In Halabja, wounds remain raw 25 years after chemical attack
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Transcript of In Halabja, wounds remain raw 25 years after chemical attack
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8/13/2019 In Halabja, wounds remain raw 25 years after chemical attack
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M O N U M E N T
O N M A R C H 1 6 , 1 9 8 8 ,
S A D D A M S A I R F O R C EB O M B A R D E D H A L A B J A ,
L O C A T E D I N I R A Q S
K U R D I S H R E G I O N , W I T H
F I V E H O U R S O F C H E M I C A L
A I R S T R I K E S .A N D N O W, E V E N A S
K U R D I S TA N F L O U R I S H E S ,
T H E T O W N S T I L LS T R U G G L E S T O R E C O V E R
F R O M T H AT D R E A D F U L D AYWords by Orlando Crowcroft
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T O A T R O U B L E D T I M E
MAIN PICTURE: A SCENE FROM HALABJA MUSEUM,
WHICH COMMEMORATES THE 5,000 KURDS WHO
DIED ON MARCH 16, 1988. TOP: AN IRAQI KURDISH
WOMAN VISITS THE GRAVE OF A RELATIVE. RIGHT:
NAMES OF VICTIMS ON A MONUMENT IN HALABJA
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A
S OUR TAXI PULLS UP AT THE CHECKPOINTjust
outside Halabja, a Kurdish soldier looks at each of us in
turn. My heart sinks as he fixes his eyes on me. No one
speaks English this is Iraqi Kurdistan, after all but
no one needs to. The man signals for me to get out and
walk, as directed, to a shabby office on the other side of the
dusty highway. Inside is pandemonium. A group of guards,
cradling assault rifles, stand by the door firing questions at
me and at each other in Kurdish as I shake my head to signal
that I dont understand.
I notice that, despite wearing a full uniform, the
ringleader a giant of a man is barefoot. A few soldiers get
bored and return to their lunch of bread and chickpea soup,
spread out on a sheet on the concrete floor. What are you doing here? the leader finally
stutters in English, the disbelief in his voice palpable. Halabja, I quickly reply, The
monument? They all suddenly smile. Ah, welcome, welcome, and they hustle me out of
the door and down the path towards the waiting taxi, crisis averted.
Few foreigners come to Halabja other than journalists and a few hardy backpackers,
but those that do generally come to see the Halabja Monument and adjoining museum.
Built in 2003, the monument commemorates the deaths of 5,000 residents in the 1988
chemical weapons attack on the city. Halabja is famous for its pomegranates, I am later to
learn, but far more famous for its scars.Prior to the Iran-Iraq War, Halabja had a big
reputation, sitting alongside cities such as Najaf
and Karbala as a centre of religious learning in
Iraq. With a population of some sixty-thousand
and located about 240km north-east of Baghdad
and less than ten miles from the Iranian border,
it was also a commercial hub for Kurds from
surrounding villages and, before the war, from
neighbouring Iran. But its importance as a
centre of Kurdish nationalism increased during
the conflict with Iran.
This independence movement had begun
decades earlier, in the 1920s. World War One
had seen the collapse of the Ottoman and Qajar
empires and the carve-up of Kurdish areas
between the modern Republic of Turkey and
the new British- and French-mandated states of
Iraq and Syria when it ended. Armed Kurdish
peshmerga(which literally means those who
confront death) rebels had been fighting ever
since. They used the city and surrounding
mountains as a base during its long guerrilla
war with Saddam Hussein and, with the Iran-
Iraq war raging, Halabjas relative proximity to
Baghdad, made the town strategically important to Hussein.
When Halabja fell to the Kurdish militia and the Iranian army in 1988, Hussein and
his right-hand man, Ali Hassan Al-Majid (Chemical Ali, as he is known by the Kurds)decided it was time to teach the upstart Kurds and their Iranian allies-of-convenience a
lesson. The exact composition of the chemical weapons used in the March attacks is still
not known exactly it may have included mustard gas, sarin, tabun, VX and possibly
cyanide but it killed five thousand over the course of a five-hour assault.
