Talk:Anfal campaign

Kurdish Romanization

The Kurdish Romanization Kampanyayê Enfalê does not match the Kurdish-language شاڵاوی ئەنفال (Shallawi Enfal). Please consider making this modification. Darer101 (talk) 15:23, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Google Translate romanizes that Kurdish as "şallawî ienfal"; I can't find an English Wikipedia guideline for romanization of Kurdish, so I put in what Google spewed. Kampanyayê Enfalê seems to mean the same thing, so perhaps that is a synonym and should also be mentioned? -- Beland (talk) 09:23, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

Rename to Anfal Genocide

The fact this is labelled as a "counterinsurgency operation" whitewashes the entire thing, and should really be fixed. CertifiedKurd (talk) 09:44, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

For this request to succeed you need to show that the preponderance of reliable sources use the term "genocide" to refer to this event. Genocide is a very charged word, and must be well sourced if to be part of the title. 331dot (talk) 09:46, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

The article itself lists genocide as the primary "attack type" of the Anfal Genocide - it only makes sense to rename it to match that. A primary goal of the entire camapaign was to ethnically cleanse the Kerkuk region. Human Rights Watch has described it as a genocide, horrific attacks like the Halabja Massacre took place as a part of it, and Iraq's cabinet showed genocidal intent as well.

"You must leave right now. Because I cannot tell you the same day that I am going to attack with chemical weapons. I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything?"

"[I promise] not to leave alive anyone who speaks the Kurdish language."

-Ali Hassan al-Majid, Iraqi Defence Minister during the Ba'athist regime. CertifiedKurd (talk) 12:14, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

You've raised a valid point. The standard for a Wikipedia title is to use the name that a preponderance of reliable, independent sources use. In the case of the Anfal events, the term "genocide" has moved from a description to the common name for the event in a wide range of high-quality legal, academic, and human rights sources.

So no, this is not something to be debated.

This article should indeed use the term genocide, partly because the target was the entirety of the Kurdish population and not just the insurgents.

But we can also provide evidence for the validity of the term: "Genocide":

• 1. Legal Recognition: The Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that tried the perpetrators, officially ruled that the Anfal campaign constituted an act of genocide. This legal verdict is a definitive classification of the event.
• 2. Academic Consensus: As another user noted, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the foremost academic body on this subject, officially passed a resolution recognizing the Anfal as a genocide. A search on Google Scholar shows that the term "Anfal genocide" is widely used in academic books and peer-reviewed journals.
• 3. Major Human Rights Organizations: The foundational, in-depth investigation by Human Rights Watch is literally titled "Iraq's Crime of Genocide". Their work was instrumental in documenting the events and classifying them as genocide. Amnesty International has also used similar terminology.

Given that the event is legally defined as genocide, recognized as such by the leading academic body, and labeled a genocide by the primary human rights organization that documented it, "Anfal Genocide" is not only an accurate description but has become the common name in serious, reliable sources. To continue labeling it a "counterinsurgency operation" in the title gives undue weight to the perpetrator's euphemism.

I will go ahead and edit the article if given permission.

No need to whitewash the Ba'ath party's actions.

If wikipedia is indeed a neutral platform, then we should go by the academic concencus, which states that this was a genocide.

Artash47 (talk) 22:09, 3 September 2025 (UTC)

The article says the Iraqi trials are widely considered illegitimate because of irregularities preventing the accused from presenting an adequate defense. Not to say the parties aren't guilty, but the trials are not a reliable source. -- Beland (talk) 19:39, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

The International Association of Genocide Scholars call the Anfal and other attacks on Kurds genocide. Vanisherman (talk) 00:14, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

This source supports a claim like "the Anfal campaign was a genocide", not renaming the article to "Anfal genocide". The source refers to the event as the "Anfal campaign". Per WP:COMMONNAME, we go by the name most commonly used by reliable sources such as this one. -- Beland (talk) 13:34, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Sorry didn't quite catch that, are you for or against naming the article "the Anfal genocide"?

Cause the resolution states: "Massacres and Persecution of Iraqi Kurds were Crimes of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity".

If the article should not be named "The Al-Anfal genocide" because of WP:COMMONNAME, then we might as well call it just: "Al-anfal" since that is the actual common name.

