In Halabja, wounds remain raw 25 years after chemical attack

8/13/2019 In Halabja, wounds remain raw 25 years after chemical attack

1/66 0 ESQUIRE JANUARY 2014

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


2/6 JANUARY 2014 ESQUIRE 6 1

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



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.



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.



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.



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.

Date post:	04-Jun-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	orlando-crowcroft
View:	218 times
Download:	0 times

In Halabja, wounds remain raw 25 years after chemical attack

Documents