Photographs from the scene show men, women and children lying in the streets,
mouths and eyes open, belongings scattered around them. Frozen in death. Between seven-
and ten-thousand are thought to have been injured aside from the immediate deaths, while
thousands more are thought to have died from complications following the attacks. When
the Iraqi Army took Halabja back, some weeks after the chemical attack, they razed the
town to the ground, burying much of the evidence beneath the rubble.
Both Hussein and Al-Majid were tried and later executed for their crimes during the
Al-Anfal campaign against Iraqs minority groups, which killed an estimated 100,000 Iraqi
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE: THE PARTIALLY REBUILT
MONUMENT AT HALABJA; NAMES OF THE DEAD.
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Kurds, according to Human Rights Watch. The Halabja attack is
considered in Kurdistan to be the culmination of that genocide the
rope used to hang Saddam is proudly displayed in the citys museum
and for the Kurds, the events of Al-Anfal only bolster their moves
towards independence from volatile and chaotic Arab Iraq.
The years since the fall of Saddam Hussein have seen a gradual
establishment of an autonomous state in Iraqi Kurdistan. The
region has its own military, its own government and institutions
and is increasingly entering into negotiations with its neighbours
Turkey, in particular over the exploitation of its vast oil
resources. And for the government of this emerging Kurdish
state, Halabja is a rallying cry. The city remains known as Halabja
Shaheed meaning martyr and, when the old town was finally
re-built in 2003, the Halabja Monument was built to honour the
dead. Every year since then, Iraqi Kurdistans great and good have
flooded into the city to commemorate the attack, in 2013 holding a
six-day-long programme of conferences, memorials and speeches.
This year, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attack, the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) prime minister, Nechirvan
Barzani, used the event to call for March 16 to be made an
international day against chemical weapons. He also pledged $97
million to develop water and sewage systems, paving and generalreconstruction in Halabja.
AS WE APPROACH THE HALABJA MONUMENT, a series of fortified
checkpoints block our path. A handful of stony-faced soldiers gather
around the car, shaking their heads as I take photographs. It is not unusual
to be prevented from visiting tourist attractions by armed soldiers for
spurious reasons in Iraqi Kurdistan, but on this occasion the issue runs
deeper than simple bureaucracy.
In March 2006, three years after the monument was built in Halabja,
thousands of residents of the town rioted and burned it to the ground. One year later the
process was repeated. This year, even as the KRG gathered in the city, there were non-
violent protests by residents. The soldiers are here to make sure it doesnt happen again.
In a doctors surgery on the outskirts of town, Azad Mustafa sits behind an empty
desk, the curtains drawn. Mustafa is the director of the Iraqi human rights organisation,
Jiyan Foundation, based in this dusty, ramshackle city, and he is explaining the story of
Halabja. I ask him why, when Halabja is such a rallying call for the Kurds in present day
Iraqi Kurdistan, the people of the city are still so angry. They see leaders and politicians
coming here every anniversary and organising a big festival, but after March 16 everything
is forgotten, he replies. Nobody knows what is happening in Halabja after that. People are
not satisfied with the services of the government here, and they are really suffering.
The Jiyan Foundation, which Mustafa runs from a villa close to the headquarters of
the local Kurdish Democratic Party (PDK), was set up in 2010 to provide free medical care
to the thousands of residents of Halabja who continue to suffer from the effects of the
poison gas. And those problems are longstanding: the first report into the health impact
of the bombing, conducted ten years after the attack, found that miscarriages in the city
outnumbered live births, the number of babies born with Down syndrome had doubledand cases of leukaemia trebled. And in the last three years the centre has treated over
1,500 Halabja residents, averaging fifteen to twenty patients a day. There are a few main
problems, explains Anas Ibrahim, the centres twenty-nine-year-old doctor. You have
respiratory issues such as asthma, skin problems such as eczema and allergic reactions,
and you also have eye problems.
As we talk, a patient arrives for a check-up. Her name is Amira Fatah, and as she sits
down in a chair opposite, she recalls the attack as if it was yesterday. When we heard the
bombs start falling, I got everyone together and we made for the mountains towards Iran.
