Genocide.

For most of us, genocide is a word seldom spoken. But for the Kurdish people of northern Iraq, genocide was a brutal reality under the regime of Saddam Hussein. After the first Gulf War, relief operations began and the horrible truth of Saddam's atrocities against the Kurds became clear to the entire world.

Every Kurd has a story to tell of personal tragedy at the hands of Saddam Hussein. The stories are of family members who were imprisoned, tortured, or taken away to an unknown fate. Mass graves littered the countryside in the north. Those who survived were forcibly resettled in collective towns where they were more easily monitored and controlled. An entire people and way of life were threatened with extermination. Between 1968 and 1988, approximately 400,000 Kurds were murdered, including thousands who were gassed to death with chemical weapons as they slept in their beds. A systematic campaign of terror was used against the Kurds to subdue, control, and ultimately kill them. The years of oppression culminated in 1988 in a brutal plan known as the "Anfal," an Arabic word meaning "permission to plunder." Four thousand Kurdish villages were systematically destroyed and reduced to nothing but rubble.

In 1991 following the first Gulf War, Saddam retaliated against the Kurds for uprising to overthrow the government. Saddam forced almost the entire population of northern Iraq, a million and a half people, to flee to the mountainous border areas of Turkey in the north and Iran in the east. In response, the U.S. and allied coalition forces imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq and forced Saddam to withdraw from the area. Refugees were encouraged to return and to start rebuilding thousands of villages that Saddam had destroyed. But in 1996, Saddam's troops again advanced north to the city of Erbil, forcing all international organizations to withdraw their workers from the country. In 2003, a US-led coalition of forces again attacked Iraq, finally forcing Saddam from power and into hiding and eventual capture, and opening the way for humanitarian agencies to return to the country.