Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
BY
SUSAN J. SCHUURMAN
BACHELOR OF ARTS
HISTORY AND SPANISH
CALVIN COLLEGE
1985
THESIS
Master of Arts
History
December, 2007
ii
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This thesis would not have been possible without the help of many people. Dr.
Denise Natali, University of Kurdistan-Hewler, Arbil, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, started
me on the right track with a brief but excellent reading list on the Kurds. My advisor and
chair of my thesis committee, Dr. Patricia Risso, was a cheerleader extraordinaire,
offering both academic and personal support. She, Dr. Noel Pugach and Dr. Enrique
Sanabria, my thesis committee, made substantial recommendations to improve the text.
Middle East analyst Joost Hiltermann provided professional encouragement at a crucial
juncture. Reagan Presidential Library archivist Lisa Jones efficiently supplied me with
photocopies of pertinent documents. Sophie Garvanian went out of her way to allow me
to scan photographs from a book in her possession. New Mexico Historical Review
(NMHR) colleagues Scott Meredith, Donna Schank Peterson, and Meg Frisbee provided
much-needed help with the images, and Sonia Dickey repeatedly motivated me to stop
researching and start writing already.
Louise Ladd supported my graduate work by providing me with a desktop
computer after hearing my sad tales of writing papers for our Middle East History class at
the library after work. She also gave me moral support and showed me by example that a
thesis could actually be brought from the theoretical realm to a tangible, loud thump-on-
the-table reality. Greg George gave me invaluable assistance in the selection of a laptop
that made writing the thesis much easier.
I would not be here if not for the help of many people during my recent breast
cancer treatment. I especially want to thank Dr. Ian Rabinowitz, my sister Kathy
Sikkema, my brother Wayne Schuurman, Anna Christina Peterpaul, Sarah Payne, Kristen
Bisson, Lorie Brau, Kristina Schauer, Spring Robbins, Kim Suina, Michele Brandwein,
Pat and Louise. Dr. Durwood Ball, Cindy Tyson and the NMHR crew have also been
there for me in so many ways. Both Durwood and my other employer, Field & Frame
owner Alan Fulford, gave me the flexibility I needed to get through my treatment. Their
support and that of others unnamed enabled me to recover sufficiently to tackle and
complete this project.
I’d also like to thank my family for their support, especially my mom, Nell
Schuurman, who asked for frequent updates on my progress, and my sister-in-law Lois
Schuurman, who in spite of her own current health challenges, found time to track my
growing page-counts. Thanks also to my Iranian Kurdish family, including my biological
father, Firouz “Phil” Sabri, who shared many colorful stories about the Kurds, sister and
brother-in-law Sabrina and Reza Ameripour, who helped me out at just the right time,
and Shahrzad Ameripour, who never failed to tell me how proud she was of my scholarly
pursuits.
Lastly I want to acknowledge the role model I had in attending graduate school in
the first place. Ann Peterpaul showed me by her example that graduate study in the
humanities was a worthwhile and achievable goal whether or not the degree could
confidently be linked to getting a specific job after graduation. For nudging me to go
back to school after a seventeen-year hiatus, I thank her.
v
AN "INCONVENIENT ATROCITY":
THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK ON THE KURDS OF
HALABJA, IRAQ
BY
SUSAN J. SCHUURMAN
ABSTRACT OF THESIS
Master of Arts
History
December 2007
vi
AN “INCONVENIENT ATROCITY”:
THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK ON THE KURDS OF HALABJA, IRAQ
by
Susan J. Schuurman
ABSTRACT
On 16 March 1988, the Iraqi military attacked the Kurdish town of Halabja with
chemical weapons, killing approximately five thousand civilians and injuring twice that
number. Taking place during the ethnic cleansing campaign called the Anfal (1987–
1988), the attack on Halabja was one of forty poison gas attacks against the Iraqi Kurds
but bears the dubious distinction of having the highest number of civilian casualties.
The English-language literature on the attack includes media coverage, human
rights reports, and an authoritative account by Middle East analyst Joost Hiltermann. I
briefly discuss the history of the Kurds, who are spread over Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria
and number approximately twenty-five million; the nature of the Ba‘athist government
under Saddam Hussein; and the wider Anfal campaign against the Kurds. The story of
March 16 is told from the point of view of survivors with emphasis on the experiences of
women and children. I then evaluate media coverage of the attack and the responses from
the U.S. government, the United Nations, and other actors. I conclude with an
examination of which persons and/or entities have been held accountable for the attack,
plus the long-term impacts on Kurdish survivors including how they memorialize the
Halabja attack today.
This study is based on English-language, written sources including reports by
Human Rights Watch, the UN, U.S. government documents from the Reagan Library and
Digital National Security Archive, and media reports. I argue that the Reagan
administration not only failed to hold Iraq accountable for the attack on Halabja but
actively worked to prevent others from sanctioning Saddam Hussein’s regime. The U.S.
allied with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988) largely because it saw the Islamic
Republic of Iran as a greater threat to Persian Gulf oil. Citing numerous internal memos, I
argue that economic considerations outweighed human rights concerns when American
foreign policymakers calculated how to respond to the attack on Halabja. My research
differs from Hiltermann’s, which focused primarily on the military and political context,
for its emphasis on women and children and the role Western companies played in
supplying Iraq’s chemical weapons industry.
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................iv
Abstract..............................................................................................................................vii
Table of Contents...............................................................................................................vii
Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................1
Methodology and Argument.....................................................................................4
Survey of the Literature...........................................................................................5
Chapter 5: Accountability...............................................................................................96
The Iraqi High Tribunal.........................................................................................96
The Companies That Supplied Iraq....................................................................101
Long-Term Impacts of Halabja on the Kurds......................................................110
Chapter 6: Conclusion...................................................................................................121
List of Appendices..........................................................................................................125
Appendix 1: Photographs of Omar Hama Saleh and Infant.................................126
Appendix 2: Map of Kurdistan.............................................................................127
Appendix 3: Photograph of Adela Khanum of Halabja.......................................128
Appendix 4: List of Articles from 11 March 1970 Peace Accord........................129
Appendix 5: List of Names of Civilian Victims...................................................130
Appendix 6: Photographs of Corpses in Halabja.................................................132
Appendix 7: List of U.S. Companies Supplying Arms to Iraq.............................133
Appendix 8: List of U.S. Companies Linked to Iraq’s CW Program..................134
Appendix 9: Photograph of Halabja Memorial....................................................135
Bibliography...................................................................................................................136
1
Chapter 1: Introduction
As U.S. President George W. Bush rallied support for regime change in Baghdad
during the winter of 2003, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons
against Iraqi citizens in the 1980s began to crop up after a long hiatus and in a completely
different context. Bush justified an invasion of Iraq with several factors, including
disarming the dictator of his remaining alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD), preventing such weapons from getting into the hands of terrorists (especially al
Qaida, in the post-September 11, 2001 attacks environment), and punishing the regime
for its past use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds. In particular, Bush cited an
event in which the highest number of civilian casualties occurred: the attacks on Halabja,
an Iraqi town of 70,000, on 16 March 1988, when as many as 5,000 Kurdish children,
women and elderly men were killed and twice that number wounded.
President Bush was not the first to use the attacks on Halabja as justification for
the so-called Coalition of the Willing to invade Iraq in 2003. In January the U.S. State
Department published a report, “Iraq: From Fear to Freedom,” in which Halabja looms
Only after the first wave of air and artillery bombardments had driven the
inhabitants to underground shelters did the Iraqi helicopters and planes return to
unleash their lethal brew of mustard gas and nerve agents. ... The inhabitants …
had no preparation for the nightmare that descended upon them—and continues to
wreak havoc upon the survivors and their offspring today.1
1
Like many observers of the Halabja incident, the authors of this report mistakenly refer to this town of
approximately 70,000 people as a village. This distinction is important because the Anfal campaign (see
chapter 2) targeted rural Kurdistan; thus, the attacks on the town of Halabja were not by strict definition
part of the Anfal campaign. U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs, Iraq: From
Fear to Freedom, 14 January 2003, 4. Although I accessed a hard copy, this report is also available at
http: //usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/iraq/.
2
The poignancy of the Kurds’ plight is vividly recalled: “As the gas spread and
animals died and birds dropped out of trees, the panicked families, many blinded by the
While at the time, the report claims, it was assumed several hundred people died, further
investigation had revealed the body count was in the thousands. The Iraqis, for their part,
used the attack as a “testing ground.”3 Without citing their presumably still classified
sources, the authors reveal that after the attack, Iraqi soldiers in protective gear divided
the town into grids to study the effectiveness of the chemical weapons in terms of number
and location of the victims. The State Department concludes that Halabja is a deadly
Two weeks after the State Department’s report was published, Bush gave his oft-
cited State of the Union address to the American people on 28 January 2003. In it he laid
out the reasons Saddam Hussein was such a threat to the United States. Attention has
focused on one particular line that drew much scrutiny: “The British government has
learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Hussein’s WMD were no idle threat and that he had actually employed chemical
weapons against his own people. “The dictator who is assembling the world’s most
dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages—leaving thousands of his
own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. … If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.”
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid., 6.
4
This revelation became part of the investigation into the leaked identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, wife
of American ambassador and Bush Administration critic Joseph Wilson. Office of the Press Secretary,
“President Delivers ‘State of the Union,’” <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-
19.html> (accessed 27 August 2007).
3
In March 2003, in a more specific reference, Bush used the occasion of the
fifteenth anniversary of the Halabja attacks to deliver a radio address consolidating the
considerable support his administration enjoyed for the imminent invasion only days
away:
This weekend marks a bitter anniversary for the people of Iraq. Fifteen years ago,
Saddam Hussein’s regime ordered a chemical weapons attack on a village [sic] in
Iraq called Halabja. With that single order, the regime killed thousands of Iraq’s
Kurdish citizens. Whole families died while trying to flee clouds of nerve and
mustard agents descending from the sky. Many who managed to survive still
suffer from cancer, blindness, respiratory diseases, miscarriages, and severe birth
defects among their children.
Listeners must have felt a wave of compassion for these victims as well as fear,
September 11 attacks were painfully fresh in the American psyche, having jolted the
nation out of its false sense of protected isolation between two vast oceans just two years
Governments are now showing whether their stated commitments to liberty and
security are words alone—or convictions they’re prepared to act upon. And for
the government of the United States and the coalition we lead, there is no doubt:
we will confront a growing danger, to protect ourselves, to remove a patron and
protector of terror, and to keep the peace of the world. 5
March 1988 contrasts sharply with the reaction of the U.S. government at the time they
occurred. Just what took place on that fateful day in the Kurdistan region of Iraq? Who
5
Office of the Press Secretary, “President Discusses Iraq in Radio Address,” transcript of President’s Radio
Address, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030315.html (accessed 27 August 2007).
4
are the Kurds, and what was their relationship with Baghdad, the Americans and the
United Nations before Halabja? How do those relationships and that context help us
understand the American and international reaction in 1988? What was the reaction of the
media, the U.S. government, Iraq’s Arab/Muslim neighbors, and the United Nations?
How did these actors justify their action or inaction? Who or what entities have been held
accountable for the attacks, and how do Halabja’s survivors memorialize March 16, if at
all?
organizations, archived U.S. government documents from the Digital National Security
Archive and the Reagan Library, Congressional committee reports, UN documents, and
media coverage. A more complete investigation (which was not feasible for this project)
would have included oral interviews with still living survivors and access to Kurdish-
language (Sorani) written documents located, among other places in the region, in the
archives of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK), the two major Kurdish political parties in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
After consulting my sources, I argue the evidence shows that at least three
thousand Kurdish civilians, largely women and children, were killed as a result of
chemical weapons dropped on Halabja by the Iraqi Air Force on or near the date of 16
March 1988; that the muted if not silent reaction by the international community in
priorities trumping human rights; and that, further, the U.S. government’s inaction and at
times active steps to prevent a punitive response created an environment which fostered
further deadly attacks on civilians. Whether such a posture can be defined as complicity
Not surprisingly for such a relatively recent incident (the 1980s are likely seen by
most historians as “current events”), no historian has written a history of the chemical
weapons attacks on Halabja, Iraq, in March 1988. Middle East analyst Joost Hiltermann,
who currently serves as Deputy Program Director for the International Crisis Group,
recently published the most in-depth treatment of the Halabja attacks to date in A
Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (2007). Thoroughly
researched and well-balanced, Hiltermann’s work draws from his experience working for
Human Rights Watch in the 1990s. He in fact is the author and/or contributor of several
reports by either Human Rights Watch or its subsidiary, Middle East Watch, on the Iraqi
campaign against the Kurds. His research involved hundreds of interviews with PUK
guerrillas who participated in the battle for Halabja, Iraqi military officers, civilian
victims of the attacks, and officials in the U.S. government, some of whom remain
anonymous. Hiltermann uses Halabja primarily as a hook to talk about a larger picture:
the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi regime in general and especially the U.S.
response over a five-year period beginning in 1983, when Saddam Hussein used chemical
weapons against Iranian troops during the Iran-Iraq War, to 1988, after the ceasefire. He
argues persuasively that the lack of a vigorous response by the U.S. government early on
6
gave a green light to Baghdad to proceed with chemical weapons use, and that those who
were complicit with such use will never stand trial.6 Hiltermann expends a great deal of
ink dissecting the debate over whether Iran also used chemical weapons on Halabja and
proves convincingly that the evidence does not support this charge. He also goes into
much detail about military strategy involved in the Halabja attacks as well as the broader
topic of the Iran-Iraq War. His work privileges male voices in positions of authority,
whether political or military; my focus will spotlight the experiences of women and
children, where possible, and of unofficial actors rather than elites. I will also attempt to
put names of individual persons on the faceless, nameless, monolithic statistic of the
5,000 victims.
A source that I was unable to access but would prove illuminating on the broader
Anfal campaign is an unpublished study by Kurdish researcher Shorsh Resool, who was
3,737 destroyed Kurdish villages and 16, 482 missing Iraqi Kurds based on interviews
with tens of thousands of Anfal survivors; his tally of the names of persons killed at
Halabja was at least 3,200.8 This study should be published and made widely available to
researchers, if not for history’s sake then for any efforts at compensating victims and
devoted to the Halabja attacks written by the late Shawqat Haji Mushir, who, according
6
Joost Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 244.
7
Shorsh M. Resool, The Destruction of a Nation (London: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, 1990),
unpublished report. Resool’s work is cited by Hiltermann, Meiselas, Power and others.
8
Cited in Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (New York:
Human Rights Watch, 1993), 27n8.
