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This article focuses on Kurdish women in Iraq who survived the Iraqi army’s Anfal operations against the Kurdish areas in 1988. It investigates Iraqi Kurdish women’s psychosocial situation and strategies for coping with violence and loss in the aftermath of the Anfal operations. These strategies are largely shaped by social and economic factors and gender relations and in the traditional patriarchal context of rural Kurdish society. The article further explores the transformation of the women’s situation and narratives through the recent political changes in Iraq and shows the conflict between their memories, narratives, and agency, on one hand, and the hegemonic discourse on victimhood in Kurdistan-Iraq today, on the other, as well as the interweaving of their individual coping strategies and the institutional processes for dealing with the past in Kurdistan and Iraq. Thus the paper contributes to socially and politically contextualized and gender-sensitive trauma research, as well as to the larger political and sociological debate on reconciliation processes after war and conflict.

On March 16, 1988 the Iraqi Army of Saddam Hussein's Baath regime attacked the Kurdish town of Halabja with poison gas, killing an estimated 5,000 people within a few minutes. In today's autonomous region of Kurdistan-Iraq, the "martyrs' town of Halabja" has become a symbol for the suffering of Iraqi Kurdish people under the Baath regime and a key element of Kurdish national identity. At the same time, the people of Halabja continue to suffer from the long-term psychological, health, and environmental consequences of the poison gas attack. The present account is based on the author's longstanding research and practical work among survivors of violence in Kurdistan-Iraq. It outlines the background and impact of the chemical attack on Halabja and provides an insight into the survivors' situation-from the immediate aftermath of the attack to this day; it details the constant struggle of the victims with the long-term psychological effects of the attack as well as their struggle for justice and recognition of their experience.

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