May 1992 Arbil or Erbil, northern Iraq. Clothing unearthed in the search for identification of those buried anonymously is now left to mark a grave.

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Graves of unknown Kurds whose bodies were exhumed from a mass grave. Thought to be victims of the Anfal campaign of mass displacement and disappearance conducted by the Iraqi Government in the waning days of the Iran-Iraq war in the late 1980s. Using a scorched-earth policy that included chemical bombing, thousands of villages were depopulated and razed to the ground. Anfal's goal was to prevent Kurdish opposition parties from relying on the Kurdish villages. Eyewitness accounts, documents seized from Iraqi security during the Gulf War uprising and international organisations estimate that 182,000 people, mostly men, were forced from the Kurdish areas and buried alive in mass graves in the southern deserts.

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Size: 2755px × 1865px
Location: Arbil Erbil northern Iraq Kurdistan
Photo credit: © Richard Wayman / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: anfal, baath, campaign, civilians, dead, dna, erbil, ethnic, forensic, genocidal, genocide, grave, graves, hussein, id, identification, identity, independence, iraq, iraqi, kurd, kurdish, kurdistan, kurds, political, politics, race, racial, saddam, war