Al-Anfal Campaign
Iraqi immigrants to Sweden have come in four distinct waves of migration. The first were around 8,000 Kurdish and Assyrian nationalists and Iraqi communists who were escaping the Baathist regime. This wave was between 1968–1978. The second wave of 10,000 people was between 1980 and 1988, mainly Kurds and Assyrians escaping the Al-Anfal Campaign and Iraqi men escaping forced conscription in the Iran–Iraq War. The third wave was about 15,000 people, between 1991 and 1999, again mostly Kurdish and Assyrian people from Northern Iraq. Most of these came with families. The largest numbers, almost 30,000 people, of Iraqis in Sweden today have migrated as a consequence of the Iraq War of 2003 to 2010. Most of them have been Sunni Arabs and Assyrian Christians.