Regardless, it is evident that this is a case of genocide and countless reliable sources call it so. Artash47 (talk) 13:42, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

I was neither for nor against; a name change would need to be justified by a survey of reliable English-language sources, which I hadn't seen. To correct myself a bit and dive deeper, the cited source does not use "Al-Anfal" at all, nor does it use "Anfal" or "Al-Anfal" to describe this event. It uses "Anfal campaign" six times, "Anfal genocide" once, and one time "Anfal" is an adjective to "massacres" in a list.

A survey of books using Google ngrams finds that "Anfal campaign" is more common than "Anfal genocide".

The article currently treats the label of "genocide" as disputed between the Hague court and Human Rights Watch. It sounds like there are lots of other sources, including IAGS, which should be added to the article, describing distribution of thinking on this question is in academic sources. If folks think the intro would more properly say "The Anfal campaign was a genocidal counterinsurgency operation" or "counterinsurgency operation and genocide", establishing an academic consensus supports that description would I think be a prerequisite.

Clarifying "Arabize" would also be helpful...was that to be accomplished by killing non-Arabs, encouraging Arabs to move in, establishing Arab political dominance by fiat, something else, some combination, or is it unclear in original sources?

-- Beland (talk) 19:26, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

I was expecting that interested editors would add these sources and discussion to the article themselves, but I just realized the specific editors advocating for changes on this page so far can't do so because of extended confirmed protection. Feel free to add citations and suggested prose to the talk page and ping me, and I will take a look.

Reading through the article a bit more, it seems the label "ethnic cleansing" might also be appropriate, as there were mass deportations in addition to mass killings. If there are any reliable sources on that, I would be interested to have them added.

I did a quick web search and did not find any documents where Amnesty International called the Anfal campaign a genocide. @Artash47: Do you have a specific one in mind that I just didn't find?

-- Beland (talk) 19:51, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

@Beland:

Hi Beland, thank you for the detailed feedback, and thank you for clearing up my confusion. It is much appreciated.

I want to address your points directly and within the limits of my knowledge - feel free to reply with your insights.

I specifically want to start with discussing WP:COMMONNAME and the sourcing, as I firmly believe the balance of high-quality reliable sources justifies the title "Anfal Genocide".

You are correct that a name change must be "justified by a survey of reliable English-language sources." However, WP:COMMONNAME is not a simple count of which term appears most often in a Google Ngrams search.

It must be balanced with WP:NPOV (Neutral Point of View), specifically WP:UNDUE.

The current title, "Anfal campaign," gives undue weight to the perpetrator's euphemistic name for the operation. It's the equivalent of titling an article on the Holocaust "The Jewish Question" or the Rwandan Genocide "The Arusha Peace Process." I want to highlight that the term "genocide" is not just a descriptor; it has become the standard, common name in the most reliable, expert sources.

Here is the evidence for the preponderance of reliable sources using this term, which I believe satisfies the Wikipedia standard:

1. Human Rights Organizations

The single most foundational and frequently cited investigation into the Anfal is arguably by Human Rights Watch. Their definitive, book-length report on the event is not titled "The Anfal Campaign."

Source: Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch. (1993). Iraq's Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds. New Haven: Yale University Press. (ISBN: 978-0-300-06427-0).

The reason why I believe this matters is that this is the primary, in-depth human rights investigation that brought the event to global attention explicitly names it "Genocide" in the title. So at large, this is not just a descriptor; it is their classification and name for the event.

2. Legal Recognition, in other words; The Official Verdict:

You noted that the Iraqi trials are considered illegitimate by some. This is a valid point, and the article body correctly discusses the process criticisms.

However, the verdict itself is a primary legal source for the event's classification.

The court's official finding is a key, reliable fact.

Source: The Iraqi High Tribunal (or Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal).

Finding: In its 2007 verdict on the Anfal case, the court ruled that the acts committed constituted genocide.

Thus the event has been legally classified as genocide by a national court, a fact we must report. This legal classification is a powerful, reliable source for the event's name.

We can argue it’s flaws all day, however, I do not believe it is justified to completely ignore it and put it aside.

3. Academic Consensus

This is a crucial point, and where credit is due; you noted the IAGS source used "Anfal campaign." However, the organization itself, which is the single foremost academic body on this subject, has issued a formal resolution that uses the term "genocide" explicitly.

We should defer to the expert consensus in my opinion.

Source: The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS).

Finding: In its 2005 resolution, the IAGS "recognizes the campaign of the Iraqi government against the Kurdish people, including the gassing at Halabja and the Anfal campaign of 1987-89... as genocide."

And the reason why I think this matters is that the world's leading academic body on genocide has officially recognized it as such.

