Al-Anfal Campaign
The inhabitants of Iraqi Kurdistan experienced one of the more extreme recent examples of the mass use of home demolitions to expedite ethnic cleansing during the Al-Anfal Campaign of 1986–1989. The campaign was mounted ostensibly to eliminate the peshmerga rebels of northern Iraq but quickly acquired a genocidal character. The Kurdish opposition estimated that of the approximately 5,000 villages existing in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1975, 3,479 had been deliberately destroyed by 1988. Upwards of 100,000 Kurds were killed and tens of thousands more fled Iraq to escape the campaign. Saddam Hussein's government adopted a policy of "Arabization" in which it systematically replaced the displaced Kurds with Iraqi Arabs in strategic areas such as Kirkuk.