7
to Hiltermann, was killed by the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Islam in 2003.9 Mushir’s
wrote a long article for the New Yorker magazine after traveling to the region and
interviewing survivors fourteen years after the event.10 His sympathetic account,
published in 2002, was quoted at length in the State Department’s 2003 report. He uses
Halabja, the long-term health affects experienced by survivors, the Anfal, and the alleged
al Qaeda connection to argue in favor of regime change. Despite his bias, the quotes from
dozens of Kurds add to the written record about Halabja and the Anfal campaign.
Several human rights reports include sections on Halabja but have not enjoyed a
wide audience. Especially pertinent is one by Human Rights Watch (HRW) titled Iraq’s
Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (1995). Based on hundreds
exhumations, and the translation and analysis of tons of captured Iraqi secret police
documents obtained after the 1991 Gulf War and Operation Provide Comfort when
documents, HRW argues that “unequivocal evidence of Iraq’s repeated use of chemical
weapons against the Kurds” exists and that this evidence is “sufficiently strong to prove
[HRW’s] case against the Iraqi government as having the clear intent of committing
genocide—in keeping with the language of the Genocide Convention of 1951.”11 Dozens
9
Shawqat Haji Mushir, Karasati Kimiabarani Halabja bi Hari 1988 (The Sad Events of the Chemical
Bombing in Halabja in the Spring of 1988) (Suleimaniyeh: 1998).
10
Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Great Terror: Saddam Hussein Against the Kurds,” The New Yorker, 25 March
2002.
11
Human Rights Watch/Middle East Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign against the
Kurds (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), 232. My study will not dwell on the question of
whether or not the Iraqi regime was guilty of genocide, which is comprehensively covered by Samantha
Power in “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002). The
8
of the Iraqi secret police documents are featured in the original Arabic side-by-side with
their English translations. This report provides a wealth of useful testimonies and
background on the Ba‘athist regime framed around the objective of building a compelling
Other sources that refer to Halabja include Middle East analyst David
McDowall’s A Modern History of the Kurds (2005) which remains the single most
comprehensive history of the Kurds found in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and the former
Soviet Union; foreign correspondent Jonathan C. Randal’s After Such Knowledge, What
Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan (1997), which traces his journey to the
region in 1991; and former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Peter Galbraith’s
The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End (2006) which
discusses Halabja based on interviews with survivors conducted three years after the
Journeys in Kurdistan (2004) discusses Halabja with particular emphasis on the long-
McKiernan, in The Kurds: A People in Search of their Homeland (2006), assesses the
lack of accountability for companies who sold the chemicals to Saddam Hussein’s regime
which were used on the Kurds. Photographer Susan Meiselas, who encountered the Kurds
for the first time when photographing skeletal remains at mass gravesite exhumations for
story of how the secret documents were obtained, written by then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee
staffer Peter Galbraith, is itself fascinating and dramatic. See U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations,
Saddam’s Documents: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate (Washington,
D.C.: GPO, 1992).
12
David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 3rd revised edition, (London: I. B. Taurus, 2005);
Jonathan C. Randal, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan, (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997); and Peter Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American
Incompetence Created a War Without End (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006).
9
Middle East Watch in 1991, has attempted to create a virtual Kurdish archive in book
form and on the Web. Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997), cowritten with social
from primary source material on the Kurds presented in a collage format. (She has also
created a virtual Kurdish archive online.) Meiselas felt a special responsibility to acquire
and preserve photographs from the Kurdish diaspora after her particularly intimate
encounters with Kurds mourning their murdered relatives. One photograph (see
Appendix 1) portrays a scene that has become iconic for its depiction of a man, Omar
Hama Saleh, lying face down on the street, clasping an infant in his arms, both overcome
Finally, three other sources reveal in their own distinctive ways aspects of the
graphic and emotional report of the attacks within weeks after they occurred, taking full
advantage of the incident’s propaganda value in the context of the waning months of their
brutal eight-year-long war with Iraq. Iran had been petitioning the United Nations
especially to take more vigorous action against Iraq for its repeated use of chemical
weapons against Iranian soldiers. While the report’s text is dubious (religious zeal is
attributed to the Kurds who welcomed the Iranian troops entering the town just prior to
the chemical weapons attack), the photographs are useful for preserving a record of the
hundreds of corpses lying in the street and the journalists who videotaped and
Kurdish guerrillas known as peshmerga (“those who face death”) in Hell Is Over: Voices
of the Kurds after Saddam. Their recollections preserve more of a collective memory,
since they did not actually witness the attacks on Halabja itself. Kanan Makiya, author of
Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam’s Iraq (1989), published under the
pseudonym Samir al-Khalil, wrote an article on the Anfal which focused on the
eyewitnesses of the atrocities at Goptapa in May 1988 two months after Halabja. An Iraqi
Arab whose family left Iraq in 1972 because his father’s name appeared on a Ba‘athist
Party list, Makiya has seen the captured secret police documents and listened to the
audiotapes of Ali Hassan al-Majid (Secretary General of the Ba‘ath Party’s Northern
Bureau, dubbed “Chemical Ali” by the Kurds). Makiya questions why so much attention
has focused on the hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed during the creation of the
state of Israel while so little scrutiny has fallen on the thousands of Kurdish villages
There are sporadic mentions of Halabja in other works, but only in passing. In
time, as the Kurdish question of autonomy versus independence becomes more pressing,
more book-length historical works will certainly appear, written by Americans who are
gradually becoming more familiar with the Kurds, and by Kurds themselves, as their
society experiences the benefits of economic development and as literacy rates continue
to rise.
The story of Halabja begins in chapter two with a brief history of the Kurds
paying particular attention to their contentious relationship with Baghdad and on-
again/off-again relationship with the Americans. I also detail the nature of the Ba‘athist
regime under Saddam Hussein as well as Iraq’s Anfal campaign against the Kurds. In
chapter three the story of the chemical weapons attacks on Halabja is told with emphasis
on the experiences of Kurdish civilians, especially women and children, for whom the
label “dissident” or “insurgent” seems most inappropriate. Chapter four covers the
reaction by the media, the U.S. government, and the United Nations, as well as a brief
mention of the response from officials within the Arab/Islamic world and other actors.
Chapter five investigates issues of accountability: what international laws were violated,
what companies sold Iraq chemical weapons or the means to make them, who or what
entities have thus far been held accountable, and finally, what long-term impacts have
Kurdish survivors experienced and how do they recall the Halabja attacks today. Finally,
my conclusion, in chapter six, discusses implications for international law and human
rights that can be drawn from the chemical weapons attacks on Halabja on 16 March
Who are the Kurds? And why would Saddam Hussein and the Ba‘athist Iraqi
government target them with such brutality? What is the Anfal campaign, and were the
chemical weapons attacks on Halabja in 1988 part of it? This chapter will address these
questions by looking at a short history of the Kurds, the nature of the Ba‘athist regime,
and a description of the Anfal in order to place Halabja into its proper context.
Kurds are often defined in the negative. They are not Arab, Turks or Persians—
their neighbors who outnumber them. They do not have their own nation-state and are
frequently called the world’s largest group of people without a homeland. They number
approximately 25 million in the Middle East, but that is not a precise number because the
countries in which they live have no interest in gauging an accurate population census of
distinctiveness. The Kurds are currently divided among four countries: approximately
16
Quoted in Susan Meiselas, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, 374. Raqib is Kurdish for enemies.
17
This brief history of the Kurds relies largely on three sources: Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and
State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (London: Zed Books, 1992); McDowall, A Modern
History of the Kurds; and Denise Natali, The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq,
Turkey, and Iran (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2005). For a feminist analysis of the Kurds,
see Shahrzad Mojab, ed., Women of a Non-State Nation: The Kurds (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers,
2001). For an ethnographic study of Kurdish women in the 1960s, see Henny Harald Hansen, The Kurdish
Woman’s Life: Field Research in a Muslim Society, Iraq, Ethnografiske Kaekke no. 7 (Copenhagen:
Nationalmuseet, 1961.)
13
Turkey’s population but, with double the Turks’ reproductive rate, a number that will
certainly increase); about 5 million live in Iran; another 4 million reside in Iraq; and 1
million are in Syria. Half a million live in the former Soviet republics of Armenia and
Azerbaijan and another half million live in Europe, mostly in Germany. Kurdistan (land
of the Kurds), an imagined community if ever there was one, straddles these four West
Asian nation-states. The name is not officially on maps but is a powerful image in the
hearts and minds of Kurds (for a map of Kurdistan, see Appendix 2).
The Kurds speak Kurdish, a language that is further divided into two groups:
Kurds residing in Turkey (sometimes referred to as northern Kurdistan), Syria and the
former Soviet republics generally speak Kurmanji, while Kurds residing in Iraq and Iran
speak Sorani. In addition to these two overall language groups are dozens of dialects;
furthermore, Kurds use three different scripts (Latin in Turkey, Arabic in Iraq and Iran,
and Cyrillic in the former Soviet republics). Hence, one factor that would facilitate a
Kurdish identity is also splintered because of the divisive nature of their tribal
tradition. While the tribes’ influence on Kurdish society has diminished over the
twentieth century due to state policies and economic changes over time, tribal leaders
continue to hold a measure of authority especially in the context of village life. Identity is
closely linked to the land and in particular the mountains, even among town-dwelling
Kurds (the majority of Iraqi Kurds). A common saying is that the Kurds have “no friends
but the mountains;” in fact, the remote and rugged ranges have provided many a safe
14
haven for the peshmerga. These mountains separated the Kurds from their more powerful
neighbors—making assimilation, control, and tax collection difficult for ruling empires—
Origin myths are another window into a people’s identity, and the Kurds tell
several. One says the Kurds are descended from children who hid in the mountains to
escape the child-eating monster Zahhak; another depicts them as offspring of King
Solomon’s slave girls, fathered by the demon Jasad, who also fled to the mountains to
escape from the angry king. A third claims that the prophet Abraham’s wife Sarah was a
Kurd.18 The majority of Kurds are probably descended from Indo-European tribes that
migrated westward across Iran during the second millennium BCE. The first recorded
mention of the Kurds, as “Cyrtii,” occurred in the second century BCE and referred to
change their residence twice a year, oscillating back and forth between the mountain
pastures during summer and the plains during winter, their lifestyle dictated by the needs
of the sheep and goats they tended. Farmers raised crops such as grains, cotton and
tobacco but frequently did not own the land they tilled. In terms of religion, the majority
of Kurds are Sunni Muslim; a small minority are Shi‘a Muslim, Christians and Jews.
Before the Islamic conquest many Kurds were Zoroastrians; a small segment called the
Yezidis remain today whose religion combines elements of the monotheistic faiths with
Zoroastrian rituals.
18
McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 4. Another story of the origins of the Kurds claims they are
the offspring of Alexander the Great’s soldiers who intermarried the local population on their way to India
in the fourth century BCE. Interview, Firouz “Phil” Sabri, August 2002, Portland, Ore.
19
Ibid., 9.
15
One of the most famous Kurds and a celebrated hero for the Kurdish people was
the twelfth-century victor over Richard the Lionhearted during the Crusades: Salah al Din
(Saladin), who identified more as a fighter for Islam and founder of the Ayubbid dynasty
than as Kurdish. Other luminaries from Kurdish history include the seventeenth-century
poet Ahmad-i Khani whose poem Mem-u-Zin (Mem and Zin, often called the Kurdish
Romeo and Juliet) celebrated for the first time the Kurds as a distinct group; he called
them a “formidable yet oppressed people” cursed by their location between strong
empires.20 Another is Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, author of the first history of the Kurds, the
Sharafname, written in the late sixteenth century. His book tells the story of the rulers of
Kurds who have achieved legendary status more recently include a woman who
lived in Halabja. We know details of the life of Adela Khanum, or Lady Adela, largely
because of the writings of British traveler and political administrator Ely Bannister
Soane.22 Adela Khanum (d. 1924) was born into an aristocratic Kurdish family in the
principality of Ardalan, the major center of Kurdish culture in Iranian Kurdistan. She
married Osman Pasha, head of the Jaf tribe in Halabja and set up her household in the
Persian style with mansions and gardens around the turn of the century. After her
husband died, she continued to lead, building a prison and instituting a court of justice of
which she was president. She hired Soane as her scribe; probably due to his influence,
20
Ibid., 5.
21
Sharaf Khan Bidlisi, Sharaf-name: Tarikh-e Mofassal-e Kordestan (Extensive History of Kurdistan), ed.
Mohammed ‘Abbasi (Tehran: Ilmi Press, 1964). Cited in “The Making of Kurdish Identity: Pre-20th
Century Historical and Literary Sources,” by Amir Hassanpour, in Abbas Vali, Essays on the Origins of
Kurdish Nationalism, Kurdish Studies Series no. 4 (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 2003).
22
See Ely B. Soane, To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in Disguise (London: John Murray, 1912).
16
Adela sided with the British during Shaikh Mahmud’s rebellion in 1919 (for a
Two other heralded Kurds are from a more recent time period. Margaret George,
the most famous female peshmerga, fought alongside her father during the 1960s.
Perhaps her religious status as an Assyrian Christian permitted her more freedom than
Muslim women. Many male peshmerga carried a photograph of this “symbol of women’s
participation in the Kurdish struggle” in their wallets. In the 1990s, Leyla Zana became a
prominent figure and one of the most famous Turkish Kurds. Born in the Diyarbakir
region of Turkey, Leyla married at age 14 Mehdi Zana, the local mayor, who was later
imprisoned for political reasons. While he was in jail, Leyla, who could not read or write
Turkish, taught herself enough to become the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish
parliament in 1991. She and other deputies were charged with separatism after speaking
publicly in the Kurdish language, a crime for which she received a sentence of 15 years
in prison. In 1996 she received the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize. She was
In terms of their political history, the Kurds have consistently rebelled against
strong central authority ever since Kurdistan was divided up by the Great Powers after
World War I. This defiance played a critical role in Saddam Hussein’s treatment of Iraqi
Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s. A discussion of the contexts for these rebellions helps to
explain the contentious relationships the Kurds have experienced with the nation-states
23
Meiselas and van Bruinessen, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, 378.
24
Ibid., 378, 381.
17
Under the Ottoman system, from the sixteenth century to mid-nineteenth century,
the Kurds were permitted a significant measure of autonomy; in Persia, under the Safavid
rulers, the Kurds also experienced a period of political stability compared to earlier more
chaotic times (e.g., the Mongol invasions). This relative independence vanished with the
end of the Ottoman Empire. Ironically, the closest the Kurds have come to forming their
own nation-state occurred during this unstable period, and an American played a major
In January 1918, while the Europeans anticipating victory were trying to figure
out how to redraw the maps of the vanquished Ottoman lands among themselves, U.S.
