Podcast with Joost Hiltermann “The Resurrected”
Anfal is an Arabic word from the Quran meaning “the spoils of war.” Saddam Hussein gave the name to his 1988 campaign against Iraq’s Kurds — eight stages of chemical attack, mass arrest and mass execution that killed some hundred thousand people, and that a later tribunal would call genocide.
Joost Hiltermann helped document the genocide for Human Rights Watch. His first novel, The Resurrected (Afsana Press, May 2026), is a fictionalised version of those events. It follows two men who survived a mass grave and made their way home to Kurdistan, and eventually to Virginia, giving voice to victims, perpetrators and bystanders alike.
The Resurrected was reviewed for the ARB by Alan Ali Saeed in July 2026. You can read the full review here.
Joost Hiltermann is Special Adviser for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, where he previously directed the MENA program for a decade. He is the author of A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja.
