Seminar: Ge

Speaker: Dr Choman Hardi

Chair:  Dr Umut Erel

Date and time : 21rst January 2010,@7:00 pm

Venue: B111, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

(SOAS) Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG

Organised by Kurdish Society at SOAS (KSSOAS) and Kurdish Studies and Students Organisation (KSSO)

Seminar Abstract

Al-Anfal (The Spoils) was a series of military attacks launched by the Iraqi state against the Kurdish rural inhabitants in 1988. The offensive took place in 8 stages and it stretched over seven months (Feb- Sep 1988). During the campaign 281 locations were attacked with poison gas, more than 2600 villages were razed to the ground, and 100,000 civilians were disappeared.

This research was conceptualised in the early 2000s when I watched numerous documentaries about Anfal on the Kurdish satellite channels. I found that despite the fact many women were interviewed during these documentaries a large part of their experiences during and after Anfal remained unspoken about. Here I draw on interviews conducted during my research (2005-2008) and some of my work for the Kurdish Museum project (2008- 2009), collecting testimonies as part of a team involving cameraman, director and photographer. My aim was to get a general overview of the women’s experiences who suffered during the different stages of Anfal and in the aftermath.

The sample included 59 women and 22 men for my research and I have also drawn on 16 interviews (13 women and 3 men) conducted for the Museum Project. This means a total of 70 women and 24 men have informed this research. Various others have contributed to this research through conversations and meetings that took place during fieldwork.

In my research I found that there were differences in how women and men remembered the genocide campaign and also they differed in what they remembered. Here I will discuss three factors that influenced Kurdish women’s remembrances of the Anfal campaign, namely the gender expectations of how men and women should feel and behave in Kurdish society; the dominant Anfal narrative; and the social stigma around certain experiences. I will also speak about the consequences of the way women are represented in the official Anfal narrative for the women themselves and the community at large.