President Woodrow Wilson issued his famous Fourteen Points; the twelfth point is well-
known by most Kurds today: “The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire
should be assured a secure sovereignty, but other nationalities which are now under
fulfilled, has not been forgotten by the Kurds. Another key document in Kurdish history
is the Treaty of Sèvres signed on 10 August 1920 between the Allies (largely Britain and
France) and the virtual puppet government they installed in Istanbul while Mustafa
Kemal (Ataturk, or father of the Turks) waited in the wings. Articles 62 and 64 of this
treaty promised the formation of an autonomous Kurdish region which would have the
right to vote for independence within one year if the League of Nations thought the Kurds
were “capable of such independence” and further stipulated that the newly formed state
would include the Mosul vilayet (present-day northern Iraq).26 But this treaty did not
25
Quoted in McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 115.
26
Ibid., 136-7. To read the complete text of the Treaty of Sèvres, articles 62 and 64, see pp. 464-65.
18
reflect the facts on the ground. Turkey regrouped under Kemal’s military leadership
during its war of independence, and the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne of 24 July 1923
trumped the promises made at Sèvres, dashing all realistic hopes for an independent
Each decade since has seen armed Kurdish rebellion of some sort.27 Shaikh
Mahmud Barzinji and his army rebelled against occupying British forces off and on
between 1919 and 1931 in the Sulaimaniya region of Iraq. There were three rebellions in
Turkey within a thirteen-year period. The first rebellion in the newly formed republic
took place in 1925 under the leadership of a charismatic sufi, Shaikh Said. The Mount
Ararat rebellion followed from 1928–30. In 1937 and 1938, the Turks crushed a rebellion
at Dersim by burning villages, killing thousands, and deporting most survivors to western
Turkey. After this pacification, Syria became the center for Kurdish nationalists from
Turkey. In 1932, the British, in an attempt to crush another rebellion, ordered the RAF to
bombard the “eccentric” religious leader Shaikh Ahmad of Barzan (Iraq), forcing him
and his men to flee to the mountains. His younger brother, Mulla Mustafa, surrendered
after hiding out for a year, and was exiled. Mulla Mustafa Barzani rebelled again from
1943–1945 and then fled to Iran, where he supported another Kurdish rebellion before
being exiled to the Soviet Union. Iranian Kurds formed the short-lived Mahabad
Republic in 1946, a Soviet-supported experiment for which the leaders were summarily
27
For more on these rebellions, see Meiselas and van Bruinessen, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, 64,
118, 192, 240.
28
The Mahabad Republic was declared by Qazi Muhammad on 22 January 1946 and fell on 15 December
1946. He was hanged on 31 March 1947. Iranian government forces also responded to the secession by
closing down the Kurdish printing press, banning the teaching of Kurdish, and burning all the Kurdish-
language books they could get their hands on. McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 241-45. The first
history of the Mahabad independence movement was written by U.S. ambassador William Eagleton, who
served as American consul in Tabriz, Iran, from 1959-1961, and later retired to Taos, New Mexico. See
19
Mulla Mustafa Barzani then formed the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), an
alliance between urban nationalists and tribal chieftains, although his leadership was
largely symbolic due to his Soviet exile until he returned to Iraq in 1958. This was a
watershed year for Iraq, when a military coup led by Col. Abdul Karim Qassem (prime
minister from 1958–1963) and the Free Officers overthrew the Iraqi monarchy and
established a military dictatorship (labeled a republic in name only, as elections were not
held).29 The Kurdish Revolt of 1961–1963 followed shortly after, led by Mulla Mustafa
Barzani, although clashes continued between peshmerga and government forces until
1970. It was into this context of perennial rebellion that the Ba‘ath Party took control in
Iraq.30
The 1960s were turbulent in Iraq in terms of central government. Qassem was
overthrown in 1963 and succeeded by the Arab nationalist Ba‘ath Party government,
which in turn was overthrown within less than a year. Abdussalam Arif assumed the
presidency until 1966; another coup put the Ba‘ath back into power in 1968.31
William Eagleton, The Kurdish Republic of 1946 (London: Oxford University Press, 1963).
29
William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, 2nd ed., (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
2000, 318.
30
While the rest of the story privileges the history of Iraqi Kurds, two other figures ought to be mentioned
in the context of twentieth-century Kurdish rebellions. In Turkey, the Partiya Karkari Kurdistan or
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fought a rebellion against the Turkish government from 1984-1999 led by
the now imprisoned Abd Allah (“Apo”) Ocalan. In Iran, the autonomy-seeking Kurdistan Democratic Party
of Iran (KDPI) was led by Western-educated Abd al Rahman Qasimlu until his assassination by Iranian
agents in Vienna in 1989.
31
For the general history of Iraq, see Phoebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, 2nd ed., (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 2004); Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
and Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, Iraq Since 1958: from Revolution to Dictatorship (London:
KPI Limited, 1987). For works focusing on the repressive nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, see Makiya,
[al-Khalil], Republic of Fear; and Makiya, Cruelty and Silence.
20
The Ba‘ath Party had changed in the five years it had been out of power. Ahmad
Hasan al-Bakr (Iraqi president from 1968–1979) dominated the leadership. In 1964 he
had appointed a young relative, Saddam Hussein, as secretary to the Regional Command,
and tasked him with reconstructing the party. That same year, yet another coup attempt
put Saddam and al-Bakr in prison, the former for two years. When they resumed power,
one aspect of Iraqi politics remained the same: the Iraqi people continued to be denied
representation in government.32
The Ba‘ath Party ideology was a combination of Arab nationalism and its version
of socialism (what van Bruinessen calls statism).33 Most of the members of the regime
were army officers with a disproportionate percentage being Sunni Arab. The emergence
Iraq’s history” was not a radical break with the past but a continuation of prior methods
and values but to a greater extreme.34 Saddam Hussein headed up a militia that controlled
the streets of Baghdad; the civil service and officer corps were purged; and public
The new regime at first reached out to the Kurds. Saddam Hussein himself, an
unlikely ambassador for peace, traveled to Kurdistan and thrust several sheets of blank
paper in front of Mulla Mustafa Barzani and asked him to write down his demands,
saying he would not leave until they had signed a mutually acceptable agreement. The
Peace Accord was issued on 11 March 1970, but within less than a year the agreement
collapsed, and the Ba‘ath attempted to assassinate Mulla Mustafa’s son Idris.35 Four years
later, Baghdad extended another seeming olive branch by creating the Kurdish
32
Tripp, A History of Iraq, 189, 192.
33
Meiselas and van Bruinessen, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, 240.
34
Tripp, A History of Iraq, 194.
35
For a list of the demands, see Appendix 4.
21
Autonomous Region in northern Iraq; however, the Autonomy Law of 1974 was
sabotaged over a failure to come to terms over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, whose
During this time, Mulla Mustafa began to find alliances outside of Iraq, among
the Iranians, the Mossad (the Israeli secret intelligence service), and the CIA. This
history and one to which they are particularly vulnerable. American support via the Shah
of Iran vanished, however, when Tehran and Baghdad signed the Algiers Agreement in
1975. In exchange for suspending all support for the Iraqi Kurds, Iran gained territorial
concessions in the strategic Shatt al-Arab waterway. U.S. Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, who had met with Mulla Mustafa Barzani in Tehran, later told critics that
“covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”36 The suspension of U.S.
aid to the Kurds is considered a moment of historic betrayal by many Kurds, added to the
unfulfilled promises conveyed in Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Within weeks, more than
100,000 Kurds, fighters and their families fled from encroaching Iraqi forces, crossed
into Iran and joined another 100,000 refugees that were already there.37 The Kurdish
alliance with Iran would reemerge as a thorn in Baghdad’s side during the Iran-Iraq War
(1980–1988).
Saddam Hussein, who was born in the village of Tikrit, took over from al-Bakr in
1979 in characteristic strongman fashion. Two weeks after assuming the presidency, he
announced the discovery of a plot against him and ordered the executions of twenty-two
36
This quote was made public when the Pike Report was leaked by Daniel Schorr to the Village Voice in
1975. U.S. President Gerald R. Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were accused of abandoning
the Kurds and refusing to provide humanitarian aid, a charge to which Kissinger made his famous reply.
Quoted in Meiselas and van Bruinessen, Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, 279.
37
McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 338.
22
senior officials, five of whom were members of the Revolutionary Command Council.38
Up to 500 senior members of the party were executed soon after. Hussein proceeded to
surround himself largely with provincial kinsmen from the Tikrit region.39
Thus, the Kurds were not the only segment of the Iraqi population to suffer under
the Ba‘ath. Human rights reports, based on interviews and the writings of Iraqi exiles
including Kanan Makiya, paint a chilling picture of life under Saddam Hussein. “Both the
rule of the party and the cult of the leader [were] enforced by various secret police
agencies, which instill[ed] the fear required to sustain the regime’s authority.”40 Those
who refused to join the Party were reportedly banned from teaching or attending
university and sometimes imprisoned. Members were forced to become secret informers.
In 1979, all teachers who refused to join the Party were fired. 41 In 1986 a law was passed
that made insulting the government or leader punishable with life imprisonment; if the
insult was blatant, then the sentence was the death penalty. According to the U.S. State
offenses with severe penalties.42 The government routinely used disappearances, torture
and arbitrary arrest, detention, and exile to suppress dissent, whether it be from Kurds, or
Sunni or Shi‘a Arabs. The State Department called Iraq’s human rights record “abysmal”
Iraq conducted secret courts, carried out collective punishments, and took out
retribution against relatives. The death penalty was specified for “any person who
38
Middle East Watch, Human Rights in Iraq, (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990), 50.
39
Tripp, A History of Iraq, 222–24.
40
Middle East Watch, Human Rights in Iraq, 9.
41
Ibid., 11.
42
U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988: Reports submitted to
the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, and Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of
Representatives by the Department of State (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1989), 1361.
43
Ibid., 1355.
23
Zionist or Masonic institutions.”44 Freedom of the press was nonexistent. Few Western
journalists had regular, unencumbered access to Iraq for nearly twenty years; the most
talented writers and artists were co-opted by the state to produce propaganda and given
housing and money in return. Freedom of movement was also severely restricted; not
only was emigration banned but travel outside the country not permitted except for a
favored few.
Saddam Hussein liquidated senior officials within the regime and his major
opponents: the Communists, the Shi‘a and the Kurds. Many Iraqi professionals, such as
writers, journalists, teachers and doctors, were members of the Communist Party;
according to exiles, the party was essentially wiped out between 1978–1980, as the Iraqi
prominent Shi‘a family, the al-Hakim, was noted for its contributions in theology, law,
medicine and science. Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, who had fled Iraq to Iran, made
regular radio broadcasts from Tehran calling for Iraqi Shi‘i to rise up against the regime
in Baghdad. In May 1983, between eighty to ninety male members of the al-Hakim
family, aged 9 to 80, were arrested and executed in front of Mohammed Hussein al-
Hakim, who was then sent to Tehran to warn if the activities did not cease, the other
family members would be executed as well. He was then told to return to Baghdad or his
three sons would be killed. He went insane and died in Tehran. The Iraqi government
44
Middle East Watch, Human Rights in Iraq, 28.
45
Ibid., 52.
46
Middle East Watch, Human Rights in Iraq, 52-53.
24
It was within such a repressive context that the Anfal campaign was launched
against the Kurds from 1987–1988. The United States would not come to their aid for
fear of undermining NATO ally Turkey, which was faced with its own Kurdish
insurgency in the form of the Partiya Karkari Kurdistan or Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK). The United Nations was not a realistic forum for Kurdish pleas, as Kurdistan is
not a sovereign nation-state. Iraqi Kurds, perversely, were represented at the UN by the
Iraqi (Arab) ambassador, who could hardly be expected to advocate on their behalf. The
The rebellious nature of Iraqi Kurdish leaders and peshmerga played a critical
role during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–1988. The war began when Iraq invaded Iran in
September 1980, right after abrogating the Algiers Agreement and claiming the Shatt al-
Arab waterway between the two countries as entirely under Iraqi sovereignty.48 KDP and
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) peshmerga, under the leadership of Masud Barzani
(Mulla Mustafa’s son) and Jalal Talabani, respectively, allied with Iranian forces off and
on during the eight-year war, drawing Iraqi military forces away from the key front in the
south near Basra. In 1983, for example, KDP units aided Iranian troops in the capture of
the border town of Haj Omran. Saddam Hussein’s retribution came in the form of the
abduction of between 5,000 and 8,000 Barzani males aged 12 and over; they have never
been seen again and are believed to have been transported to the south of the country,
47
The most authoritative source on the Anfal and prelude to Anfal are the reports by Middle East Watch,
which were based on over three hundred interviews with survivors and analysis of 14 tons of Iraqi
documents brought to the United States under the auspices of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
1992. This short synopsis on the Anfal relies on Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal
Campaign Against the Kurds (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993).
48
Tripp, A History of Iraq, 233.
25
executed, and buried in mass graves. In 1986 the PUK made a formal political agreement
In March of 1987, Saddam Hussein granted his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, the
secretary general of the Northern Bureau of the Ba‘ath Party, special powers to deal with
the Kurds. To quote al-Majid, or “Chemical Ali” as he is known to the Kurds, his
objective was to “solve the Kurdish problem and slaughter the saboteurs.”49 The Iraqi
regime employed dozens of euphemisms in its written documentation; saboteurs was the
term for Kurdish guerrillas (peshmerga) and civilian sympathizers, although, as we shall
see, even young children, obviously unable to express a political point of view, were
lumped together with dissidents under this term. Al-Majid spent two years, 1987-1989,
focused on this task. The Anfal campaign was just the final operation during this period.
The broader campaign against the Kurds, which Middle East Watch and other
observers, including the Iraqi High Tribunal (see chapter 5), have called genocide,
non-combatants, including large numbers of women and children and sometimes entire
populations of villages
• widespread use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and the nerve agent
dismantled electrical wiring and other infrastructure to erase any hint a community had
prior existed) of more than 2,000 villages and at least a dozen towns in Iraqi Kurdistan,
49
Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, 4.
26
• looting of civilian property and livestock on a vast scale by Army troops and
pro-government militia
(manateq al-mahdoureh), despite the fact they were on their own land
food, water, shelter, or clothing), of tens of thousands of women, children, and the
elderly, without charge or cause other than their presumed sympathies for the Kurdish
government settlements without provision for housing, clothing or food, and forbidden to
human being or animal found in the “prohibited areas,” an expansive swath of Iraqi
Kurdistan.51 In essence he emptied the Kurdish countryside and ethnically cleansed rural
Kurdistan in addition to targeting some Kurdish towns. His reign of terror culminated in
the six-month long Anfal campaign, which took place between 23 February 1988 and 6
September 1988.
50
Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, 4–5.
51
Middle East Watch, Bureacracy of Repression: The Iraqi Government in Its Own Words (New York:
Human Rights Watch, 1994), 68–69.
