The Anfal operations in 1988 were a series of genocidal assaults on the Iraqi Kurdish population that had supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Led by Ali Hassan Majid, Saddam Hussein's cousin and at that time defense minister, the Anfal operations resulted in some 180,000 deaths by execution and chemical attacks such as at the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja in March 1988. Some 2,000 to 3,000 villages were destroyed, and many more Kurds were exiled to "model villages" and the south of Iraq.
During the Kurdish uprising in 1991, thousands of official Iraqi documents testifying to the extent of the slaughter were taken and eventually transferred to the University of Colorado at Boulder in the United States, where some have been translated and published by Human Rights Watch/Middle East. The term Anfal comes from the Koran, where it is the title of the eighth sura (chapter) and means "spoils of battle." By using the term, the Iraqis were attempting to provide a religious justification for what they were doing.
Historical Dictionary of the Kurds. Michael M. Gunter.