4. Scholarly Monographs

Following the legal and academic consensus, "Anfal Genocide" has become the standard term in modern scholarship, separating it from the perpetrator's "campaign" label.

Source: Douglas, R. M. (2012). The Anfal Genocide in Iraq. Routledge.

Source: Moradi, F. (2021). The Truth in Pieces: The Anfal Genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan. Rutgers University Press.

Source: Sadiq, A. (2020). The Anfal Genocide: The 'Other' in the Age of Ethnic Cleansing. In: Kurdish Writing and Diasporic Identity.

These are high-quality, peer-reviewed academic presses (Routledge, Rutgers) whose expert authors and editors have titled their works "The Anfal Genocide." This demonstrates it is the WP:COMMONNAME within the most reliable field of sources.

So my own conclusion is as following;

The Ngrams search, although good, is misleading because it non-discriminately counts all mentions, including older journalism and sources that repeat the Ba'athist-era name.

We must balance it with other facts and rules.

The most reliable, expert sources, the definitive HRW report, the primary legal verdict, the foremost academic body (IAGS), and modern scholarly monographs - have all converged on "Anfal Genocide" as the common and correct name.

To continue using "Anfal campaign" in the title is to fail our WP:NPOV duty by prioritizing a euphemism over the established legal and academic consensus.

I believe the evidence for a name change is overwhelming.

Please feel free to correct me if you disagree. Artash47 (talk) 20:16, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

1.) "Anfal Campaign" is in fact what Human Rights Watch calls this event in the title of the source you cite; "Anfal Genocide" does not appear in the title, only "Iraq's Crime of Genocide".

2.) Didn't the Iraqi High Tribunal issues its decisions in Arabic? We only take English sources into account for the purpose of naming articles on the English Wikipedia. I found this document which appears to be a (poor) English translation of an IHT decision. It repeatedly uses "Anfal Campaign" and not "Anfal Genocide".

3.) I have added this source to the article.

4.) Pointing to 3 sources with "Anfal Genocide" in the title doesn't establish it as the most common name, given that could be many more sources with "Anfal Campaign" in the title. The Google Ngrams charts show "Anfal campaign" is still (as of 2022) and always has been more common than "Anfal genocide", so we can't dismiss that as "older journalism".

What sort of "discrimination" would you apply to the Ngrams instances to disqualify sources from e.g. the 2020s that shouldn't count? I could see discounting direct quotes from older sources if we're trying to determine what is in current use, but that's probably not all that common. Repeating "the Ba'athist-era name" does not seem like a good reason to disqualify a source; that simply means the old name is still in current use, which is exactly the question we're trying to answer. -- Beland (talk) 09:11, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

@Beland:

Thank you for the detailed reply. These are precisely the core issues, and I appreciate the chance to address them directly within the Wikipedia policy framework.

=== 1. The Human Rights Watch (HRW) Title ===

You are absolutely correct about the full title of the HRW source: Iraq's Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds.

So perhaps I should’ve been more precise in why I mentioned this article. My reasoning is as follows; I believe this source strongly supports the "genocide" position.

The title's structure is [Classification]: [Subject]. The primary classification and the "crime" being identified is "Genocide." The "Anfal Campaign" is the SUBJECT being defined.

And the reason why the HRW article is being discussed at all is because this 1993 report was the foundational, explosive investigation that established the event as a genocide in a definitive, reliable source.

The reason subsequent academic sources (like the monographs I cited) moved to the more direct "Anfal Genocide" is precisely because this HRW report laid the groundwork.

It's the primary source for the classification.

=== 2. The Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT) and WP:EN ===

This is a very fair point. Per WP:EN, the original Arabic or a poor translation is not the basis for the English Wikipedia's title. So full points to you for that.

However, I want to be clear; my argument is not based on that specific document, but on the reliable, English-language secondary sources that reported on that verdict.

When the IHT delivered its verdict, reliable English sources (like the BBC, Reuters, AP, and subsequent scholarly articles) announced that the court had found the Anfal campaign to be an act of genocide.

It is the common English-language reporting on that legal finding- a key, encyclopedic fact -that matters, not a single primary source translation.

That overwhelmingly cemented the link between "Anfal" and "Genocide" in high-quality English sources.

=== 3. The IAGS Source ===

Thank you for adding this to the article. It is a crucial source that strengthens the article's body and directly substantiates the academic consensus, which is central to this discussion.

Your work is much appreciated.

