The Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq is seeking to pressure the federal government in Baghdad to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) to ensure that what took place under the rule of the successive regimes in Iraq before 2003 — when the Kurdish people were subjected to assaults and ethnic cleansing — would never repeat itself.
During the reign of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, Kurds were subjected to genocidal campaigns dubbed the Anfal Campaign by the government itself, in reference to the eighth chapter of the Quran, which details the triumph of proponents of the newly descended Islam over pagans.
