no longer with me.”
After 21 years of separation, in a tearful ceremony near the Halabja memorial monument, this was how Ali’s real mother told the story to Ali in the autumn of 2009.
“Thank the almighty, after the death of my mother Kubra, he made me find my real mother.” said Ali.
Zimnako is his real name, but after the gas attack on Halabja in the spring of 1988 by the Iraqi army and his separation from his mother, the Iranian family who adopted him as a baby named him Ali.
It has been two years since Ali returned. Now he is studying at the American University in Sulaimaniyah and engaged to one of his relatives. He loves Sulaimani city in Iraqi Kurdistan where the city officials have awarded him with a Kurdish identity card and birth certificate.
Ali is now trying to get a driver’s license, and he plans to get married in the near future and move to Sulaimaniyah with his family.
“My story sounds like the one of Joseph,” said Ali.
During Ali’s return ceremony at the Halabja memorial, his Iranian uncle, Asfandiyar Hamid, looked at him with his tearful eyes and said, “His survival was like a miracle, when my sister Kubra found him in Halabja,www.ekurd.nethe was covered with flies. He had sucked on his fingers for two days from hunger. My sister Kubra loved him more than her two real sons until the day she passed away.”
“When I was playing with kids, I could hear my mom telling others that she had found me in Halabja, but she was just telling our neighbors and did not let me know.” said Ali.
Since his return a sense of sadness has been haunting Ali.
“When my mother Kubra had an accident, she was taken to hospital and her legs were amputated. I did not visit her that night, and she passed away the next day. I still ask myself why I did not visit her that night, I still feel the sorrow,” said Ali. “When she died my whole life stopped, there was nothing left for me.”
The President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, and the president of the Kurdistan region Massoud Barzani, both met with Ali. Ali said the main focus of his meeting with the leaders was the fate of the missing children of Halabja.
“I asked them to do all they could to find the other missing children. If they see their real mothers, they will recognize them at once, even if they have not met them before.” said Ali.
Although Ali was linked to his real mother through blood tests, he said with confidence, “When I hugged my real mother, it felt as if I had known her for 100 years. I have been dreaming about her and wanted to know what she and my dad looked like.”
Ali has suffered so much being away from his real family that he is now ready to take it upon himself to go back to Iran and search for the other missing children whose families still wait for their return.
Fatima Hamidpour, aged 58, is Ali’s Iranian aunt. She made Ali promise to always come back and visit them before bursting into tears.
Hamidpour has witnessed Ali growing up in front of her eyes. She said that her sister Kubra did not want Ali to know the truth so that he isn’t hurt.
“Once I went to a psychiatrist and told him about Ali’s story, the specialist said that we should have told him the truth when he was six years old, because after that age he can feel it by himself.” said Hamidpour.
“It was because of the psychiatrist’s advice that we decided to tell Ali about the truth,” she added.
She also said that Ali would not have been in Halabja now if not for what the psychiatrist had said.
Ali is now preoccupied with the stories of Halabja and does not want them to be forgotten. He is thinking about a project for collecting the stories of the survivors in their own words.
“In every house in Halabja there is a tragic story. Next year I want to arrange a contest in Halabja schools for nonfiction stories. I plan to tell each student to go and ask their own mothers about where they were and what happened to them on March 16, 1988. I will gather these stories and I am sure a unique collection will be assembled.” said Ali.
Ali once told his tragic story in a class at the American University in Sulaimaniyah.
“When I turned back, I saw tears running down the eyes of some American teachers, then I understood what Saddam has done.” he said.
Ali saw Saddam Hussein’s execution while he was still in Iran.
“When I was in Iran, I decided to forgive Saddam and said that perhaps God will show him the right path, but he lived as a tyrant until his last moment. If not for Saddam, what would make an American feel pity for Halabja.” said Ali.
When Ali came back to his real family, he could only speak with his mother through a translator. He hasn’t mastered Kurdish yet.
Ali’s stepbrother from his biological mother said, “We thank God for brining this sweet brother back to us. He is a very good person.”
Ali was the only surviving male in his family. His four brothers, one sister and his father all perished in the chemical attack by the Iraqi army on Halabja in March of 1988 that killed 5000 people.
His mother remarried later on and now she lives with Ali in the same house.
Ali said, “When another missing child comes back to Halabja I would love to be present there and welcome him back because I understand their pain.”
Ali then spoke sadly of the day he was separated from his family.
“I was three months old when I lost my family. I was 17 when my adoptive mother died and I lost my family once more. I lived in her empty house for four years in loneliness. I always felt lonely and I kept asking myself, why should my story end like this?”
Ali misses his relatives in Iran and he would like to visit them. But his studies do not give him time.
“I always talk to them on phone and I have had the chance to visit them twice so far. But when my school is over, I will definitely visit them more because half of my heart is still there.” he said.
Halabja gas attack survivor reunited with mother
A man who as a baby survived a chemical attack on the Iraqi city of Halabja in 1988 has been reunited with his mother.
Ali Pour was taken to Iran by Iranian soldiers who stormed the Kurdish city days after the gas attack by Saddam Hussein’s forces.
Ali Pour made his way back to Halabja after growing up in Iran
Mr Pour, now 21, had to wait for the results of a DNA test before it could be determined whose son he was.
His mother, whose husband and six other children had all died in the attack, fainted when she heard.
Five thousand people were killed in the Halabja attack, considered one of the worst atrocities of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Five other families were waiting to hear from a judge whether Mr Pour was their missing son, but Fatima Mohammed Salih, 58, was found to be his real mother.
“I’m in a dream,” Mr Pour said as he comforted her, according to Associated Press news agency.
Mr Pour had been adopted by an Iranian woman and named Ali.
I wonder if it is a dream or a gift from God
Fatima Mohammed Salih
He grew up in eastern Iran speaking Persian, although he always knew he was from Halabja.
Co-operation between the Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish regional governments led to this week’s reunification – the first time a long-lost son of Halabja is known to have been reunited with his family.
Mr Pour, know as Zimnaku to his birth mother, has said he plans to stay in the region to study and learn the local language.
He is proud of his Kurdish identity, and is going to move in with his mother, he said.
“I wonder if it is a dream or a gift from God,” his mother said.
Forty-one people – children at the time of the attack, are still registered as missing, the assistant chief of the Directorate of the Martyrs of Halabja said, according to AP.
As a four-month-old baby, Ali Pour managed to survive three days after the gas attack while his family died around him.
His mother remembers the gas burning her children, collapsing herself and then waking in a Tehran hospital.
An Iranian woman offered to adopt him.
When Mr Pour’s adoptive mother died in a car accident four months ago, he said: “I felt lonely and I felt a strange feeling calling me to return to the arms of my relatives.
“I decided to go back.”
Kurdish Genocide 