=== 4. Ngrams, WP:COMMONNAME, and Source Weighting ===

This is the most important point, and I want to be precise. You asked what "discrimination" I would apply to the Ngrams results.

The answer is not "discrimination" but WP:WEIGHT.

A Google Ngrams search is a raw, unweighted tool. It cannot differentiate between:

• (A) A dedicated, peer-reviewed, specialist scholarly monograph (like the ones I cited).
• (B) A passing mention in a generalist news article or a broad history of Iraq that simply re-uses the original operational name.

Per WP:PSTS (Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Sources), we are guided to rely on high-quality secondary and scholarly sources. Per WP:WEIGHT, we "should not give undue weight to any aspects... in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources."

The "Anfal Campaign" Ngrams count is likely inflated by decades of cursory, non-expert mentions. In contrast, the sources I am pointing to - the most expert and specialized sources on this specific topic (HRW, IAGS, and academic presses like Routledge and Rutgers) - have clearly converged on "Anfal Genocide" as the most accurate and common specialist term.

In my view; this isn't about an "old name" versus a "new name.", rather this is about the perpetrator's euphemistic operational name ("Anfal Campaign") versus the subsequent legal and academic classification ("Anfal Genocide").

So to summarize what I mean:

WP:COMMONNAME does not mean we must privilege a raw count of all mentions, especially when it creates a WP:NPOV problem by platforming a perpetrator's euphemism.

When the most reliable, expert sources (the definitive HRW report, the foremost academic body, and multiple scholarly presses) have either adopted, laid the framework for, or supported the verdict that the "Anfal Genocide" as the common and correct classification, we should give that consensus more weight than a raw Ngrams count of generalist sources. The trend in high-quality sourcing is clear in my opinion.

Feel free to hit back with your perspective if you disagree with me. Artash47 (talk) 09:45, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

I think we've established the Anfal campaign is widely considered a genocide; I've changed the intro to note that. That certainly underscores that "Anfal genocide" is an accurate name, but does not establish that it is the most common one.

Per WP:NPOVNAME, a non-neutral article title is allowed if it is clearly still the most commonly used name, which for better or worse would include a Ba'athist euphemism.

WP:WEIGHT is part of the neutrality policy; it is not used for determining article names. For title purposes, generalist news articles count just as much (if not moreso, given their wider audience) as scholarly articles, because the title policy is about recognizability and likely search terms, not expert terminology. Whether or not generalist news articles are excluded doesn't seem to make a difference, anyway - the Google Ngrams results I linked to already excludes them, because it only includes books.

For title purposes, we tend to avoid jargon, specialist terminology, and formal names if there is a more common colloquial name. For example, our article is United States. It's not "United States of America" even though this is the official legal name of the country and the "most expert" sources such as the President and Congress and the Supreme Court have "United States of America" printed on their stationery, etc.

If you think "Anfal genocide" is actually the common name now, a good way to show that might be to find all the books and journal and news articles from say 2022-2024 and count up how many of them use "Anfal campaign" vs. "Anfal genocide". It's not helpful to only have a count on one or the other of those phrases, because it's the ratio that's important. -- Beland (talk) 19:45, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

@Beland:

Thank you for the thoughtful reply and for updating the intro. In my opinion that significantly improves the article by immediately clarifying the nature of the event for the reader, which we both agree is the key encyclopedic fact here.

If we return to the title discussion; I want to address your points on WP:NPOVNAME, the Ngrams data, and the "United States" analogy, which in my opinion, fear might be flawed.

=== 1. The "United States" Analogy is Flawed ===

You compared "Anfal Campaign" vs. "Anfal Genocide" to "United States" vs. "United States of America." I must respectfully disagree with this comparison.

• "United States" is a common, neutral shortening of the formal name "United States of America." Neither name is a euphemism, and neither is factually misleading.
• "Anfal Campaign" is a perpetrator's euphemism. It is an inaccurate and non-neutral name by its very origin, designed to OBSCURE the event's true nature.

A far more accurate and relevant analogy, which is standard practice on Wikipedia, is The Holocaust.

• The perpetrator's name for that event was the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (or Endlösung der Judenfrage). That was its formal, bureaucratic, and "campaign" name.
• We do not title our article "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." We call it "The Holocaust" because that became the common name in English—a name that, critically, reflects the nature of the event (a genocide).

Another example is the Rwandan Genocide. We don't call it "The Hutu Power Insurgency" or "The 1994 Civil War Resumption," even though its perpetrators used such framing. We use the name that is common and accurate.

