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The genocidal attacks on Kurds claimed somewhere between 50k - 180k. Kurds make up 20%-25% of the population, which would have been around 3-4 millions in 1988.
by luckylion 5y ago
The genocidal attacks on Kurds claimed somewhere between 50k - 180k. Kurds make up 20%-25% of the population, which would have been around 3-4 millions in 1988. If you kill 1-3% of a population, it's very likely that most families will be affected, especially in societies where families are large.
Another ~100k Kurds and Shiite Arabs were killed during the '91 uprisings. Together, they make up more than half of the population.
Unless Saddam was super surgical (#heWasnt), they were affected. Unless of course, by "personally affected", you mean they personally did die. But that would be a very strange idea.
- vidarh 5y agoYour own numbers don't support the claim that most would be affected.
- luckylion 5y agoI have no idea how you come to that conclusion. If you kill 4% of the population, you will have lots of people losing a relative. What's that moving of the goal post about?
- vidarh 5y agoWhen you kill a large portion of a specific ethnic group in specific geographic regions in a society that still had major tribal tension, most people outside of those groups and regions will not be affected. In any case you're the one mong goalposts here - this started with simply making the point that it's unread jable to assume a single experience captures the experience of a people. Nevertheless you've provided nothing to justify the idea that Saddam's purges affected anywhere close to a majority of the population, even if that is itself a distraction.