"In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of 
     extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern 
     Iraq. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 
     (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of 
     them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch 
     investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of 
     captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying 
     out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks 
     on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations 
     of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances 
     of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of 
     chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents 
     that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of 
     thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in 
     conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of 
     hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of 
     their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two 
     thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, 
     and power stations."