PUK Lawmaker Calls for Anfal and Halabja Atrocities to Be Included in School Textbook

PUKMEDIA

PUK Lawmaker Brako Sherko Fatih Shwani.

A member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) parliamentary bloc has submitted a formal request to the Presidency of Iraq’s parliament, calling for a review of a secondary-school textbook that omits the Anfal campaign and chemical weapons attacks against the Kurdish people.

Lawmaker Brako Sherko Fatih Sawani told PUKMEDIA that the request was submitted during Sunday’s parliamentary session. It calls for a review of "Crimes of the Defunct Ba’ath Party", a textbook published in 2025 for fourth-year secondary-school students, to ensure that crimes committed by the former Iraqi regime against the Kurdish people are properly documented.

Shwani stressed the need to include the Anfal operations, which claimed thousands of lives and resulted in the destruction of thousands of villages, as well as the chemical weapons attack on Halabja.

He said the request also urges the parliament to direct the Ministry of Education to revise the textbook and document these atrocities fairly and accurately.

According to Shwani, the proposed revision would help deliver justice for victims, strengthen students’ historical awareness, and promote coexistence and justice among Iraq’s diverse communities.

The former Iraqi Ba’ath regime launched the Anfal campaign in early 1988, targeting Kurdish civilians. The campaign continued until September that year and is widely recognised as one of the gravest atrocities committed against the Kurdish population under Saddam Hussein’s rule.

On 16 March 1988, the regime carried out a chemical weapons attack on Halabja, killing more than 5,000 people and injuring thousands more.

In total, the Anfal campaign claimed the lives of more than 182,000 Kurdish civilians, including women, children and older people. Thousands of Kurdish villages were destroyed. Government forces rounded up residents from villages across the Kurdistan Region, transported them to southern Iraq and killed many of them, burying victims in mass graves.



PUKMEDIA