LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Iraq: Northern Iraq
built 277 days ago
With regard to Iraq's actions against its Kurdish minority, the report noted "the grave human rights violations when the Iraqi armed forces moved to crush a longstanding Kurdish rebellion.... The campaign was marked by the use of chemical weapons against guerrillas and civilians alike." The report ... pointed out that in l988 the Iraqi government intensified its destruction of Kurdish and Assyrian villages in northern Iraq and its relocation of their inhabitants.
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Iraq is bordered by Kuwait, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The country slopes from mountains over 3,000 meters (10,000 ft.) above sea level along the border with Iran and Turkey to the remnants of sea-level marshes in the southeast. Much of the land is desert or wasteland. The mountains in the northeast are an extension of the alpine system that runs eastward from the Balkans into southern Turkey, northern Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, terminating in the Himalayas.
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Iraq is situated at the northern tip of the Persian Gulf. Its coastline along the gulf is only 30 km (19 mi) long. Thus, the country is nearly landlocked. Its only port on the gulf, Umm Qaşr, is small and located on shallow water, and only small craft can dock there.
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On December 23rd, Turkey bombed northern Iraq for the second time in a week, in an attack on suspected bases of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla group. The first cross-border attack, the largest since 2003, took place in the early hours of Sunday December 16th. Up to 50 fighter jets bombed targets up to 100 kilometres inside Iraq. The army followed up the air strikes with a series of artillery barrages on border villages.
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Iran sued for peace following the failure of a Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq in the winter of 1988 which Saddam ruthlessly suppressed in the Anfal campaign, turning the chemical weapons he had long used against Iran on his own citizens. Throughout the period of absolute rule a few hundred people every year were executed, frequently by torture, but this was the crescendo of repression as Saddam seemed to be endeavoring to wipe out the Kurds of Iraq. The memory of this repression gave rise to a phrase frequently repeated in the United States following the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when that country was overrun in 2003: "Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction."
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Rivalry between Kurdistan Democratic Party & Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, coalition partners for 5 years, breaks out into open conflict in Northern Iraq. INC, brokers truce, but fighting continues until Sept, and intermittently thereafter despite peace plan of November 94. 3000 killed by Jun96, with PUK controlling half the territory but 2/3rds of the population.
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Northern Iraq