After Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War in February 1991, Kurds in the north and Shia Arabs in the south rose up against Saddam Hussein's government, briefly seizing control of most Kurdish cities. Iraqi forces, using helicopter gunships not covered by the ceasefire terms, crushed the uprising within weeks, prompting an estimated 1.5–2 million Kurds to flee toward the mountainous Turkish and Iranian borders, where thousands died of exposure, hunger, and disease. The humanitarian crisis prompted the US, UK, and France to launch Operation Provide Comfort and impose a northern no-fly zone, enabling refugees to return and creating the conditions for the de facto autonomous Kurdistan Region that has persisted since. A separate, less internationally publicized crackdown followed the failed Shia uprising in southern Iraq.
Following Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, Kurds in northern Iraq rose up against Saddam Hussein's government; Iraqi forces crushed the uprising, prompting a mass refugee flight toward the Turkish and Iranian borders that led to a US/UK/France-enforced 'safe haven' and no-fly zone.
Iraq's 1987 census and subsequent estimates put Kurds at roughly 20-23 per cent of an Iraqi population of about 18 million in 1991, that is some 3.6-4.1 million, concentrated in Dohuk, Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Kirkuk and Nineveh. Iraqi census categories and the status of Kirkuk are politically contested, so the figure is approximate.
Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch's 'Endless Torment' (1992) documented thousands killed in the suppression of the uprising by indiscriminate fire and summary execution but declined to give a total, citing lack of access; it reported a Greenpeace estimate that mortality among Kurdish and Shi'a refugees and displaced people averaged about 1,000 a day through April, May and June 1991, which underpins the top of this range, while roughly two million people fled — 1.4 million to Iran and 450,000 to Turkey. Iraq's government disputed all such figures, and most of the toll is death in flight from exposure, disease and lack of food rather than direct killing.
Human Rights Watch / Middle East Watch and Amnesty International documented indiscriminate fire into residential areas, summary executions in streets, homes and hospitals, house-to-house mass arrests, helicopter attacks on fleeing civilian columns, torture, and thousands who remained unaccounted for a year later.
Iraq, Turkey, Iran