I had heard about chemical attacks Id read about what they do so I knew we had to
go. That night, as we climbed, the symptoms started. My son and daughter began coughing
blood and their eyes were streaming. I tried to make masks, but it didnt work. Then I lost
my sight.
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM
THE SCENE SHOW MEN,
WOMEN AND CHIL DREN
LYING IN THE STREETS,
MOUTHS AND EYES OPEN,
BELONGINGS SCATTERED
AROUND THE M.
FROZEN IN DEATH.
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Amira and her family reached safety in Iran, where her sight was restored and she
discovered she was pregnant with her third child. He was born with severe learning
difficulties that he has to this day. Amira, for her part, still suffers from anxiety attacks,
heart problems and shortness of breath. This, explains Ibrahim, is normal for residents
here. You usually find that they have combined disorders so perhaps hypertension,
depression, and skin problems, he says. These illnesses are not reversible. You can give
them medicine but if they stop taking it the problem comes back. There is no cure.
Jiyan is the only the NGO in the city providing medical care to victims of the attack,
using funding from Germany to purchase good quality medicine from Europe and provide
trained doctors and psychologists. Many of those working in the centre, Anas included,
hail from Halabja and, as a result, know the residents well and understand their anger
towards the KRG. If you want me to be honest, the problem starts from the government.
We are in the Middle East, and we have a corrupt government, even if it is better here than
in Baghdad and other cities, says Anas, signalling towards the rows of branded medicine
packing the glass-fronted cupboards behind us. All of this came from outside and it is
good quality. What the government provides us is from India, and it is cheap, low quality
medication. It doesnt work.
SADDAM HUSSEIN KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOINGwhen he sought
the Arabisation of Kurdish cities such as Kirkuk and Mosul by moving
Iraqi Arabs en masse to the north. Iraq has the f ifth largest proven crudeoil reserves in the world, and a third of it lies in the Kirkuk field, which
straddles Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraq proper. Since his fall,
and the increasing independence of the Kurdish area,
oil has been a regular bone of contention between the
Kurdish Regional Government, based in Erbil, and Baghdad.
By virtue of their far superior security situation, the Kurds have
moved much quicker towards improving their oil industry, granting
exploration agreements to major oil companies and establishing a
pipeline between Kurdistan and Turkey, worth billions of dollars.
This has angered Baghdad, with Ali Dhari, the deputy chairman of
Iraqi parliaments oil and gas committee, telling theNew York Times
in December that the Kurds were stealing Iraqs oil and selling it to
neighbouring Turkey.
The Kurds, for their part, are not overly interested in appeasing
the south, wracked as it is by suicide bombings, corruption and a
staggering lack of infrastructure. The KRG controls checkpoints in and
out of Kurdish territory, and has its own discretion as to who it permits
into Iraqi Kurdistan. This political clout comes alongside a booming
economy, with GDP forecast at eight percent in 2013 and over 2,300
foreign companies operating in the region.
Yet complaints about corruption and nepotism in Kurdistan are
common, and conversations about politics or indeed, most subjects
often end with criticism of the government in Erbil. Kurds see the states of the Gulf,
with their substantial welfare systems (for locals, at least), free schooling, healthcare and
housing, and wonder why they with forty-five billion barrels of untapped oil reserves
dont enjoy the same privileges.
Kurdistan has a bright economic future and it is the safest and most stable region inIraq, but politically things are not that different from the rest of Iraq, explains Hayder al-
Khoei, an associate fellow on Chatham Houses MENA programme. Much of the power is
still concentrated within a few families and the duopoly that ran Kurdistan for decades has
only recently been challenged with the rise of the Gorran(Change) movement. In terms of
corruption, a democratic culture, and tribal attitudes, Kurdistan has much in common with
the rest of Iraq.
The duopoly he speaks of comprises two main political parties: the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK), headed by ageing Iraqi president Jalal Talabani (whose stroke in December
2012 put him out of action for a year), and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), headed
by KRG president Massoud Barzani. They currently share power but there is no love lost
between them. The two have faced off in regional elections in Iraqi Kurdistan since 1992 and
went to war in 1994 until the fighting was ended by a 1998 Washington-negotiated ceasefire.
