Prosecutors are describing the campaign as an act of genocide against the Kurdish people, while the former Iraqi regime defended its actions as no more than a necessary counter-insurgency operation during wartime.

Although estimates vary, it is believed that at least 100,000 Kurds were killed during this period, and more than 3,000 villages were destroyed.

The Iraqi High Tribunal had announced in April that Saddam and six co-defendants -- including Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali -- would face genocide charges over the Anfal campaign.

"After the transfer of the investigation results of the Al-Anfal crimes to the criminal court... the tribunal decided on Monday August 21, 2006 as a trial date," the court said in a statement Tuesday.

Between 1987 and 1989 there were major attacks on the Kurds -- including the gassing of the entire population of Halabja in 1988 in which 5,000 people died. Halabja will not be counted in the current case, however.

The gassing of Halabja by Iraqi forces was in retaliation for the capture of the city by Kurdish peshmergas (warriors) backed by Iranian revolutionary guards, and did not form part of the eight official Anfal campaigns.

The term "Anfal" comes from the eighth sura of the Koran and means spoils. The campaign involved the systematic bombardment, gassing and then assault of areas in the Kurdish autonomous region in 1988.

By 1986, with the regime under severe strain because of its war with Iran, large swathes of the Kurdish region had become free of central government control.

So starting in 1987, Saddam charged his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid -- "Chemical Ali" -- with bringing the area back under state control.

Ali began by declaring "prohibited" zones, much like the Vietnam war-era "free fire" zones, in which all inhabitants were considered insurgents.

Villagers were moved to defined and easily controlled settlements, while the prohibited areas were first bombarded and then invaded in classic counter-insurgency tactics.

According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, what made these campaigns different from counter insurgency operations was a clear plan to exterminate the Kurds as a people.

"Tellingly, the killings were not in any sense concurrent with the counter-insurgency: the detainees were murdered several days or even weeks after the armed forces had secured their goals," the organization said in its extensive report on the campaign.

"Finally, there is the question of intent, which goes to the heart of the notion of genocide," said the report, going on to detail the documents and testimony that make this intent clear.

Central to the case will be al-Majid, and accusations that he made liberal use of poisonous gas, mass executions and prison camps to subdue the north.

The remaining defendants include former minister of defense Sultan Hashem Ahmed and high-ranking Baathists Saber Abdel Aziz, Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, Taher Mohammed al-Ani and Farhan al-Juburi.

Saddam and seven co-defendants are currently on trial for allegedly executing 148 inhabitants of the Shiite village of Dujail following an assassination attempt there against Saddam in 1982.

They face execution by hanging if convicted in the Dujail case, which is set to resume on July 10. A US official has said a verdict could be issued by mid-September.

But Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, has said that Saddam would be tried for all his crimes before any of the verdicts are implemented.