Al-Anfal Campaign
In the north, the displacement of Kurdish people as part of the Arabization campaign continued throughout the 1980s. Although the majority of people with a Kurdish background were not subjected to high casualty rates during the war, Hussein saw the activities from Kurdish political groups as a betrayal against his regime and accused them of cross-border military and intelligence cooperation with Iran. The Ba’ath regime punished these activist groups in northern Iraq by the use of extensive violence in the Al-Anfal Campaign at the end of the 1980s. This use of extreme violence caused a high number of casualties estimated to be around 150,000 to 200,000 deaths and echoed further into the Kurdish community, contributing to a stronger sentiment of sectarian division.