27
“Anfal” was the code word used by the Iraqi military for a specific series of
military actions during 1988. Before the Iraqi government used the term in this twisted
way, Muslims knew “Al Anfal” as the name of the eighth sura (chapter) of the Qur’an,
They ask you (O Muhammad) about (things taken as) spoils of war. Say: “(Such)
spoils (of war) are for Allah and the Messenger (Muhammad): So fear Allah, and
settle the differences between yourselves (with fairness): Obey Allah and His
Prophet (Muhammad), if you do believe.”52
One interpretation of this passage says that “booty taken in battle should never be our aim
in war” and that no soldier has an inherent right to it. Further, booty belongs to God, or
the community or the cause, and there should be no disputes about its division, as they
interfere with “internal discipline and harmony.”53 The passage is meant to promote good
relations among the Muslim community and to reduce friction based on greed for
cleansing of Iraqi Kurds and genocidal campaign against unarmed civilians and seeing
human beings as mere booty to be divided up among the vastly better armed Iraqi armed
forces, is seen as particularly perverse and an abuse of the Qur’an to many observers.
The Anfal campaign had eight stages. The First Anfal (23 February 1988 to 19
March 1988) targeted the Jafati valley (named after the Jaf tribe) near the Dukan Lake
dam northwest of Suleimaniyeh, and included the siege of Sergalou (“upper valley” in
Sorani Kurdish) and Bergalou (“lower valley”). Iraqi Defense Ministry orders from 23
52
Interpretation of the Meaning of the Glorious Qur’an: A Simplified Translation for Young People, trans.
Dr. Syed Vickar Ahamed, (Elhurst, N.Y.: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an Inc., 2003), 153.
53
A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an: Text, Translation and Commentary (Brentwood, Md.: Amana Corp.,
1983), 414.
28
purification.” PUK peshmerga were in the area, but both guerrillas and civilian villagers
There were thousands of people, many living in tents. I myself was injured, my
face became black and my skin was painful. I had trouble breathing. But these
were mild symptoms; others who were closer to the point of impact had severe
blisters. Some men suffered from swollen testicles.
The number of casualties is unclear; a PUK commander estimates that 28 people were
The Second Anfal took place between 22 March 1988 and 1 April 1988, a mere
three days after the First Anfal terminated. This stage targeted the nahya (district) of Qara
Dagh, a thin line of jagged mountains flanked by lowlands south of Suleimaniya. Qara
Dagh was fertile country; small farms grew winter wheat, barley, tobacco, rice, okra,
peas, green beans, tomatoes, melons and grapes. But the beauty and bounty of the land
did not protect the Kurds who lived and farmed there. Chemical weapons were fired from
rajima (truck-mounted artillery), herding the fleeing villagers and peshmerga into the
arms of troops as well as jahsh. Literally translated as “donkey foal,” jahsh was the term
used by Kurds for members of the pro-government Kurdish militia whom the Iraqis
called the fursan. These troops oscillated between collaboration and defiance—
sometimes following orders and implementing anti-Kurdish measures in exchange for the
license to loot and other opportunities for material gain, and other times coming to the aid
This second stage saw the first use of mass disappearance of people who were
and adult men; this stage also included the disappearance, especially from Germian, of
54
Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, 97, 99.
55
Ibid., 162.
29
women and children, including nursing infants. Eighty villages across Qara Dagh lost
hundreds of people. An eighteen-year-old young man named Akram, from Omer Qala,
was suspicious of the promises made by the army to his fellow villagers that nothing
would happen to those who surrendered. He hid in a barrel and watched; the five hundred
who gave themselves up were taken away and never seen again. Akram survived.56
Germian (“warm country”) was the focus of the Third Anfal, from 7 April 1988 to
20 April 1988 (only six days after the second stage). It is a large plain in the southern part
of Iraqi Kurdistan, close to Iraq’s Arab heartland. Captured cables, in a folder called “The
File on the Third Anfal Operation (Qader Karam sector), April 9, 1988,” describe 120
villages “stormed and demolished” or “burned and destroyed.” The intention was to
“wipe out all vestiges of human settlement,” according to Middle East Watch.57
recognized that chemical weapons had been used when she saw “a lot of dead goats and
cows and birds.” Unable to find her husband, Aisha fled to the hills with her children.
She hid with others in a cave; that night she gave birth but had no covering for the
newborn. She stayed there, without food, for three days before venturing out, leaving the
baby behind. She was quickly spotted and captured by the jahsh. 58
Fleeing civilians like Aisha were channeled by Iraqi army troops toward
designated collection points by blocking all other means of escape. Others surrendered,
believing announcements they heard over loudspeakers that males who turned themselves
56
Ibid., 123–24.
57
Captured Iraqi documents reveal an array of euphemisms used during the Anfal. Chemical weapons were
referred to as “special ammunition” or “special measures.” Other stock phrases whose meaning was clear to
all include “prohibited areas” which meant areas under rebel control, and “agents of Iran,” which meant
PUK guerrillas. Ibid., 132, 246.
58
Unlike many others from her area, Aisha survived Anfal and was even reunited with her newborn. She
lost her husband, three brothers and twelve other members of her family in the Anfal. Ibid., 135–36.
30
in would only be required to serve in the jahsh for one year. Men and women were
separated and taken by trucks to collection centers. Thousands were taken to Qoratu, the
notorious fort where prisoners were kept on starvation diets. Another destination was
Chamchamal, where residents watching fellow Kurds being herded off trucks staged a
spontaneous revolt to liberate the detainees. Townspeople threw stones at the trucks and
smashed the windows. Several dozen people escaped; however, the Amn (security police)
tracked many of them down, executed them publicly, and made family members pay for
the cost of the bullets before they could recover the bodies for burial. Middle East Watch
estimates that at least 200 villages were destroyed and 10,000 Kurds disappeared from
The Fourth Anfal, from 3 May 1988 to 8 May 1988, focused on the Lesser Zab
the city’s original Kurdish name). Iraqi troops were in high spirits, as a major battle of the
Iran-Iraq war in the south on April 17–18 had enabled Iraq to recapture the strategic Fao
peninsula from the Iranians (a victory clinched by the extensive use of chemical
weapons).59 Iraqi Air Force MIG fighters dropped chemical bombs on Askar and
Goktapa, killing 300 Kurds at the latter village. Nasrin, the 40-year-old daughter-in-law
told her in case of a chemical attack: head for the river and cover your face with a wet
cloth. She ran to the Lesser Zab river with seven of her eight children (her eldest
daughter, who ran in a different direction, was arrested and disappeared). With towels to
59
Up to 10,000 Iranian troops died in this offensive alone, making it the deadliest of the war. For a first-
hand perspective on the aftermath of this battle, see Rick Francona, Ally to Adversary: An Eyewitness
Account of Iraq’s Fall from Grace (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1999). For references to the
decisive role gas played in this battle, see Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair, 138; Francona, Ally to
Adversary, 23; and Robert S. Greenberger, “Iraq Opened Dangerous Pandora’s Box by Using Chemicals in
War With Iran,” Wall Street Journal, 1 August 1988.
31
their faces, they saw one bomb land in the water and dead fish rise to the surface; they
survived.
One document from the Army’s First Corps, a daily field report dated 6 May
1988, gives an indication of how many of those captured were women and children: 37
were “saboteurs,” presumably peshmerga, while the civilians included 60 men, 129
As villagers were rounded up and and their money and identity documents
confiscated, one jahsh protested loudly. In response, “[a]n angry military officer … told
him, ‘These people are heading toward death, they cannot take money or gold with them.
The law of the state says they are going to die.’”60 Not all were captured. Fifty villagers
from Darmanaw hid for twelve days in a cave, eating wild grasses. Hunger drove them to
the town of Taqtaq, where they were helped by locals and huddled in the chicken sheds
Some of those captured in this stage were taken temporarily to a livestock pen or
named Osman and his sister, “‘Take a chance, there are no soldiers here, run away. If
anyone asks you where you are from, tell them Taqtaq.’” Anfal, after all, targeted rural
Kurdistan, so being from a town would, according to strict “bureaucratic logic,” offer one
immunity.61 The siblings escaped with the help of another jahsh but lost their parents, two
brothers and three sisters, the youngest only three years old.
The Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Anfals, consisting of an assault and two follow-up
maneuvers over the same areas, occurred from 15 May 1988 to 26 August 1988.
60
Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, 180.
61
Ibid., 189.
32
Described as akin to a car’s windshield wiper motion, moving back and forth, Iraqi troops
“purified” the countryside between and including Rawanduz and Shaqlawa in the Balisan
valley northeast of Erbil (Hawler). These “clean-up” operations yielded much lower
numbers of people captured, as the population by that time had dramatically thinned. One
man from Hartal recalled walking through the nearby village of Wara just after the May
As soon as we arrived we saw four or five people in the orchard on the hillside.
They were obviously dying. … When we reached the center of the village, we
saw that the place was a mess. Food was still on the stoves. There were animals
lying all around, dead or dying, and we could hear their screams.62
In the early afternoon of May 23, waves of aircraft dropped chemical bombs on
the Balisan and Hiran valleys. By this time, the attacks were so frequent that the
peshmerga lost count of them. As survivors were taken into custody, the bureaucratic and
methodical nature of the Anfal is evident from another handwritten Amn field report
which stated, “On the night of June 2–3, thirty families from the village of Lower Bileh
were received by the military command of FQ 45. They were counted and surveyed by
us. We will presently send you lists of their names, addresses and birth dates.” No one
was to be “anfalized” until his or her personal data had been recorded.63
One progress report from the Suleimaniyah governate to the regional security
director at Kirkuk refers to the processing of Kurds which reached an industrial level at
62
Ibid., 196.
63
Ibid., 199–200.
33
persons, who were among those arrested during the heroic Anfal operations, were
sent [to Topzawa].64
Other elements of the Iraqi army, meanwhile, were busy destroying all signs that
villages had once stood where now there was only rubble. Refugees who returned in 1991
saw that “everything had been destroyed, exploded by dynamite; even the pipes were
taken that brought the water from the spring.”65 All signs of life, including the beehives,
had vanished. The poplar trees, which had been used for roofing, had been cut down. The
The Sixth and Seventh Anfal experienced some delays, perhaps due to the visit to
Washington, D.C., of PUK leader Jalal Talabani, who met with mid-level State
Department personnel.66 Saddam Hussein himself ordered that these campaigns resume
with “high momentum.”67 In July, the peshmerga were alarmed by reports that Iran was
This unilateral decision to end the fighting was a breach of the PUK’s agreement with
Tehran and threatened to leave the Kurds even more vulnerable, as Iraq could devote
On August 8 the Iranians accepted Saddam Hussein’s terms for the ceasefire, and
hardly a day went by for the next several weeks without more chemical weapons attacks
in the Balisan Valley. Preparations were in the works, under al-Majid’s direction, for the
so-called Final Anfal. Two dates were selected: August 25 to “soften up” their targets
64
Ibid., 210.
65
Ibid., 202.
66
Ibid., 203; and Elaine Sciolino, “Kurdish Chief Gains Support In U.S. Visit,” New York Times, 22 June
1988, A3.
67
Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, 205.
34
Whereas the first seven stages of the Anfal targeted peshmerga and civilians who
lived in PUK-controlled areas, the eighth and Final Anfal, from 25 August 1988 to 6
Kurdistan bordering on Turkey called Badinan. 68 Refugees fleeing the chemical weapons
attacks crossed into Turkey and attracted international attention for the first time during
the Anfal (other than a brief period following the Halabja attack on 16 March 1988).
Many contemporary observers believed the campaign against the Kurds commenced after
the August 8 Iran-Iraq ceasefire, but the operations in Badinan were merely the last act of
a brutal play that had started in February, six months earlier. Three Iraqi army divisions
were redeployed from the southern front around Fao and Basra to Iraqi Kurdistan for the
final push.
The KDP leadership did not predict a massive chemical attack. One regional
commander said, “After Halabja, we thought the international community would stop
Saddam Hussein.”69 He was mistaken. Forty-nine villages were hit with mustard gas and
nerve agents. Many Kurds, fleeing to the border, died not from the chemicals directly but
from exposure, hunger, malnutrition, and disease acquired in the refugee camps. One
particularly poignant episode concerns the bridge at Baluka over the fast-flowing Greater
Zab river, only four miles from the Turkish border. Hundreds of villagers and their farm
animals had converged on the bridge, fleeing the encroaching army in all directions.
Warplanes appeared at 1 p.m. on August 25, dropping two chemical bombs on Baluka
and several more over the river. A green cloud descended on the bridge, and piles of dead
people and their livestock made the bridge impassable. Ground troops and jahsh (called
68
The captured Iraqi army documents refer to Masud Barzani, son of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, as “the
offspring of treason.” Ibid., 262.
69
Ibid., 268.
35
tens of thousands of refugees headed for Turkey. The Iraqi Army tried but failed to close
off access to the border, and approximately 70,000 made it across. Many who did not
make it, especially males, were executed by firing squads at the point of capture.
Fifth Corps commander Brigadier General Yunis Zareb proudly reported on the
success of the Final Anfal to his superiors by listing his tally of the “saboteurs” taken into
custody: “Saboteurs surrendered: 803; saboteurs captured: 771; men: 1,489; women:
Although Kurdish leaders estimate that 182,000 people were killed during the
famously that the number was no higher than 100,000, as if he did not want to take undue
credit for exploits not actually achieved.71 Another often-quoted gem from the so-called
Chemical Ali tapes reveals his dishearteningly accurate picture of the effectiveness of
international law and institutions in terms of preventing genocidal campaigns like Anfal.
I will kill them all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? The
international community? Fuck them! The international community and those
who listen to them.72
By the end of the Anfal campaign, the Kurdish countryside had effectively been
pacified and emptied of nearly all life. And no one had stopped Saddam Hussein from
achieving this objective. But since it was a town, the worst single attack on Kurdish
civilians at Halabja, which chronologically occurred during the first stage, was not
70
Zareb also listed the “plunder” obtained by jahsh: cattle, goats, rugs, mattresses and blankets, watches,
cash and pieces of gold, picture albums, eating utensils, packets of powered milk and toothpaste.” He
complimented the jahsh for their “good physical fitness, especially for mountain-climbing.” Ibid., 289.
71
Kurdish officials present at a meeting with al-Majid in 1991 report that, when they brought up the
number killed during the Anfal as approximately 182,000, al-Majid jumped to his feet in rage, saying,
“What is this exaggerated figure of 182,000? It couldn’t have been more than 100,000.” Ibid., 345.
72
Ibid., 349.