=== 2. WP:NPOVNAME and WP:COMMONNAME ===

You correctly cite WP:NPOVNAME allowing a non-neutral name if it's the most common. But my argument is that "Anfal Genocide" has become the common name in high-quality, reliable sources, and "Anfal Campaign" is precisely the non-neutral name (as it adopts the perpetrator's non-neutral framing).

Your point that WP:WEIGHT doesn't apply to titles is well-taken. However, WP:COMMONNAME is not just about raw search terms or a generalist audience. It's about what a preponderance of reliable sources use.

=== 3. The Ngrams Data and The Challenge ===

Once again, kudos to you because you rightly noted that Ngrams only includes books, which already skews toward reliable sources. However, the Ngrams data has a significant lag time. The 2019/2022 data reflects books written in the years prior.

My argument, supported by the monographs I cited (Routledge, Rutgers), is that the academic and human rights consensus has already to a certain extent shifted, and this shift is now a standard that cannot be ignored.

In other words, these aren't just "3 sources"; they are representative of what I believe is increasingly becoming the standard, modern, specialist title.

You challenged me to look at the 2022-2024 ratio, which I believe is a very fair test.

A search in a database like Google Scholar or ProQuest for "Anfal" in this specific date range reveals:

• Anfal genocide is very common, especially in later years and frequently used in the titles and as the main identifier for the event. Examples include titles like "Psychological scars of genocide... in Kurdish Anfal survivors" and "Revisiting Legacies of Anfal and Reconsidering Genocide..." And in the cases where the Anfal campaign is used instead, it is almost always immediately qualified as a genocide within the abstract or introduction. For example, an article might be titled "The Security-Anfal and the Identity-Anfal" but the abstract will refer to it as "the Kurdish genocide in Iraq. In my opinion, the fact that the sources which use the title “Anfal campaign” almost always put the disclaimer that it was a genocide or also use the Anfal genocide interchangably, is facts that actually favor the title: “Anfal genocide”.
• When it comes to the fact where the two terms are used interchangeably; Many articles use "Anfal genocide" as the main concept and "Anfal campaign" to refer to the specific military operations themselves. This I also believe is a point in favor of the “Anfal Genocide” title being used.

Since the term "genocide" is now inextricably linked to the name, and the disclaimer for “genocide” is given in many instances where the “campaign” name is being used, I believe that supports that the recognizability and common search term for this event is "Kurdish genocide" or "Anfal genocide."

I believe based on this that the term "Anfal Genocide" has moved from being merely an "accurate description" to being a common name on par with the “campaign” name, at the very least in the most reliable, modern sources (academia, human rights law). The older term "Anfal campaign" persists, that I wont deny, but it is the non-neutral euphemism that based on what I’ve seen, is not so much more common that it becomes a clear cut case where it should be used over the “Anfal Genocide”.

And per the precedent set by articles like "The Holocaust" and "Rwandan Genocide," I believe that we should use the title that is accurate, common in reliable sources, and not a perpetrator's euphemism, and the only title that fulfills all those criterias would be the "Anfal Genocide".

Please feel free to correct me if you believe I am wrong in my assessment. Artash47 (talk) 20:07, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

If you want examples of non-neutral, euphamistic names we use as article titles, WP:NPOVNAME has them, including Great Leap Forward.

What is the ratio of "Anfal campaign" to "Anfal genocide" in the data you are looking at? Writing "Anfal campaign" and then immediately describing it as a genocide does not count as an instance of using the name "Anfal genocide". Phrases like "Psychological scars of genocide" do not actually use a name to refer to the event, so they are extraneous to the name frequency question. -- Beland (talk) 21:07, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

@Beland:

As always, you do raise good points, Beland.

1. The "Great Leap Forward" Analogy

You've cited Great Leap Forward as an example of WP:NPOVNAME allowing a euphemistic title. This is a fair point, but I believe the analogy is different from the "Anfal" case in a crucial way.

The "Great Leap Forward" is the established historical name for a whole socio-economic period and campaign (1958-1962), which resulted in a catastrophic famine. The name itself is not a direct euphemism for the act of mass death; it's the name of the program that caused it.

This, I believe is vastly different from "Anfal."

The "Anfal Campaign" was not a socio-economic program with an unintended consequence; the campaign's entire PURPOSE was the destruction of the Kurdish population and villages.

The name was a direct euphemism for the act of genocide itself.

Therefore, the Holocaust / Final Solution analogy remains the most accurate.

So to summarize:

"Final Solution" = The perpetrator's name for the genocide.

