Title: FROM BLUEPRINT TO GENOCIDE? An Analysis of Iraq’s Sequenced Crimes of Genocide Committed against the Kurds of Iraq
Author: Mohammed Ahmad
Place of publication: UK
Publisher: University of Exeter
Release date: 2014

Through an analysis of the Iraq’s engineered genocides against Kurds during the years of Saddam Hussein’s regime, this work aimed to reveal the weakness of the current political and social situation in Iraq. The purpose was to offer an overview of the dangers posed by the current difficult coexistence between the Federal Government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. The birth of a new political system after the fall of Saddam's regime meant that every institutional power had to be built from scratch in a political and social reality new to most Iraqis. This process of renovation, already witnessed in Europe after World War II, in particular in Italy and Germany, implied the writing of a new constitution and of a new set of legal frames with the purpose to give the country a strong and reliable democratic base. In the case of Iraqi Kurds, who suffered discrimination, death and, ultimately genocide, it is important to revisit their recent past in order to feel they are an integral part of the new country born after the last Gulf War in 2003. Despite the international interest in the Kurdish case, Kurdish people did not have the opportunity to see the ones responsible of the crimes committed against them brought to international justice, as happened in the past in the case of Rwanda and Bosnia. The execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006 meant that the charges against him and his commanders related to the Kurdish case were not discussed in court preventing Kurdish people not only from obtaining the justice they were entitled to but, most importantly, from gaining access to the truth about the massacres and human rights abuses carried out by Saddam's regime between 1963 and 2003. Through an analysis of the Iraq’s engineered genocides against Kurds during the years of Saddam Hussein’s regime, this work aimed to reveal the weakness of the current political and social situation in Iraq. The purpose was to offer an overview of the dangers posed by the current difficult coexistence between the Federal Government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. The birth of a new political system after the fall of Saddam's regime meant that every institutional power had to be built from scratch in a political and social reality new to most Iraqis. This process of renovation, already witnessed in Europe after World War II, in particular in Italy and Germany, implied the writing of a new constitution and of a new set of legal frames with the purpose to give the country a strong and reliable democratic base. In the case of Iraqi Kurds, who suffered discrimination, death and, ultimately genocide, it is important to revisit their recent past in order to feel they are an integral part of the new country born after the last Gulf War in 2003. Despite the international interest in the Kurdish case, Kurdish people did not have the opportunity to see the ones responsible of the crimes committed against them brought to international justice, as happened in the past in the case of Rwanda and Bosnia. The execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006 meant that the charges against him and his commanders related to the Kurdish case were not discussed in court preventing Kurdish people not only from obtaining the justice they were entitled to but, most importantly, from gaining access to the truth about the massacres and human rights abuses carried out by Saddam's regime between 1963 and 2003.[1]