36
technically part of Anfal. Survivors of Halabja, for example, who were caught up in the
Anfal dragnet were treated differently than other rural Kurds and often released by guards
if they were discovered to be from Halabja. Many observers have speculated that, if the
international community had intervened after Halabja in March, many of the victims of
the subsequent stages of Anfal, from April to September, could have been spared.73
73
See Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair, 244, for one such example.
37
What happened on 16 March 1988 at Halabja, during the first stage of the Anfal?
How did it differ from other chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds? This chapter uses
the stories of survivors to answer these questions. It mines clinical reports for short-term
impacts on survivors and briefly explores the military context of the attack as well.
Civilians bore the brunt of the attacks, since most of Halabja’s inhabitants were
non-combatants (the peshmerga were outside the city). Residents were unprepared for a
chemical assault and had little or no access to gas masks and/or atropine injections.
Halabja also boasts the unwanted distinction of having the highest number of civilian
wounded) from chemical weapons in history. (World War I poison gas casualties were
inflicted on the battlefield, and the 8,000 Iranian troops fatally gassed at the Fao
Peninsula were also combatants.) But statistics only tell one part of the story. Individuals
tend to get lost in the sea of numbers that is Halabja and Anfal. This chapter attempts to
put names and personal experiences behind the numbing quantities that become difficult
Nasreen’s Story
“At about ten o’clock, maybe closer to ten-thirty, I saw the helicopter.”
Nasreen Abdel Qadir Muhammad, a 16-year-old girl from Halabja, was outside
preparing food for her family on the morning of 16 March 1988. “It was not attacking,
though. There were men inside it, taking pictures. One had a regular camera, and the
74
For a list of the names and ages of civilian victims of the Halabja attacks compiled from UN and media
sources, see Appendix 5.
38
other held what looked like a video camera. They were coming very close. Then they
went away.”75
Nasreen had been married off by her father to her 30-year-old cousin, a local
physician’s assistant named Bakhtiar Abdul Aziz, several months earlier. That morning
she and her 15-year-old sister, Rangeen, were busy preparing food for the thirty or forty
relatives who were sheltering in the cellar. They and other residents of Halabja were
people. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard (pasdaran) and peshmerga had attacked Iraqi
positions just outside Halabja in the past couple of days, forcing Iraqi soldiers to retreat.
The pasdaran had entered the city, celebrating their substantial territorial gains.
Residents hid in cellars to seek protection from the artillery shells they were expecting.
Although she thought the videotaping was strange, Nasreen was preoccupied with
making lunch. The bombardment started around 11 a.m., and Nasreen rushed to the
cellar. At 2 p.m. the bombing eased, and she went upstairs to get the food. “At the end of
the bombing,” she said, “the sound changed. It wasn’t so loud. It was like pieces of metal
She noticed a strange smell. “At first, it smelled bad, like garbage. And then it
was a good smell, like sweet apples. Then like eggs.” She checked on the family’s pet
partridge in its cage. “The bird was dying. It was on its side.” As she looked out the
window, she saw more evidence of some invisible killer. “It was very quiet, but the
animals were dying. The sheep and goats were dying.” She went back to the cellar, where
she told the people something was “wrong with the air.”
75
Eyewitness accounts in this chapter are drawn from media, United Nations documents, and Middle East
Watch reports. Nasreen Abdel Qadir Muhammad’s story was obtained by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg
nearly fourteen years after these events took place. Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Great Terror: Saddam Hussein
Against the Kurds,” New Yorker, 25 March 2002.
39
The people began to panic. They didn’t want to leave the shelter, but they knew
they were getting sick. Nasreen felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her eyes. Rangeen looked
closely at her eyes and said they were very red. Then children began vomiting
continuously. “They were in so much pain, and crying so much. … My mother was
crying. Then the old people started throwing up.” The poison gas, heavier than air, had
clung to the ground and seeped down into the cellar, transforming the shelter into a gas
chamber.
Nasreen’s uncle said they should go outside. “We were getting red eyes, and some
of us had liquid coming out of them. We decided to run.” She and some of her relatives
tentatively emerged from their shelter. The first thing they saw was their cow, lying on its
side and breathing heavily. “The leaves were falling off the trees, even though it was
spring.” She saw the lingering killer. “There were smoke clouds around, clinging to the
ground. … It was finding the wells and going down the wells.”
They checked which way the wind was blowing and headed in the opposite
direction. The children were too exhausted to walk after relentless vomiting episodes.
“We carried them in our arms.” The family members were thirsty and wanted to wash
their faces and those of the children but couldn’t decide whether the water was safe. “The
children were crying for water. There was powder on the ground, white. … Some people
Nasreen and her relatives ran in a panic toward Anab (a collective settlement to
which the Iraqi Army had forced Kurds to relocate after destroying villages surrounding
the city of Halabja in an earlier campaign against the Kurds). The Iraqi Air Force
40
continued to bomb the city while they were running. “People were showing different
symptoms. One person touched some of the powder, and her skin started bubbling.”
A truck driven by a neighbor pulled up alongside Nasreen and her relatives, and
they piled into the back. “We saw people lying frozen on the ground. There was a small
baby on the ground, away from her mother. I thought they were both sleeping. But she
had dropped the baby and then died. And I think the baby tried to crawl away, but it died,
too. It looked like everyone was sleeping.”76 Nasreen thought the truck would ensure an
escape to higher ground and their survival. But suddenly, the truck driver pulled over and
abandoned the vehicle and all the people on it, including his wife. “The driver said he
couldn’t go on, and he wandered away. … He told us to flee if we could. The chemicals
affected his brain, because why else would someone abandon his family?”
Nasreen and the children who could walk continued up the road on foot. She
wondered if her husband had survived the chemical bombardment. The scene on the road
to Anab was one of chaos and confusion. She saw other children running for the hills and
screaming that they were going blind. “The children were crying, ‘We can’t see! My eyes
are bleeding!’” In the disoriented mass of people, the family became separated. Nasreen
lost her mother and father and then, under the mind-altering affects from the poison gas,
she inadvertently led her cousins and siblings in a circle, back into the city. Someone led
them back out again up a hill to a small mosque where they sheltered, exhausted and
hungry. “But we didn’t stay in the mosque, because we thought it would be a target.”
They found a small house nearby and huddled there. Nasreen scrambled to find water and
something to eat for herself and the children. It was night, and they were all exhausted.
76
For photographs of corpses lining the streets of Halabja taken by Iranian journalists days after the attacks,
see Appendix 6.
41
Meanwhile, Nasreen’s husband, Bakhtiar, was frantically searching for his wife.
“My plan was to bury her,” he said, fully expecting to find her dead. “At least I should
bury my new wife.” He had scavenged two syringes of atropine, a drug that helps to
counter the effects of nerve agents, from a local clinic. He injected himself with one and
went looking for Nasreen. After hours of fruitless searching, some neighbors told him
they had seen her and the children headed for the mosque on the hill. “I called out the
name Nasreen,” Bakhtiar recalled. “I heard crying, and I went inside the house. When I
got there, I found that Nasreen was alive but blind. Everybody was blind.”
Nasreen had lost her sight an hour or so before Bakhtiar found her. She was
searching for food for the children when she became blind. “I found some milk and I felt
my way to them and then I found their mouths and gave them milk,” she said.
Bakhtiar tried to wash the chemicals off the children. “I wanted to bring them to
the well. I washed their heads. I took them two by two and washed their heads.” But this
simple task was difficult, as the chemicals had affected the children’s motor skills. “Some
Having one syringe left of atropine, Bakhtiar decided to give it to the person who
was most heavily overcome by chemicals, one of his neighbors. “There was a woman
named Asme. … She was not able to breathe. She was yelling and she was running into a
wall, crashing her head into a wall. I gave the atropine to this woman.” But Asme died
soon thereafter, and Bakhtiar wonders if he made the right choice. “I could have used it
for Nasreen.”
After the bombardment, Iranian troops reentered the city from the border eleven
miles away to occupy the area and provide humanitarian aid to the Iraqi Kurds, their
42
intermittent allies in the Iraq-Iran War. They buried thousands of deceased victims and
evacuated survivors to hospitals and clinics in Iran. Nasreen and other members of her
named Muhammad came up from his cellar and saw something unusual.77 “A helicopter
had come back to the town, and the soldiers were throwing white pieces of paper out the
side.” Later, he realized they were measuring wind speed and direction so the chemical
In the northern part of town, Nouri Hama Ali, like Nasreen, decided to lead his
family to Anab. “On the road to Anab, many of the women and children began to die,” he
remembered. “The chemical clouds were on the ground. They were heavy. We could see
them.” Children who could not continue were abandoned by hysterical parents too afraid
to stay behind. “Many children were left on the ground, by the side of the road. Old
people as well. They were running, then they would stop breathing and die,” he said.
Near the Julakan neighborhood, a twenty-year-old young man named Awat Omer
was overwhelmed by the smell of garlic and apples. He and his family were trapped in
their cellar as clouds of gas smothered the city. His brother began to laugh
uncontrollably, took off all his clothes and died soon after. As night fell, the children
77
Halabja’s Jewish community emigrated to Israel in the mid-1950s.
78
The stories of Muhammad, Nouri Hama Ali, Awat Omer and Muhammad Ahmed Fattah, told to a
journalist fourteen years later, are drawn from Goldberg, “The Great Terror.”
43
overwhelmed by an oddly sweet odor of sulfur. His family’s cellar was packed with 160
people. “I saw the bomb drop,” he recalled. “It was about thirty meters from the house. I
shut the door to the cellar. There was shouting and crying in the cellar, and then people
became short of breath.” His brother Salah’s eyes were pink, and something was oozing
out of them. “He was so thirsty he was demanding water.” Others began to shake with
tremors.
March 16 was supposed to have been Muhammad’s wedding day. His fiancée,
Bahar Jamal, was one of the first in the cellar to succumb to the gas. “She was crying
very hard. I tried to calm her down. I told her it was just the usual artillery shells, but it
didn’t smell the usual way weapons smelled.” Bahar knew she was dying. “She was
smart, she knew what was happening. She died on the stairs. Her father tried to help her,
In the same cellar, Hamida Mahmoud tried to save her two-year-old daughter
Dashneh by allowing her to nurse. She thought the child might not breathe in the gas if
she were breastfeeding. Hamida died with Dashneh still at her breast. By the time
Muhammad went outside, most of the people in the cellar were unconscious; his mother
Jamila Abdullah, a 28-year-old elementary school teacher, said, “It was half past
six in the afternoon and the Iraqis had already left the town. I was at home when I heard
the explosion and then smelt the bad smell.”79 She placed a wet scarf over her face. Abdul
Rahman, a sixty-year-old mosque employee, was found wandering about the deathly
79
Jamila Abdullah was interviewed by a journalist in a clinic in Bakhtaran, Iran, less than a week after the
event. Nicholas Beeston, “Gas Victims Frozen in the Agony of Death,” The Times (London), 22 March
1988.
44
quiet streets of Halabja some five days after the attacks. “I do not know where my
Soman Mohammed, a 14-year-old boy, said he saw black jet fighters drop bombs
which smelled like “weed killer.” He said he was in the center of town when the attacks
Haj Ali Rasa, 50 years old, survived by hiding in his root cellar beneath his house.
“There was no army here, just people,” he told a journalist. “The white clouds came from
Mohamed Mahmoud Bharam, 35, said a “sudden harsh smell” made him fly out
of his house and up into the hills as the chemical attacks began. Mustard gas penetrated
through his clothes, burning all over like “scalding water.” He lost consciousness and was
Aras Abed was in the hospital when the attacks took place. His parents and twelve
brothers and sisters all died when warplanes dropped chemical bombs on Halabja. He
found their bodies the day after the attack in an underground shelter. “I screamed,” he
Testimonials from survivors like those above help to flesh out the personal impact
the attacks had on individual people. In addition, they form a record for potential
subsequent prosecution and compensation, as well as fodder for historical analysis and
80
Ibid.
81
Paul Koring, “High Civilian Toll in Iraqi Attack on City: Poison-Gas Victims Recall Bomb Horror,” The
Globe and Mail (Canada), 22 March 1988.
82
Paul Koring, “Poison-Gas Attack Leaves City of Dead: At Least 4,000 Killed in Halabja,” The Globe
and Mail (Canada), 24 March 1988.
83
John Bierman, “A Terrible Survival,” Maclean’s, 11 April 1988.
84
Caroline Hawley, “Halabja Survivors Seek Justice,” BBC News, 19 October 2005.
45
A Clinical Assessment
Some of the survivors from the Halabja attacks were evacuated by Iranian troops
to one of three hospitals in Tehran (Labbafi-Nejad Hospital, Baghiat Ullah Hospital, and
Loghman-al-Doleh Hospital), the Mofatteh Convalescence Centre near Tehran, and the
clinic at the Bakhtaran Reception and Monitoring Centre. Just over a week after the
attacks, Dr. Manual Dominguez, under the auspices of the UN, examined seventy patients
at these medical facilities and documented his findings in a report prepared for Secretary
General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar. The report’s appendix, “Summary Report on Patients
Examined by the Medical Specialist with Relevant Clinical Data,” includes brief
descriptions of the circumstances of the injuries as told by the patients and physical
victims were very young—infants—making the labels “dissident” and/or “rebel,” which
were often later applied to them, appear inaccurate and inappropriate. Several of the
women were pregnant at the time of the attacks yet somehow managed to deliver healthy
85
United Nations, “Report of the Mission Dispatched by the Secretary-General to Investigate Allegations
of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Conflict Between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq,” 25 April
1988, UN document no. S/19823/Add. 1.
A colonel in the Spanish Army Medical Corps, Dominguez had been sent to Iran on four previous
occasions (in 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1987) by the UN Secretary General in order to investigate claims that
Iraq had used chemical weapons. UN, “Report of the Mission Dispatched by the Secretary-General to
Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Conflict Between the Islamic Republic of
Iran and Iraq,” 10 May 1988, UN document no. S/19823, pp. 2, 6.
Dominguez examined soldiers as well as civilians; my focus will remain on his civilian patients.
For an extensive and thorough analysis of the military nature of the Halabja attacks, from the Iraqi,
Kurdish, and Iranian combatants’ points of view, see Joost Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq,
and the Gassing of Halabja, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
46
relatively good condition, exhibiting symptoms that did not appear to be life-threatening,
others were struggling to breathe or were unconscious. The litany of horrific symptoms
oedema (severe swelling of the eyelids), erythema (redness/inflammation of the skin) and
leukopenia (low white blood cell count). Some examples from his case notes follow.
