DAVID ROMANO // Does Current Violence Against Kurds Meet 'Genocide' Definition?

4.5.18

Does Current Violence Against Kurds Meet 'Genocide' Definition?: When recognizing genocide, one should separate intent from motive. Whatever may be the motive for the crime, if one commits acts intended to destroy a group, or even a significant part of a group (such as a group’s educated elite, or members of a group living in a particular region), it is genocide.

Ottoman policies to “cleanse” Armenians and other Christians from Anatolia — via physical elimination or forced transfer or both — also featured the mass arrests and executions of Armenian elites in April 1915 and constitute genocide. Similarly, efforts to “cleanse” the Kurds from Afrin and replace them with Arabs and Turkmen — including Sunni Arab rebels currently being relocated from around Damascus to Afrin — look like attempted genocide. Saddam’s policies of executing all Kurds in large swaths of land near the Iranian border that were declared “no go zones”, along with other elements of the 1987-88 Anfal campaigns, likewise fall into the genocide category.