THE PEOPLE SEE LEA DERS
AND POLITICIANS COMING
HERE EVE RY ANNIVERSARYAND ORGANISING A BIG
FESTIVAL. BUT AFTER
MARCH 16 EVERYTH ING
IS FORGOTTEN.
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The Gorran Movement has in recent years emerged as a third force in Kurdish
politics, winning twenty-four seats in Iraqi Kurdistans September elections,
pushing the PUK into third place and winning control over its former stronghold of
Sulaymaniyah. An offshoot of Talabanis party, The Gorran Movement has run on a
firmly anti-Barzani and anti-corruption ticket.
Al-Khoei does not believe that the lack of attention paid to Halabja since the fall
of Saddam Hussein has anything to do with financial constraints or the KRG being
preoccupied with other issues. He thinks it stems from reluctance on the part of the
government to allow cities like Halabja to have the cash to run its own affairs. The
Kurds are federalists in Iraq but centralists in Kurdistan. To put it simply, those who
successfully managed to take authority away from Baghdad to Kurdistan dont like
devolving that power further to the Kurdish people, he says.
For Gareth Stansfield, a professor at the University of Exeter and expert in
Kurdish politics, the neglect of Halabja comes down to bad planning rather than
an unwillingness of the KRG to invest in the city. Its easy to knock the KRG for
corruption but, first of all, corruption is always relative. I think within the setting of
Iraq, Erbil is a lot cleaner than Baghdad.
And Halabja is by no means alone in badly needing development if its education,
health or social services, he says. Many of northern Iraqs cities that were decimated
during the Al-Anfal campaign face similar problems; Halabja is just better known
because of its tragic history.
Its not a question of Why is the KRG so rich and Halabja so poor? It is abouta lack of integrated planning. The situation in Halabja is in keeping with many
other places in Kurdistan, where there is no
well-considered, thought-out, administrative
process towards improving the socio-economic
lot of people and regions of Kurdistan, he says.
Because of that you get waste, you get corruption,
you get nepotism. Prime Minister Nechirvan
Barzani acknowledges all this; he doesnt hide
away from it. The big question for him is whether
he can change the situation, because the time to
do it is now.
THE HALABJA MONUMENTmay
be the largest and best-known
monument to the victims of the
attack on Halabja, but it is by no
means the only one in the city.
On Piy Mohammed Street, the
centrepiece of a busy roundabout is a
statue of a man struggling to cover his dying child,
its mouth wide open having already succumbed to
poison gas. A few streets away, another monument
to the attacks shows hands grasping from a mountain as bombs fall. Tucked away
in the centre of the city is a graveyard for the residents killed in the attack, not to
mention those who have died since. Residents speak of a collective depression in
Halabja. Amira describes a nervousness in peoples hearts, while Dr Mustafa speaksof a bad feeling about the town.
Things could be set to get worse. A major worry for Ibrahim and Mustafa is that
funding for the Jiyan Foundation is due to be cut from this month as the German
government scales back on overseas aid, meaning the foundation may have to close.
If it does, the people of the town will be left to fend for themselves. Im not worried
about myself, says Mustafa, as we drive back to Sulaymaniyah, the sun setting over
the mountains. I will probably be able find another job. But for these people, it is a
big problem.
Indeed, it is a prospect that Amira, now far too elderly to leave Halabja for care
even if she could afford it dreads. Ive been sick for seventeen years and I have never
received any help from the government. We dont get anything from them, she said, as
she made to leave the centre. All we have is here.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: US AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ,
ZALMAY KHALILZAD WEARING SUNGLASSES LAYS
A WREATH AT HALABJAS CEMETERY IN 2005; THE
CEMETERY WHERE MOST OF THE DEAD ARE BURIED;
A MEMORIAL AT A TRAFFIC INTERSECTION, INSPIRED
BY A PHOTOGRAPH OF A FATHER AND BABY KILLEDDURING THE 1988 CHEMICAL ATTACKS.