Iraqi Kurds mark 25 years since Halabja gas attack

[Aslan]

Clutching photos of dead relatives, mourners observed a minute's silence at the Martyr's Monument in Halabja.

An estimated 5,000 people, mostly women and children, were killed when Iraqi jets dropped poison gas on the town.

Many others died later of cancer and other illnesses, and the legacy of chemical contamination persists.

The attack on Halabja on 16 March 1988 was the most notorious act of chemical warfare in modern times, the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says.

Iraqi government forces attacked the town near the Iranian border after it was taken over by Kurdish rebels towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

Scarred memory
The exact number killed is not known, but ran into the thousands as townspeople choked on a mixture of mustard gas and nerve agents.

Researchers believe the contamination passed not only into the soil and water, but also into the gene pool, with abnormal numbers of children since being born with genetic malformations.

In a speech marking the anniversary, the regional prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani, called for 16 March to be recognised as an international day against chemical weapons, the AFP news agency reports.

The atrocity at Halabja scarred the collective memory of Iraqi Kurds and hardened their determination to run their own affairs autonomously within a loose Iraqi federation, our correspondent says.

The two men directly responsible - Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid - known as "Chemical Ali" - were hanged in 2006 and 2010.

The attack on Halabja was part of a wider campaign known as "Anfal" in which tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed by their own government.

[Aslan]

NEW YORK, United States – This week the Government of Iraq’s (GOI) Mission to the United Nations organized its third annual memorial to the victims of the horrific 1988 Halabja massacre. And though the March 11-15 exhibit is located right next to the Delegates Entrance -- the exclusive access for diplomats and UN staffers -- it seems that the message was missed by many who saw it.

According to the ethnically Kurdish GOI diplomat Lawen Hawezy, a number of UN staffers expressed disgust and distaste with the exhibit due to the graphic nature of the photos. Unlike pictures from most other acts of genocide, Hawezy points out, many of those at the Halabja memorial depict the aftereffects of a gas attack upon a civilian population, including deformities and severe burns. Furthermore, Lawen notes, the relatively recent nature of the attack (which happened 25 years ago this week), means that the photo quality is much higher than for previous genocides, making them all that more disturbing.

Those who did take the time to visit the memorial would see a very simple set-up: two thin, blue dividing walls covered in photos and a small television screen in between. There is very little writing in the exhibit -- and what text there is simply informs the reader of basic facts about the attack such as the death toll-- which puts the focus on the visuals.

When Rudaw visited the exhibit, however, it sadly saw very few attendees. With the exception of a couple of staffers who perused the photos for a few minutes, the only people who spent any actual time in the exhibit area used the quiet alcove to make calls on their cell phones.

The attack itself -- the largest chemical attack against a civilian population -- was also largely ignored by the West at the time.

On the morning of March 16, 1988, in the closing weeks of the war with Iran, Sadaam Hussein’s enforcer, Ali Hassan al-Majid (who henceforth became known as “Chemical Ali”), shelled the border city of Halabja with nerve gas and mustard gas. Gas canisters were strategically shot into the streets, the initial explosions breaking windows (making escaping indoors no safer than staying outside), and the odorless and colorless nerve agents VX and Sarin, along with the fruity-smelling nerve agent Tabin, killed many residents of the Kurdish city within minutes.

Sweet-smelling mustard gas soon filled the valley surrounding Halabja, making escape from the toxins impossible. Many affected by the nerve gas were seen laughing (a side effect of nerve agents), as they inched closer to death. At the end of the day, Ali’s attack left as many as 5,000 dead and 10,000 wounded.

“They were just innocents caught in the middle of a war between two nations,” Hawezy says. The lesson to be learned here is the same as that which the UN staffers, who feel so disturbed, work so hard to teach the rest of the world: when people look the other way on political or military conflict, horror like Halabja can get swept under the rug.

A quarter of a century after the attack, some world leaders are trying to better acknowledge the human rights abuses endured by Kurds under Saddam. Within the past three months alone, for instance, the parliaments of both the United Kingdom and Sweden passed resolutions recognizing Saddam’s anti-Kurdish Al-Anfal campaign (which included the attack on Halabja), as genocide. While most other nations have failed to pass such resolutions, it is at least a start to honor the innocents, such as the victims of Halabja.