suggests that religious motivations by no means contributed to Saddam's decision to launch the war, an overview of the Iranian leaders' speeches and martyrs' statements reveals that religion significantly motivated people to take part in the war. (...) The Iranian leadership painted the war as a battle between believers and unbelievers, Muslims and infidels, and the true and the false.' Iran cited religious reasons to justify continuing combat operations, for example in the face of Saddam's offer of peace in mid-1982, rejected by Ayatollah Khomeini's declaration that the war would not end until Iran had defeated the Ba'athist regime and replaced it with an Islamic republic. While Ba'athist Iraq has sometimes been described as a 'secular dictatorship' before the war, and therefore in ideological conflict with the Shia Islamic 'theocracy' which seized control of Iran in 1979, Iraq also launched the so-called Tawakalna ala Allah ("Trust in God") Operations (April–July 1988) in the final stages of the war. Moreover, the Anfal campaign (1986–1989; in strict sense February–September 1988) was code-named after Al-Anfal, the eighth sura of the Qur'an which narrates the triumph of 313 followers of the new Muslim faith over almost 900 pagans at the Battle of Badr in the year 624. "Al Anfal" literally means the spoils (of war) and was used to describe the military campaign of extermination and looting commanded by Ali Hassan al-Majid (also known as "Chemical Ali"). His orders informed jash (Kurdish collaborators with the Baathists, literally "donkey's foal" in Kurdish) units that taking cattle, sheep, goats, money, weapons and even women as spoils of war was halal (religiously permitted or legal). Randal (1998, 2019) argued that 'Al Anfal' was 'a curious nod to Islam' by the Ba'athist government, because it had originally been known as a 'militantly secular regime'. Some commentators have concluded that the code name was meant to serve as 'a religious justification' for the campaign against the Kurds. Yugoslav Wars The Croatian War (1991–95) and the Bosnian War (1992–95) have been viewed as religious wars between the Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim populations of former Yugoslavia: respectively called "Serbs", "Croats" and "Bosniaks" (or "Bosnian Muslims"). Traditional religious symbols were used during the wars. Notably, foreign Muslim volunteers came to Bosnia to wage jihad and were thus known as "Bosnian mujahideen". Although some news media and some scholars at the time and in the aftermath often described the conflicts as nationalist or