A U.S. Senate report, released in December 1991, accuses Iraq of waging a deliberate campaign to exterminate the Kurdish people. It charges the Iraqis undertook a "systematic program to destroy every village in Kurdistan - more than 3900 of them- as well as many of the smaller cities." The report estimates more than 180,000 Kurds to be missing or dead at the hands of the Iraqi state.

Following the March uprising that forced Iraqi military withdrawal from northern Kurdistan, Peshmerga units discovered records and videotapes in captured police headquarters that documented the campaign of terror...