By Human Rights Watch
February 2005

Al-Majid earned the sobriquet “Chemical Ali” because of his role in the genocidal Anfal campaign between February and August 1988, and his use of chemical weapons against Kurdish villagers in northern Iraq beginning in April 1987. He was subsequently in charge of Iraq's military occupation of Kuwait, and led forces that suppressed the popular uprising in the south of Iraq in March 1991, following the 1991 Gulf War. Al-Majid also played a leading role in the campaign against Iraq's Marsh Arab population in the 1990s. All of these campaigns were marked by summary executions, arbitrary arrests, disappearances, torture, and other atrocities.
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