Scarred by sarin and the poison of politics

Twenty one years ago, terror struck the town of Halabja, not far from the Iranian border.

It was the last stage of the Iran-Iraq war and the town's Kurdish population was seething with resentment against Saddam Hussain.

On March 16-17, 1988, the Iraqi president ordered a poison-gas attack on the city to put an end to the Kurdish revolt.

Halabja was showered with bombs, artillery fire and chemical agents, including mustard gas and the nerve gas sarin, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people.

Survivors described the gas clouds that formed 46 metres in the air as turning “white, black and then yellow''.

The gas, they said, smelt like apples and then people began dying. Some just dropped dead. Others died “blistering or coughing up green vomit''.

The world cried “genocide''. Human Rights Watch said it was the worst chemical attack against civilians in human history.

But Saddam turned a blind eye as he had the support of Arab heavyweights backed by the United States.

Saddam and the US blamed Iran for the attack: A report by America's Defence Intelligence Agency said Iran was responsible for Halabja.

Iran had been supporting the Kurds and that was not going down well with the Reagan White House.

The first photos of the crime appeared in Iranian newspapers, taken by the Iranian photographer Kaveh Golestan.

The list of side-effects of the Halabja attack is long: blindness, respiratory and digestive disorders, infertility and cancers.

And all of that in addition to the psychological impact not only on the Kurds in Iraq but also on those in Turkey, Iran and Syria.

In 2003, when America was preparing to go to war against Iraq, however, the CIA changed tack and cited Halabja to accuse Saddam of having used weapons of mass destruction.

Ironically, neither Saddam nor his cousin Ali Hassan Al Majid — the commander of the Halabja campaign who later became known as Chemical Ali — was convicted for the attack.

Saddam was tried for the Anfal Campaign and an Iraqi court sentenced him to death in December 2006 for the Dujail massacre of Iraqi Shiites.

Responding to the charges against him for the ordering the attack on Halabja, Saddam is said to have smilingly told the court that had he been accused of using chemical weapons against Iran, he would have accepted “responsibility, with honour''.

He denied having used such weapons against “any Iraqi citizen, Arab or Kurd''. He said: “I don't accept any insult to my principles or [to myself].''

He said the court was a farce because the judge had refused to let him speak or allow him out of his cage-like box.

At one point, after being ejected from court for rowdy behaviour, he made an appeal to Iraqis: “I call upon all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands.''

After Saddam was hanged, the Anfal trial continued till January 2007. Al Majid and Sultan Hashem Ahmad, who was minister of defence under Saddam, were convicted.

The Halabja massacre was part of the eight-stage Anfal Campaign — from 1986 to 1989 — carried out by Al Majid. It was aimed at crushing the Kurdish rebellion.

The death toll in the campaign is estimated at 100,000 and 150,000, to it displaced about 1 million Kurds.

Iraqis who supported Saddam when he came to power in 1979 refused to believe he had unleashed his war machine on his own countrymen in such a savage manner.

The same applied to Western powers that had befriended Saddam. They were embarrassed by a man who was being described as another Hitler.

Was this the same man who had created and controlled the “National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy'' and a campaign for “Compulsory Free Education'' in Iraq, thereby earning an award from Unesco?

This same president had created roads, bridges, gave more rights to women and offered high wages in government jobs.

He also adopted a Western legal system — although it became corrupt — which was the first in the Gulf that was not based on Islamic law.

When he visited Paris in 1975, Jacques Chirac had welcomed him saying: “I welcome you as my personal friend. I assure you of my consideration and affection.''

Throughout the 1980s, and during the Anfal Campaign, Saddam bought $25 billion worth of arms from the French and picked builders from that country for the Saddam International Airport project in 1982.

The US initially feared Saddam and five months after he came to power, the State Department put his country on the list of states that sponsored terrorism.

Nevertheless, Iraq was delisted when the country went to war against Iran in 1980.

From 1983 to 1990, the US sold Saddam arms for about $200 million to fight the Iranians, much of which was used to crush the Kurdish revolt in Halabja.

In 1983, US president Ronald Reagan sent his special envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, to Iraq to sell arms and give money to Saddam, and to thank him for his war against Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But in March 2003, Halabja erupted in protest against the Kurdish government, accusing it of using the massacre to serve its interests.

They claimed Masoud Al Barazani and Jalal Talabani had used the event like the Jews had used the Holocaust.

Rioters accused the Kurdish leaders of not doing enough to ease the suffering of the Anfal Campaign survivors. They burnt a museum set up to commemorate the massacre and one man was killed.

Halabja has left a permanent scar on the Kurds, affecting even their genes.

It has affected their psyche to the extent that they now fear everything; anyone who does not support their claims to statehood is suspected of being another Saddam.

They seem to have forgotten that Reagan's America was as much to blame for Halabja as Saddam himself.

Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria.

A chapter of injustice

The Halabja massacre was part of the Anfal Campaign, an operation carried out under orders from Saddam Hussain, by his cousin Ali Hassan Al Majid.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Anfal Campaign (1986 to 1989) resulted in the deaths of between 50,000 to 100,000 civilians.

It led to the destruction of about 4,000 Kurdish villages, out of the 4,655 villages in northern Iraq (now known as Iraqi Kurdistan).

Iraqi officers ordered the destruction of 1,754 schools, 270 hospitals, 2,450 mosques and 27 churches as part of the raid.

That is not to mention the 5,000 killed in Halabja, which according to The Hague in December 2005, was a criminal act of genocide.

The first to cry foul against Saddam, in addition to the Kurds, was Iran.

When Iran pressured the UN to act against Saddam's use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, the United States pressured the UN Security Council against passing a resolution condemning Iraq for use of chemical weapons.

Nizar Hamdoon, the Iraqi attaché in Washington DC, told the Department of State that if a resolution were passed, it should not mention Iraq by name but condemn the use of weapons in general, so as not to embarrass Baghdad. The US complied and Iraq got what it wished.