[6] During the Al-Anfal campaign of the Iraqi Government, which took place between March 1987 and May 1989, the neighborhoods Kani Ashqan and Mordana were erased in May 1987 as a reprisal for the support of the Peshmerga.

An interdisciplinary scientific study from 2019, after more than three decades, shows that the chemical attacks on Halabja have long-term biological, psychological and social effects on the survivors.

We conclude that multidisciplinary interventions are needed to tackle the biopsychosocial complications in survivors of SM exposure to minimize further health damage in the future, as well as to promote their health-related quality of life.

[15] In March 2010, the Iraqi High Criminal Court recognized the Halabja massacre as genocide; the decision was welcomed by the Kurdistan Regional Government.

[16] In the mountains to the east of Halabja, a militant Kurdish Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam, occupied a small enclave in the period of 2000–2003.

The area was overrun by Peshmerga forces from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), with U.S. air support, at the beginning of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

[citation needed] Just before Kurds gained some autonomy over the Iraqi Kurdistan region in 1991, which included Halabja, a new town was set up where some former Kurdish refugees later relocated.

[17] The Kurdistan Regional Government made some concentrated reconstruction efforts after 2003 in the old town and began rebuilding some of the bombed-out homes in Halabja and paving new roads.

An estimated 7,000 demonstrators protested against priorities in reconstruction, claiming that officials were not sincerely addressing the problems of the gas attack victims.

Halabja is located in the Shahrizor plain, a fertile valley nestled in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.