The youngest victim examined by Dominguez (case no. A-57) was the unnamed,
two-month-old son of another patient, Sabihe Ali. The report brusquely states: “On both
buttocks there are lesions resembling second-degree burns. Genitalia slightly swollen
victim, a six-month-old female, was categorized as “unidentified child” and described as:
“General condition good. Moderate conjunctivitis. On the right cheek there are remnants
of a vesicle that has scabbed over. Surface of thorax up to 5 cm above navel exhibits
brownish pigmentation.”87
Madhi’s case notes include one paragraph about the circumstances of the injuries (using
language that is repeated throughout the report nearly verbatim) and another on her
symptoms.
While outside her home, she was exposed to the effects of a chemical agent from
an aerial bomb. First symptom she complained about was a burning sensation
over entire body.
86
UN, “Report of the Mission Dispatched by the Secretary-General to Investigate Allegations of the Use of
Chemical Weapons in the Conflict Between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq,” 25 April 1988, UN
document no. S/19823/Add. 1, case nos. A-56, A-57, p. 29.
87
Ibid., case no. A-51, p. 26.
47
Three-year-old Mahnaz Mohammad, a little girl, was in much worse shape, suffering
Four-year-old Ardalan (no last name listed), a small boy, had experienced “acute
year-old girl whose mother was “not affected” because she was on “the upper floor of
their dwelling,” was faring somewhat better. While her general condition was described
as “good,” she displayed darkened patches of skin across her chest, and her legs were red
and covered with “scattered lesions resembling second-degree burns.”91 Injuries of others
must have been quite extensive if Conna’s symptoms qualified her as being in “good”
condition. Another unidentified child, aged four, was listed in good condition but with
dark pigmented areas and lesions, one as large as 15 cm. His future was particularly
uncertain, because Dominguez noted “his parents have died or are missing.”92
Three of the females examined were pregnant; one cannot help but notice how
young many of these girls were and how many children they already had at such a tender
88
Ibid., case no. A-26, p. 14.
89
Ibid., case no. A-10, p. 6.
90
Ibid., case no. A-52, p. 27.
91
Ibid., case no. A-48, p. 25.
92
Ibid., case no. A-31, p. 16.
48
age.93 One patient, 22-year-old Khadijeh Abdolrahim, is listed as having five children
“whose whereabouts she does not know.”94 Marayam Mohammad Amin, aged 15, was
four months pregnant when the attacks occurred and had four children, one of whom died
“as a result of attack with chemical weapons.” The report continues to describe her
plight:
She does not know what has become of the other three [children]. When the air
attack occurred, she went down to the basement of her home and came back up
when she thought the danger was over. The first symptom she noticed was ocular
irritation.
She exhibited scabby lesions around her mouth and lower lip, had a fever for four days
and suffered from leukopenia. The back of her hands were black, and her ankles were
ulcerated. She had a moderate cough, aphonia and pruritus (itchiness) on both legs.95 A
patient like Amin must have been in deep psychological shock from not knowing the
Twenty-one-year-old Shamsi Mohamad experienced the loss of one child and the
birth of another. “While inside her home, she was exposed to contents of bombs dropped
by aircraft. She realized she had been affected when she started vomiting.” Dominguez
dryly summarizes the emotional roller-coaster ride this woman must have been
experiencing:
This patient picked up one of her children (a two-year-old boy) and held him in
her arms during the attack. The child has since died. She has given birth to a
healthy infant at the Convalescence Centre.
One wonders how this child and others in utero during the attacks fared later in terms of
healthy childhood development. Mohamad, meanwhile, was in good condition after the
93
A combination of factors undoubtedly contributed to such a practice, including cultural traditions, low
levels of education, and minimal access to reproductive health care.
94
Ibid., case no. A-17, p. 9.
95
Ibid., case no. A-8, p. 5.
49
delivery but exhibited lesions resembling second-degree burns with dark patches over her
thorax, lesions and ulcerations on her toes, laryngitis and aphonia.96 Nasrin Mohammad,
age 25, also delivered a healthy infant while at the centre; her only lingering symptoms
after initial eye problems were an inflamed larynx and loss of voice.97
The tendency for chemical weapons to affect the genitalia is quite evident. A
symptoms:
practically leaps off the page. In other words, the inflammation must have been severe.
Experiencing pain in and the indignity of examination of such intimate areas surely
compounded other more disabling injuries. Davood Karim, a 52-year-old male civilian,
was described as being in “very bad” condition, with severe conjunctivitis, photophobia,
and very black pigmentation on his face, neck, chest and back. His armpits were
ulcerated, his abdomen had lesions resembling second-degree burns, and his arms were
covered with a striped pattern of lesions. “Scrotum and skin of penis are black and
swollen.” He was inside his home at the time of the attacks.99 The genitalia of females as
well as males were affected. Kochar Ali, a 22-year-old woman, was in generally
satisfactory condition according to the case notes, but her left armpit and arm were
96
Ibid., case no. A-21, p. 11.
97
Ibid., case no. A-22, p. 12.
98
Ibid., case no. A-45, p. 23.
99
Ibid., case no. A-46, p. 24.
50
covered with an “enormous lesion resembling [a] second-degree burn and stopping at the
level of the wrist. … Genital region is severely ulcerated. Dyspnea [shortness of breath]
Finally, two other patients’ case notes comprise examples of how gravely some of
the Kurds were injured. Thirty-year-old Ayeshe Rashid’s general condition, Dominguez
noted, was “very bad.” She was unconscious, had blepharitis (swollen eyelids) and
palpebral oedema so extensive the corneas could not be examined; her face was black,
and her trunk covered in burn-like lesions. “Legs show remnants of vesicles which have
left exposed surface raw.” Her genitalia were severely affected, the report continues, and
she was in such respiratory distress she required a tracheotomy as well as nasogastric
intubation. Her lab work revealed pancytopenia—low red and white blood cell and
platelet counts.101 An unidentified child, guessed to be about five years of age, was in
poor condition. “She is in pain. … Face ulcerated and with scabs in some areas.” She had
swollen, infected eyes, a black and ulcerated neck, and second-degree burns across her
chest. Her left ankle was ulcerated as well; she had tracheolaryngitis with frequent
coughing.102
Taken together, the case notes recorded by the UN medical specialist indicate a
weapons attack. The question remains, however, if there were 10,000 people injured in
the Halabja attacks, why there weren’t larger numbers of patients at the hospitals
Dominguez visited? Perhaps some remained in Iraq and sought medical attention there
rather than evacuating across the border to Iran; patients may have been distributed
100
Ibid., case no. A-16, p. 9.
101
Ibid., case no. A-18, p. 10.
102
Ibid., case no. A-25, p. 13.
51
among dozens of Iranian hospitals, of which the UN team only visited a handful; and
some of the injured could have considered their injuries not sufficiently serious to
warrant professional medical treatment. The reason is unclear at the moment. Perhaps
documents that can shed light on this question will be made public in the future.
By March of 1988, the Iran-Iraq War was in its eighth year of duration. Iraq had
begun to increase the number of missile strikes against Tehran in the “War of the Cities”
campaign. Military analysts state that as many as 182 scud-B missiles with an extended
range capable of reaching the Iranian capital some 340 miles from the Iraqi border were
launched from the end of February to mid-April.103 The Iraqis were apparently trying to
lure the Iranians into organizing an attack in order to improve the Iraqi position at the
Tehran launched three different offensives in quick succession, each in the north.
The first, called Zafar 7, took place on March 13 and consisted of joint operations
between the Revolutionary Guard (pasdaran) and the PUK peshmerga. The second
attack, called Bait al-Maqdis 4, occurred on March 14, and enabled Iranian forces to
come within twelve miles of Suleimaniyeh. The third, a much larger and more significant
offensive codenamed Val-Fajr 10, was announced on Tehran radio on March 16.104 Val-
Fajr 10 was the operation that triggered the attacks on Halabja. Tehran claimed it had
103
Richard Jupa and Jim Dingeman, cited in Middle East Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, 326 n18. This
brief discussion of the military context, dealt with in-depth by Hiltermann in A Poisonous Affair, is drawn
from these two sources.
104
Previous Val-Fajr designations had included such major campaigns as Val-Fajr 1, Iran’s first land assault
on Iraq in February 1983, and Val-Fajr 8 and 9 in February 1986, which consisted of the simultaneous
capture of the Fao Peninsula and areas within artillery range of Suleimaniya. Middle East Watch, Iraq’s
Crime of Genocides, 69, 326 n23.
52
advanced as far into Iraqi territory as the eastern shores of Darbandikhan Lake and, more
During the battle in the areas surrounding Halabja, the pasdaran managed to
capture more than a thousand Iraqi troops, including some officers. Versions of the
operations are contradictory and imprecise in terms of dates (whether they occupied the
city on the 13th, 14th, or 15th of March)105. The PUK claim a large role in the taking of
But Baghdad did not send ground troop reinforcements. Instead, as Middle East
Watch puts it, “it had an entirely different strategy in mind.”106 On the 15th of March,
pasdaran were celebrating in the streets of Halabja, shouting “God is great! Khomeini is
our leader!” Some asked where the Shi‘a holy cities of Karbala and Najaf were, under the
mistaken belief that they were close by. But the vast majority of the townspeople were
From the point of view of Baghdad, Halabja was strategically important for two
reasons: its location and the questionable loyalty of the local population during Kurdish
rebellions and the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988). Halabja is situated only seven miles away
from Darbandikhan Lake, and its dam controls a significant portion of Baghdad’s water
supply. In terms of allegiance, local residents’ previous support for PUK guerrillas had
led the Iraqi government to retaliate against the townspeople back in May 1987. Two
neighborhoods, Kani Ashqan and Mordana, were bulldozed and their inhabitants were
forcibly moved to camps on the edge of town.107 The lack of resistance by the local
townspeople in March 1988, after PUK peshmerga and Iranian Revolutionary Guard
105
Hiltermann covers the various versions given by participants he interviewed. Hiltermann, A Poisonous
Affair, 107–20.
106
Ibid., 70.
107
Ibid., 69.
53
troops entered Halabja, triggered another incidence of collective punishment by the Iraqi
The Iraqi counterattack began on 16 March with conventional weapons, air strikes
and artillery from the nearby town of Sayed Sadeq. The first strikes reportedly contained
napalm or phosphorous. One witness told Middle East Watch that “there was a huge
sound, a huge flame, and it had very destructive ability. If you touched one part of your
body that had been burned, your hand burned also. It caused things to catch fire.” The air
raids continued for hours. “Six planes would finish and another six would come.” 108 The
people could see clearly the bombardment came from Iraqi aircraft. Around 3 p.m. on 16
March, people in shelters began to smell what they described most often as sweet apples,
perfume, or cucumbers. The chemical weapons attack concentrated in the north of the
When the people emerged from their shelters, it was dark. The electricity had
been knocked out the day before by artillery fire. They saw dead bodies of humans and
animals littering the streets, sprawled in doorways, slumped over their car steering wheels
and survivors stumbling about, laughing hysterically, then collapsing. Pasdaran were
also about, wearing gas masks. Those who could ran toward the Iranian border, many
barefoot. There had been a freezing rain which turned the ground into mud. Symptoms
worsened as the night wore on, and many succumbed on the side of the road. 109
At dawn, Iraqi planes hovered overhead, watching the exodus. Refugees, fearing
more attacks, avoided the roads and walked through mountains in spite of the danger of
land-mines. Six thousand people are estimated to have sought refuge in the earlier
108
Ibid.
109
Ibid., 71.
54
destroyed villages of Lima and Pega, and another thousand at the former village of
Daratfeh.110
The Iranians would occupy Halabja until July; before relinquishing control they
looted the town’s offices and homes of anything that moved (office equipment, books,
carpets), blew up two bridges, and captured security agency files which they later used
against their own Kurdish opposition who often sought sanctuary in Iraqi Kurdistan (e.g.,
members of KDPI).111 When the Iraqis reoccupied Halabja in July, they finished the job
of the city’s destruction by leveling virtually every structure with dynamite and
bulldozers.112
after doctors administered atropine injections. Some survivors spent two weeks in a
converted schoolhouse in Hersin; others were later moved to two refugee camps—
Sanghour, near Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf, and Kamiaran in Kermanshah
Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz was quoted in a Jordanian newspaper as saying,
“The loss of Halabja is a regrettable thing. Members of Jalal al-Talabani’s group are in
the area, and these traitors collaborate with the Iranian enemy.”113 The chemical attacks
on Halabja dealt a crushing psychological blow to the peshmerga and the civilians who
supported them. By March 18, PUK headquarters were stormed by Iraqi forces and
110
Ibid.
111
Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair, 122.
112
Middle East Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, 71.
113
Sawt al-Sha’b, translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), cited in Middle East
Watch, Iraq’s Crime of Genocide, 327 n32.
55
As for Nasreen’s fate, she and some family members were taken to a hospital in
Tehran. She was blind for twenty days. She said she lay in bed thinking, “Where is my
family? But I was blind. I couldn’t do anything. I asked my husband about my mother,
but he said he didn’t know anything. … He was avoiding the question.” The Iranian Red
Crescent Society had begun compiling books of photographs of the dead from Halabja in
order to facilitate informing next-of-kin. “The Red Crescent has an album of the people
who were buried in Iran,” she said, “and we found my mother in one of the albums.”114
Her father was alive but permanently blind. Her sister Rangeen and four other siblings
were dead. Like many other women, she began menstruating profusely while in the
hospital, received drugs that stopped the bleeding and was told she could not have
children.
After staying in Iran for several months, Nasreen and her husband returned to
Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1991 she gave birth to a boy who they named Arazoo (Kurdish for
hope). “He was healthy at first, but he had a hole in his heart. He died at the age of three
months.” By the time she spoke with a Western journalist in 2002, she was 30 and living
in Erbil (Howler), the largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan. She didn’t want pity, she said, but
did request that a doctor help her with a cough she’d had for fourteen years.115
114
Goldberg, “The Great Terror.”
115
Ibid. For more on long-term health affects from the Halabja attacks, see chapter 5.
56
Back in the spring of 1988, overall reaction to the Halabja attacks was muted. In
fact, Saddam Hussein was not encumbered in any way from continuing to use chemical
weapons against Kurdish civilians for the next six months. Later, much greater attention
focused on chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds after images of fleeing refugees
stranded on the Iraqi/Turkish border in August 1988 flooded television screens and, as
discussed further below, crucially, after the eight-year Iran-Iraq War had ended. In
general, though, the media covered the Halabja story frequently and in depth once the
story filtered down from Iraqi Kurdistan to Western journalists. The lack of a vigorous
and effectual response could not be attributed to officials not knowing about the attacks,
thanks largely to good reporting. Official reaction within the U.S. government varied;
while Congress pushed for sanctions, the Reagan administration and especially the State
Department effectively blocked penalties against Iraq, claiming Iran had also used
chemical weapons on Halabja, and continued to provide Saddam Hussein with military
intelligence and economic assistance. The United Nations, after sending a team to
investigate charges of chemical weapons use, condemned both Iran and Iraq for using
these weapons and appears in hindsight to have been powerless to prevent and/or punish
violations of the Geneva conventions as seen at Halabja. Officials from other countries
rhetorically condemned the attacks but took no action. Iran used the event for propaganda
purposes, and the Arab/Islamic countries opted not to criticize Iraq at a conference held
soon after. The United Kingdom and Canada fell in line behind the U.S. in terms of
doling out blame to both Iraq and Iran. Finally, various NGOs (nongovernmental
57
organizations) investigated the attacks and appealed for an international response that
never came.
