The book addresses one of the most heinous crimes of Saddam Hussein's Baath regime in Iraq, the so-called Anfal Campaign against the Kurdish population in 1988: within a few months, thousands of villages were destroyed; up to 182,000 men and women abducted and murdered; tens of thousands of civilians detained and forcibly reset tled. Based on longstanding work with women Anfal survivors in the Germyan region of Kurdis tan-Iraq, the author explores their psychosocial situation and coping strategies over more than twenty years. She documents the women's path from victims to survivors, their struggle for truth, justice, and acknowledgement, and their conflicts with both the Kurdish national victimhood discourse and Iraqi national strategies in dealing with the past. The research gives an exceptional long-term psychological perspective on coping with extreme violence, beyond common discourses of trauma and "healing". It links psycho logical trauma research to memory studies and the debate on socio-political reconstruction in post-conflict societies.

Thomas Schmiedinger in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 107, 2017, 510-513