Majid, Ali Hassan

(1940-2010)

   A cousin of Saddam Hussein, General Ali Hassan Majid was given unprecedented powers to act ruthlessly against the Kurds when he was appointed secretary-general or governor of the Baathist Northern Bureau in northern Iraq on 3 March 1987. His appointment came during some of the darkest days of the Iran-Iraq War and at a time when the Iraqi Kurds were seen as a fifth column aiding the Iranian advance.

   Majid became known by the Kurds as Chemical Ali for his willingness to use chemical warfare against them beginning in 1987 in the Balisan valley and continuing into 1988 with the notorious chemical attacks on Halabja and during the genocidal Anfal campaign. Majid used a scorched earth policy to destroy Kurdish villages, evacuate the Kurds from the frontier areas, and deport large numbers of them to their deaths. In a seized document, Majid bragged in crude Arabic slang how he butchered and bulldozed thousands of captured Kurds and cared nothing for international opinion.

   After the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, Majid was sentenced to death on three separate occasions for his role in killing tens of thousands of Kurds as well as for a crackdown on Shiites in southern Iraq. He was finally executed on 25 January 2010.