Media Coverage
When were the chemical weapons attacks on Halabja first reported in the media?
How prominent was the story’s placement, and what other stories were competing for
attention at the time? How accurate were the initial reports, and how did journalists and
The story of the chemical attack on Halabja was widely covered, although it took
a few days for news of the attacks to reach the West (the news cycle was relatively longer
before Internet use became pervasive). No one at the time can credibly claim they took no
action against Saddam Hussein because they did not know the attacks occurred. On 18
March the first brief reports from Western correspondents based in Cyprus told of Iran
capturing the town of Halabja despite heavy chemical weapons use but made no mention
of civilian casualties.116 No additional reporting on Halabja appeared until four days later.
The story finally acquired the spotlight on 22 March. Americans saw on the
evening news grisly videotape of corpses which ABC news anchor Peter Jennings warned
would be “jarring.” Reporter Mike Lee observed, from Tehran, “Here in the war between
Iran and Iraq Kurdish women and children have in effect been punished for being in the
way.”117 The iconic number of 5,000 first appeared in the press as well, quoting the
Iranian delegate to the UN, Mohammed Mahallati, who accused Iraq of injuring 5,000
more and that seventy percent of the victims were civilians.118 Another story, appearing
116
“Iraq and Iran Raid Cities,” New York Times, 18 March 1988, A2; and “Iran Says Iraq Used Chemical
Weapons,” Christian Science Monitor, 18 March 1988, 2.
117
ABC News transcript, “World News Tonight,” 22 March 1988.
118
“Protest at U.N. on Chemical Arms,” New York Times, 22 March 1988, A11. Note the story’s placement,
far from the front pages.
58
on the front page of the New York Times, mentioned Iran’s accusation of Iraqi chemical
weapons’ use in the context of the Tanker War, an aspect of the Iran-Iraq war which
received more attention due to its connection to oil, a resource considered vital to the
U.S. economy.119
Tehran quickly saw the attack’s propaganda value. More than a dozen Western
journalists were flown by Iranian government officials via helicopter to the front lines of
Halabja on 21 March. David Hirst, reporting for The Guardian, described the scene he
witnessed:
Nicholas Beeston, writing for The Times (London), compared the victims of Halabja to
the Kurds continued: “A family of five who had been sitting in their garden eating lunch
were cut down—the killer gas not even sparing the family cat [or] the birds in the tree,
which littered the well-kept lawn.”121 Paul Koring, writing from Tehran, noted the sixty-
seven civilians being treated at Lebafi-Negaed hospital among the 140 Kurds who had
been admitted over the weekend. He interviewed a U.S.-trained physician, Dr. Hamid
119
Alan Cowell, “54 Feared Dead on 2 Oil Tankers In Iraqi Attack on Iran Terminal,” New York Times, 22
March 1988, A1.
120
David Hirst, “Iran Puts Dead on Show After Gas Raid: The Kurdish Victims Caught Unaware by
Cyanide,” The Guardian (London), 22 March 1988.
121
Nicholas Beeston, “Gas Victims Frozen in the Agony of Death,” The Times (London), 22 March 1988.
In general, an examination of media coverage of the Kurds reveals more comprehensive treatment by the
Brits than the Americans. Perhaps this greater interest in the region—at least during the 1980s— is a legacy
of the British occupation of Iraq after World War I.
59
Sonrabpour, who said the “difficulty of treating a large number of civilian casualties had
been compounded because none of the hospital staff spoke Kurdish and none of the
patients understood Farsi.” The language barrier surely exasperated the plight of the Iraqi
Kurdish patients. “Dr. Sonrabpour said the pathetic group of burned and coughing
figures, especially the children, had ‘really touched my heart because they were helpless
civilians.’”122 A Reuters story with a Tehran dateline took a more measured approach,
emphasizing the story’s propaganda value for the Iranians. “Iranian officials displayed
injured Iraqi civilians yesterday to back up their charges that Baghdad is using chemical
weapons on its own territories.” But the unnamed reporter did refer to the injuries visible
on civilians: “Women and children were among several dozen hospital patients suffering
peeling skin, raw pinkish blotches and labored breathing that doctors said appeared to
have been caused by mustard gas, and possibly phosgene and other chemicals.”123
The story still had legs the next day, as television newscasts covered the Iraqi
government’s denial of chemical weapons use at Halabja and its brazen charge that Iran
had launched the attack. One broadcast reported, “The Iranians say that 3,500 people
were killed in the Halabja region,” an example of how the number of fatalities shifted
from one account to another. American media sources tended to carefully attribute the
sources of such claims, rather than stating absolutely that civilians were killed often seen
in British and Canadian reporting.124 Viewers also saw swift condemnation of the attacks
by the Reagan administration. White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called the attack
key soundbite, which would set the tone for any potential international response, was also
122
Paul Koring, “High Civilian Toll in Iraqi Attack on City: Poison-Gas Victims Recall Bomb Horror,” The
Globe and Mail (Canada), 22 March 1988.
123
Reuter-AP, The Toronto Star, 22 March 1988, A3.
124
ABC News transcript, “World News Tonight,” 23 March 1988.
60
aired: “There are indications that Iran may also have used chemical artillery shells in this
fighting.” Reporter Bob Zelnick uncannily predicted the absence of punitive action:
“There appears little likelihood of any effort to penalize Iraq despite what’s widely
reporters Andrew Gowers and Richard Johns, after visiting Halabja, pulled no punches by
describing the attacks as revealing “unplumbed depths of savagery.” Two Kurds were
cited in this story; KDP central committee member Hushyar Zebari and PUK leader Jalal
Talabani. Zebari said, “Surely President Saddam Hussein is the first ruler in the world to
use chemical weapons against his own people,” language that was later echoed by U.S.
President George W. Bush during the buildup to war in 2003. And Talabani was said to
have called the use of chemical weapons, the razing of Kurdish villages and mass
deportation of Kurds to camps on the other side of the country “genocide.” Gowers and
Johns concluded that the world’s reaction had been grossly insufficient. “The
international community’s response to the Kurds’ mounting cries of alarm has so far been
a deafening silence.”126
Despite the extensive coverage, during the ten days immediately following the
attacks, the Halabja story never made the front page of the New York Times, one of the
most influential American newspapers known for in-depth international coverage derived
from dozens of overseas bureaus. Seeing which stories were getting more attention helps
create a fuller picture of the context in which the Halabja attacks occurred.
125
Ibid.
126
Andrew Gowers and Richard Johns, “Iraq Uses Chemical Bombs on its Own Citizens,” The Financial
Times (London), 23 March 1988, 4.
61
A perusal of the front pages for the weeks following 16 March reveals the
dominant themes of the times: The Cold War was not yet over (observers were unaware
that the Berlin Wall would fall the following year); the Soviets still occupied
Afghanistan, although talks were underway for troop withdrawals; and Latin America
campaign was underway. President Reagan was completing his second term and could
not run again. Vice President George H. W. Bush was trouncing Sen. Bob Dole in the
Republican primaries, while Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was leading the
Democrats. Polls had Bush and Dukakis virtually tied at this point in the campaign, but
Congress had blocked Reagan’s attempt to arm the contras in Nicaragua, the
rebels who were fighting the leftist Sandinista government, but the president tried to get
around those legalities in what was to be known as the Iran/Contra affair. On 17 March,
capping a fourteen-month investigation, Lieut. Col. Oliver North and Rear Adm. John
Poindexter were indicted for their roles, as National Security Advisor staff, in the
diversion of millions of dollars from the sale of arms to Iran to the Nicaraguan contras.
This domestic story overshadowed an atrocity happening to a people most Americans had
never heard of (the Kurds) in a casualty-laden war which many perceived as a stalemate
(after Nicaraguan troops allegedly crossed into Honduran territory) and the state of
“urgency” declared in Panama after its military ruler, Gen. Manuel Noriega, was charged
in a Florida court with drug trafficking and racketeering. Reagan was also preparing for
127
See New York Times, 16–26 March 1988, A1.
62
another summit with Mikhail Gorbachev—the first visit in fourteen years of an American
president to the Soviet Union. Nuclear disarmament talks were stalled over Reagan’s
The Cold War comprised the proverbial elephant in the living room and the
glasses through which U.S. government officials largely saw foreign policy for more than
a generation (1945–1989). This mindset influenced the way in which the U.S. responded
to Halabja, but I argue that other economic and energy-related factors played a larger role
Media coverage of Halabja was adequate: reporters in the field did their job,
although editors back at their desks arguably dropped the ball in terms of the story’s
placement. Was the coverage accurate as well? In hindsight, journalists appeared for the
most part to take Iraqi denials of culpability for Halabja with a healthy grain of salt. For
months the Iraqi government consistently denied using chemical weapons on Kurdish
civilians; later, however, they admitted using chemical weapons but claimed that Iran had
used them first, sounding more like school-yard bullies than heads of state. Newspaper
reporters often repeated without qualification, by and large, the U.S. government line that
Iran as well as Iraq had used chemical weapons on Halabja, although the Americans
Some observers have concluded that this evidence has never been produced
because it does not exist and that U.S. officials used outright deception to publicly charge
Iran with complicity in the Halabja attacks in order to deflect criticism of their ally
Iraq.128 Reporters failed to push U.S. government spokesmen to produce the evidence of
Iran’s use of chemical weapons on Halabja. Perhaps this lack of media independence was
128
One example of such a perspective is Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair, 205.
63
due to the tendency to accept official versions of events without question; another factor
may have been the relative popularity of the Reagan presidency with the American
people. Corporate-owned media keep a close eye on ratings; being seen as unfairly
attacking a popular president could affect the bottom line. Finally, profound feelings
against Iran in the United States, lingering after the overthrow of U.S.-backed Shah Reza
Pahlavi and the hostage-taking at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, also contributed to
an atmosphere in which appearing to sympathize with the Iranians would have been a
risky position.
loosely. During the Iran-Iraq war, when the U.S. was officially neutral but tilted towards
Iraq, the number of victims cited in some articles tended to be low-balled, claiming that
merely “hundreds” rather than thousands of victims were killed at Halabja.129 After the
July 20th ceasefire, when it was safer to criticize Saddam Hussein’s regime without fear
of harming Iraq’s chances of defeating (or not being defeated by) Iran, the number of
Halabja victims in some accounts jumped to the thousands without explanation and the
publication’s bias is to deflect attention from the atrocity of an ally, then a lower figure
will do; if the intent is to persuade readers of a regime’s threat to regional and global
stability, then higher numbers are appropriate. The absence of precise, agreed-upon
statistics regarding the number of fatalities at Halabja created the perfect conditions for
their manipulation.
129
David B. Ottaway, “U.S. Decries Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons: ‘Grave Violation’ of International
Law Cited,” Washington Post, 24 March 1988, A37; and “Poison Gas: Iraq’s Crime,” New York Times, 26
March 1988, A30.
130
Robert S. Greenberger, “Iraq Opened Dangerous Pandora’s Box by Using Chemicals in War with Iran,”
Wall Street Journal, 1 August 1988, 1; and “So What If It’s Gas?” Wall Street Journal, 14 September 1988,
1.
64
Views expressed in editorials, Op-Eds, and columns varied as well. One of the
strongest editorials, published by the New York Times, called the Halabja attacks a “war
crime” and urged Washington and Moscow to “get an urgent message to Baghdad now:
Stop using these weapons or forfeit support.” This editorial stance, though principled,
was ignored by the powerbrokers in Washington. Columnist Martin Peretz was also
unequivocal in his criticism of the attacks and the West’s weak response to them:
There is something breathtaking in the way the policy elites of the West have
simply shrugged off what may be the single most enormous massacre of civilians
in one place at one time since the Nazis. Last month the Iraqi air force dropped
poison gas on the town of Halabja, killing hundreds and possibly thousands of
civilians. The inconvenient atrocity was treated in the media like a human interest
story. … This is not the first time that Iraq’s very weak regime has proved the
world community powerless (or just unwilling) to enforce the simplest constraint
on the conduct of war.131
In a column for the Washington Post, Jim Hoagland asked rhetorically, “Is the world
really prepared to look the other way and do nothing in the most ghastly case of the use
of poison gas since the Nazi death camps of World War II?” He urged Reagan not to veto
the pending sanctions bill in Congress and not “become a party to the refusal to confront
evil.”132
In contrast, some writers took issue with the term “genocide” and wanted to see
more evidence before passing judgment on Iraq. Patrick Tyler wrote a piece for the
“Insight” section of the Washington Post in which he argued that, while it was “horrible,”
genocide was “not an accurate term” for what was happening to the Kurds. After touring
the region by helicopter, he stated that “the vast majority of Iraq’s Kurds are safe in their
homes, perhaps safer” than when the peshmerga controlled the north. Tyler claimed that,
since “major towns and cities of Kurdistan are still standing, unscathed and populated”
131
Martin Peretz, “Cambridge Diarist: Neighborhood Bullies,” The New Republic, 25 April 1988, 43.
132
Jim Hoagland, “A ‘Furlough’ for Iraq,” Washington Post, 12 October 1988, A19.
65
the term did not apply. “Life is going on,” he opined, “but it is not as pretty as the life the
Kurds used to live with their flocks in the high valley—a sort of noble Hobbit land of
mud-roof houses covered with spring grass.” Tyler sanitized the ethnic cleansing of Iraqi
legislation in Congress against Iraq, asserted that Saddam Hussein’s regime was about to
be punished “for a particular crime which, according to some authorities, may never have
taken place.” After his tour by helicopter, Viorst concluded that, “if lethal gas was used,
it was not used genocidally—i.e. for mass killing. … If there had been large-scale killing,
it is likely they [the Kurds] would know and tell the world about it. But neither I nor any
attended a Kurdish wedding in Baghdad and saw eating, drinking and dancing, that the
community was not in any danger. Viorst seemed unaware that due to the repressive
nature of the Ba‘athist regime, it was unlikely a Kurd would feel safe confiding to a
And finally, a column in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs saw the
threat of sanctions against Iraq as “Arab bashing.” The author said there was no “real
proof” the Iraqis had used chemical weapons against the Kurds and cautioned against a
“rush to judgment until after we meet some victims with seared lungs.” Evidently the
numerous reports compiled by UN investigators were not sufficient for this observer.135
133
Patrick E. Tyler, “The Kurds: It’s Not Genocide, But Iraq’s Policy of Repression and Relocation Is Still
Horrific,” Washington Post, 25 September 1988, C5.