"The Holocaust" = The common name in English that replaced the euphemism.

"Anfal Campaign" was the perpetrator's name for the genocide.

"Anfal Genocide" is the common name that is replacing it in high-quality sources.

2. The data I was looking at was from https://scholar.google.com/

Here I searched from 2024 forwards until present.

For the Anfal campaign I got approximately 493 results, and for the Anfal Genocide I got 437 results.

The ratio was close enough that I thought it was worth further inquiry, and after careful consideration I found it remarkable that a lot of the sources that decide to use the "Anfal Campaign" name where also very keen on either using the Anfal genocide interchangeably or having sections where they clarified that the act was a genocide, many times both.

I did not witness the same pattern in reverse, sources that used "Anfal Genocide" many times stuck to that name.

This in my opinion was a point in favor of the "Genocide" name.

Please feel free to share yours as well, I believe this discussion can only lead to long-term benefits of the Wikipedia article. Artash47 (talk) 21:25, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

This data seems to support "Anfal campaign" as the most common name. -- Beland (talk) 21:56, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

@Beland:

With respect, I believe that is a significant oversimplification of what the data I presented actually implies.

=== 1. The Data Shows "Competing" Names, Not a "Winner" ===

My search of Google Scholar (2024-present) yielded:

• "Anfal campaign": ~493 results
• "Anfal genocide": ~437 results

This is a ~53% to 47% split. In Wikipedia policy terms, this is not a "preponderance" or a clear winner. This is the very definition of two closely competing common names. WP:COMMONNAME itself says: "When there are multiple common names for a subject, all of which are fairly common... any of the closely competing names is a reasonable choice."

A 53/47 split clearly demonstrates that "Anfal Genocide" is "fairly common" and a direct competitor.

=== 2. The Qualitative Data is the Tie-Breaker ===

My central point, which you've overlooked, is the qualitative analysis of how these terms are used.

• The 493 results for "Anfal campaign" are not 493 "votes" for that title. As I noted, my analysis of those sources shows they routinely feel it is editorially necessary to immediately qualify the term ("...the Anfal campaign, which was a genocide...") or use both terms interchangeably.
• The 437 results for "Anfal genocide" are, by contrast, unambiguous. They are clear "votes" for that name.

This usage pattern is the key. When a name (like "Anfal campaign") is so insufficient that it requires immediate clarification by the reliable sources themselves, it has failed as a neutral and clear WP:COMMONNAME.

=== 3. Applying Wikipedia Naming Policy ===

Since the data shows we have two very common and closely competing names, we must use other policies as a tie-breaker. This is where WP:NPOVNAME (which includes WP:EUPHEMISM) is critical.

WP:NPOVNAME states: "Titles should be neutral... we should generally prefer the name that is most neutral."

We are faced with a choice between two common names:

• Option A: "Anfal Campaign" — The perpetrator's official, non-neutral euphemism.
• Option B: "Anfal Genocide" — The legal and academic classification, which the data proves is also a common name.

Given the choice between a common euphemism and a common and accurate name, policy clearly favors the latter. This is precisely the Holocaust / Final Solution precedent. We do not use the "Final Solution" even though it is a common historical term, because "The Holocaust" is also common and is the neutral, accurate identifier.

The data I provided does not support "Anfal campaign." It proves that "Anfal Genocide" has achieved near-parity in common usage, and is therefore the superior title as it is both common and neutral. Artash47 (talk) 22:00, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

With respect, are you using an LLM to generate these comments? They all seem to be about the same length and use wikitext formatting in an unnatural way. -- Beland (talk) 23:44, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

No I am using a Swedish program called: "Stava Rex", which is used for correcting grammar since I have very heavy dyslexia.

As for the wikiformat, I used the button that automatically formats it - but since it is formatting the text in a weird way, I'll simply stop using it. Artash47 (talk) 00:26, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Ah, I see.

When I repeat your query, I get 593 results for "Anfal campaign" and 437 for "Anfal genocide". It seems you have made a typo with 493 instead of 593, and the ratio is 57% to 42%. So perhaps things are trending toward a vocabulary shift, but they don't seem there yet. -- Beland (talk) 03:35, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

References

Add source on the International Association of Genocide Scholars calling the Anfal genocide

The International Association of Genocide Scholars call the Anfal and other attacks on Kurds genocide Vanisherman (talk) 00:18, 30 August 2025 (UTC)

I have added this to the article. -- Beland (talk) 09:14, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

References

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