Kurds in search of their dead meet remains

She knew he was dead, but getting his corpse would be better than having nothing. At least she could give him a decent burial.

When Ameen finally got a peek inside the coffin given to her by government officials, though, she felt no relief.

"As I look inside the coffin, I wonder, is the man inside my husband or not?" said Ameen, standing on an airport tarmac where the coffins of 150 long-deceased Kurds had just been unloaded from a cargo plane in the northern city of Irbil, capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.

After so many years, Shareef Ali's remains were like the others that arrived from Najaf last month: bones and dust.

There were no shreds of clothing, no jewelry, nothing personal -- only a slip of paper stating that an identification document proved these were Ali's remains.

An estimated 180,000 Kurds died in the 1980s in what came to be known as the Anfal campaign, or "spoils of war." The campaign included gas attacks on the Kurds' northern homeland and the transfer of Kurds to southern Iraq, where many were killed.

As with most of the crackdowns designed to bolster President Saddam Hussein's Sunni Arab-led dictatorship, most of the victims were civilians.

The remains of Anfal victims have stayed beneath the country's sandy soil, in the deep holes where the Kurds fell after being gunned down. Identification cards are mixed among bones or tucked in pockets of whatever remains of clothing.

Since Hussein's ouster in 2003, the graves have been uncovered one by one. So many, in fact, that the Iraqi government has designated May 16 as Mass Graves Day, a national day of remembrance.

The latest discovery was about three months ago in a farmer's field near Najaf. Many of the bodies were identified through documentation found nearby. For others, there were no clues. But each set of remains was placed in a coffin and sent to Irbil, about 290 miles north, where relatives waited on a chilly, overcast afternoon, hoping that their lost loved ones were among those whose identities had been confirmed.

"For 22 years I am waiting for the return of my brother's corpse," Ali Mohammed said, crying as he spoke of Fraydoon Mohammed. "Today I see him among many corpses, yet I cannot identify him."