Taymour Abdullah, 15, shows his wounds to prove his story of escape from a mass killing. Arbil, Northern Iraq, December 1991
Taymour Abdullah, 15, the only survivor of a mass execution, shows his wound. Arbil, Northern Iraq, December 1991
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the White House exhibited a relentless determination to find evidence linking Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. In the prelude to war, the Anfal campaign and the gassing of the Kurds were repeatedly cited as additional evidence of the evil nature of Saddam’s regime. The Kurds were America’s most significant allies inside Iraq, and their participation in the war greatly strengthened their bargaining position, giving them for the first time in history a decisive voice in charting the future of Iraq. The American offensive destroyed the regime, and much of Iraqi society along with it; Saddam went into hiding, was hunted down, captured, and publicly humiliated. His American captors then handed him to a specially established Iraqi court that tried him and his closest collaborators on various charges, including genocide of the Kurds.
-S.M. from "Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History"
Cover of TIME Magazine, December 22, 2003
Saddam was sentenced to death for a massacre of Shiites and executed before the Kurdish trial had run its course; but the trial continued with the official who planned and organized the Anfal, Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, as the chief defendant. Testimonies from Taymour Abdullah, along with scores of other Kurdish victims and witnesses of the Anfal campaign were gathered as evidence. Al-Majid was convicted in June 2007 and sentenced to hang.
-S.M. from "Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History"
A destroyed portrait of Saddam Hussein at the security headquarters in Sulaymaniya. Northern Iraq, 1991