134
Milton Viorst, “Poison Gas and ‘Genocide’: The Shaky Case Against Iraq,” Washington Post, 5 October
1988, A25.
135
Richard Curtiss, “Iraq & Iran: Rush to Judgment,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 31
October 1988, 51.
66
In general, though, the media informed the public about the attacks on Halabja
such that officials could not later use ignorance to explain their inaction.
rhetorically condemning the use of chemical weapons but failing to back their words with
action. In fact, not only did the administration fail to penalize Iraq for chemical weapons
use on civilians, it actively blocked efforts by others to hold Saddam Hussein and his
regime accountable. The administration blamed Iran as well as Iraq for the attacks on
Halabja, without ever producing evidence of Iranian involvement, a strategy that diffused
Halabja attacks; and it successfully stopped a tough Congressional bill—that would have
hit Iraq with harsh sanctions for chemical weapons use—from becoming law. The
administration put economic and energy-related interests above human rights when
formulating official policy on Iraq, and evidence of these priorities appears frequently in
The U.S. government, however, was not in lock step concerning Iraq and
chemical weapons use. Some members of Congress argued passionately on the floor of
the Senate and House to penalize Baghdad; the State Department was not unanimous in
its objective to maintain good relations with Iraq, putting Secretary of State George
Shultz in the position of having to decide which of his staffers’ policy positions to
approve.136
136
For one example of differing views regarding Iraqi policy among State Department staffers, in this case
whether to extend Export-Import Bank credits, see Action Memorandum, “Export-Import Financing for
Iraq,” Alan P. Larson, Richard W. Murphy, and Richard Schifter to George P. Shultz, 29 December 1988,
Digital National Security Archive, document no. IG00739. The Digital National Security Archive
67
of Iraqi CW use was not without precedent. As early as 1983 the U.S. government knew
Iraq was using chemical weapons and in effect turned a blind eye (other than a rhetorical
condemnation) to this violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925 banning the use in war of
knowledge of Iraqi chemical weapons use against Iranian troops, stating bluntly: “We
weapons.” The State Department knew the National Security Council was considering
assisting Iraq in its war with Iran and suggested they might have some leverage to
If the NSC decides measures are to be undertaken to assist Iraq, our best present
chance of influencing cessation of CW use may be in the context of informing
Iraq of these measures. It is important, however, that we approach Iraq very soon
in order to maintain the credibility of U.S. policy on CW, as well as to reduce or
halt what now appears to be Iraq’s almost daily use of CW.137
Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Kurdish guerrillas was also known to U.S.
officials. A heavily redacted cable from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to the Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 1987 reveals the U.S. military knew Al-Majid had
“flattened” hundreds of villages and was using chemical weapons (CWs) against the
peshmerga. “Despite the ruthless repression, which also includes the use of chemical
[emphasis in original] agents, and the reinforcement of the armed forces by several
[hereafter DNSA] publishes online U.S. government policy documents made available through FOIA
(Freedom of Information Act) requests. The “IG” designation refers to the Iraq-Gate Collection.
http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com.
137
Information Memorandum, “Iraq Use of Chemical Weapons,” Jonathan T. Howe to George P. Shultz, 1
November 1983, DNSA, doc. no. IG00145.
68
brigades of the Presidential Guard, Iraqi security operations, coordinated by Ali Hassan
March, six days after the attacks and the same day the story hit American news
broadcasts. In another heavily blacked-out cable from JCS to DIA, classified intelligence
sources refer to Iranian claims of twenty bombardments of cyanide, mustard and nerve
gas on the Halabja area and reveal the nonchalant attitude of at least one member of the
American intelligence community: “Iraqi use of cluster and chemical munitions is not an
Although President Ronald Reagan did not comment publicly on Halabja, White
House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater called the attacks “horrible, outrageous and
disgusting.” But that same day State Department spokesman Charles Redman cryptically
claimed, “There are indications that Iran may also have used chemical artillery shells in
this fighting.”140 The Reagan administration had apparently determined that muddying up
the waters a bit would be the best way to deflect criticism from their unofficial ally Iraq.
While official U.S. policy during the Iran-Iraq war was neutrality, the American so-called
“tilt” towards Iraq was clear by the end of the war and especially visible with American
escorts of Persian Gulf shipping. This brief statement implying Iranian as well as Iraqi
culpability for Halabja was repeated for years in the media and had a profound effect on
the world’s drive to hold the perpetrators accountable, effectively diffusing responsibility
138
Cable, “IIR [Excised] the Internal Situation in Iraq,” U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency, 4 August 1987, DNSA, doc. no. IG00453.
139
Cable, “[Excised] Val-Fajr 10 Offensive,” Joint Chiefs of Staff to Defense Intelligence Agency, 22
March 1988, DNSA, doc. no. IG00533.
140
ABC News transcript, “World News Tonight,” 23 March 1988.
69
for the attacks. But no evidence of Iranian CW use on Halabja has ever been made
public.141
Members of Congress also expressed their horror over Halabja. The first reference
on Capitol Hill to the attacks occurred on 24 March. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Cal.), a
Holocaust survivor, said Americans had not been so shocked by graphic television
images of dead corpses since the mass suicides at Jonestown. He reminded his colleagues
that the U.S. Navy was protecting Iraq and called on the Reagan administration to “use its
leverage with the regime in Baghdad to convince them that mass poisoning of its own
civilian population is unacceptable in the eyes of civilized nations.”142 Five days later, the
effect of the State Department position of dual culpability is apparent in the remarks of
Rep. Chester G. Atkins (D-Mass.), which likened the attacks to a passage from the
Biblical book of Revelations. “It looked as if the fourth horseman of the apocalypse had
ridden through the town, and left a swath of death in his wake. Chemical weapons are
horrible. … Yet it is believed that both Iran and Iraq have used these terrible weapons in
But the U.S. government took no action in response to Halabja and the deaths of
as many as 5,000 Kurdish civilians. The different stages of Iraq’s Anfal campaign were
put into operation without any interference from either the U.S. or the Soviet Union. We
know that the Reagan administration was aware of the Anfal, although officials may not
have known the Iraqi code name for it. In April, as Anfal stage 3 was coming to an end, a
JCS cable to the DIA neatly summarized in four bullet points the “information on Iraqi
141
For an extensive discussion on Iran’s fledgling chemical weapons capacity and an authoritative
refutation of Iranian responsibility for CWs on Halabja, see Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair.
142
Congressional Record, 24 March 1988, House of Representatives, p. 5111, cited in The Kurdish
Question in U.S. Foreign Policy: A Documentary Sourcebook by Lokman I. Meho (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 2004), 36.
143
Congressional Record, 29 March 1988, House, p. 5556, cited in Meho, 36.
70
measures against the Kurdish population”: 1.5 million Kurds resettled in camps, 700-
1000 villages and residential areas targeted for resettlement, large numbers of Kurds
placed in “‘cowcentration’ [sic] camps,” and severe restrictions placed on the local
population “throughout the north.”144 While the statistics on villages turned out to be an
undercount, the cable confirms the Reagan administration was cognizant of the
In June, PUK leader Jalal Talabani came to the United States to raise charges of
genocide against Saddam Hussein to the UN, Capitol Hill, the State Department, and the
press, and his visit reveals how the administration attempted to avoid a confrontation with
Baghdad. President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz refused to meet with Talabani;
a meeting between the peshmerga leader and a mid-level State Department official
caused a diplomatic furor.145 Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz responded by canceling a
long-scheduled meeting with Shultz. A National Security Council memo reveals staffers’
sensitivity to Iraqi and Turkish reaction to the Talabani meeting. “We were aware that the
Iraqis would react badly to his entry into the U.S. and his reception in the department,
even at the office director level; however, we underestimated the depth of the Iraqi
their dealings with the Iraqi regime, as if they were afraid their actions or rhetoric would
For example, a secret talking points memo detailing Reagan administration policy
towards Iraq includes a reference to “our commitment to a strong relationship with Iraq,
144
Cable, “[Excised] Baghdad’s Represive [sic] Measures Against the Kurds,” JCS to DIA, 19 April 1988,
DNSA doc. no. IG00555.
145
Elaine Sciolino, “Kurdish Chief Gains Support In U.S. Visit,” New York Times, 22 June 1988, A3.
146
Cable, “Information Memo Re Talabani,” National Security Council, Bureau of Near East Affairs,
Edward P. Djerejian, to Secretary of State George Shultz, 20 June 1988, folder “Iraq [1987-1988],” box
91849, William J. Burns Files, Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, Calif [hereafter Burns Files].
71
based upon support for Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and non-interference in
Iraq’s internal affairs.” In other words, the U.S. had no plans to block Baghdad’s
from Congressional support for Talabani, listing “further points on Talabani, including
emphasis that SFRC [Senate Foreign Relations Committee] action on Kurds was taken
Although Congress did not take any action on the attacks immediately after
Halabja, by the summer they at least moved to put their displeasure with Iraq on the
record. On 24 June the Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution (S. Res. 408)
condemning Iraq for CW use (91-0). Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine), speaking in favor
of its passage, cited 2,000 deaths at Halabja and reiterated that “Iran has reportedly used
chemical weapons, including at Halabja, in retaliation for Iraqi attacks.” Sen. Mark
Hatfield (R-Ore.) reminded his colleagues that Iran used “children to sweep minefields”
during the still ongoing Iran-Iraq war. He also criticized Congress for giving “the green
light to production of an entirely new generation of nerve gas weapons just last year” in
spite of former President Richard M. Nixon’s moratorium on U.S. nerve gas production
in 1969. Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-RI), a consistent supporter of Kurdish aspirations on the
Senate floor over many years, asserted that Halabja claimed 5,000 victims and that
“tragically, poison gas has become a standard part of the Iraqi arsenal.” Oddly, the
147
Secret Memo, “Additional Talking Points for Assistant Secretary Murphy,” n.d., folder “Iraq [1987-
1988],” box 91849, Burns Files.
72
language in the resolution itself only cited that “hundreds” were killed at Halabja, in yet
fleeing the final stages of Anfal and stranded on the Turkish border began to flood
American television screens, and Congress finally took action that had some teeth. The
sight of so many vulnerable refugees spurred Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer
Peter Galbraith to quickly draft a bill which was sponsored by Senator Pell, the SFRC
chair. Senate bill 2763, the “Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988,” called for tough
sanctions against Iraq; on 9 September, within twenty-four hours of its introduction, the
bill passed on a voice-vote. The bill asserted that “Iraq’s campaign against the Kurdish
Some have argued that including genocide in the sanctions bill doomed its
chances of passing. For example, Hiltermann argues that information available at the time
did not support the charge of genocide, and that evidence revealing the full picture of
Iraqi repression against the Kurds did not emerge until 1991.150 However, a weaker
version of the sanctions bill, passed by the House, removed the “genocide” language and
still failed to become law, so other factors must have been obstacles to its passage.
But in September 1988, Senate bill 2763 called for a ban on U.S. exports, credits,
and credit guarantees to Iraq, for the U.S. to oppose loans to Baghdad from international
148
Congressional Record, Senate, 24 June 1988, pp. 15918-21, cited in Meho, pp. 37–42.
149
U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Chemical Weapons Use in Kurdistan: Iraq’s Final
Offensive. A Staff Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, (Washington, D.C.:
GPO, 1992). For a thorough discussion of Galbraith’s drafting of the bill, and the story of its failure to
become law, see Power, A Problem from Hell.
150
Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair, 213. See also Power, A Problem from Hell and Galbraith, The End of
Iraq.
73
financial institutions, and prohibited American oil imports from Iraq.151 At the time, U.S.
credits and credit guarantees to Iraq totaled $800 million per year, so the proposed ban
Arguing in favor of the bill, Senator Pell compared the gassing of the Kurds to the
Holocaust and speculated as to why there was not a greater outcry on their behalf. He
also placed a measure of responsibility on those who were not speaking out.
While a people are gassed, the world is largely silent. There are reasons for this:
Iraq’s great oil wealth, its military strength, a desire not to upset the delicate
negotiations seeking an end to the Iran-Iraq war. Silence, however, is complicity.
A half century ago the world was also silent as Hitler began a campaign that
culminated in the near extermination of Europe’s Jews. We cannot be silent to
genocide again.152
Pell acknowledged the sacrifice American business would have to make, but justified it
by saying “this is a matter of life and death for hundreds of thousands … a moral issue of
against the Kurds and wondered “if they were not Kurds whether we would not be a lot
more exercised than we are at this time.”153 Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.) also evoked the
Holocaust, saying Iraq “may right now be in the midst of trying to impose a final solution
on its Kurdish population. … For governments to have knowledge of such events, and not
to cry out, is to become complicit with them.”154 Gore, playing the devil’s advocate, listed
economic concerns as major reasons why Iraq might not be held accountable.
Iraq expects to get away with it [chemical weapons use against the Kurds].
Because that country has oil money. Because there is big business to be done in
provisioning its economy, reconstructing war damage, and equipping its armed
forces. Because it has used chemical weapons before without penalty; indeed
151
Ibid.
152
Congressional Record, Senate, 8 September 1988, p. 22877, cited in Meho, 42–43.
153
Congressional Record, Senate, 9 September 1988, pp. 23139-41, cited in Meho, 52-53.
154
Congressional Record, Senate, 12 September 1988, p. 23423, cited in Meho, 57.
74
because it used them successfully, to break the morale of Iran’s army and civilian
population.155
The Senate’s relatively quick action alarmed the Reagan administration. Members
of the State Department met with House Foreign Affairs Committee members to pressure
them into killing or weakening the sanctions legislation. Within a couple of weeks they
the bill (HR 5337), on 27 September. The sanctions debates, however, were moot, since
the legislation died in October after it was attached to an anti-terrorism bill that never
during the month of September 1988 reveals why the Reagan administration opposed
One secret internal State Department paper on Iraq policy spells out the
marginalization of human rights and the paramount place of economic opportunities that
should not be squandered. “Human rights and chemical weapons aside,” it states frankly,
“in many respects our political and economic interests run parallel with those of Iraq.” It
described the “enormous projects for oilfield development, irrigation, power generation
and other major infrastructure projects.” Within the context of a discussion of what the
In other words, prevention is a moot point, since the goal of CW use had already
been achieved, a rationale in which ethical concerns are conspicuously absent. The State
155
Congressional Record, Senate, 7 October 1988, p. 29361, cited in Meho, 62.
75
Department also weighed the option of placing Iraq on the terrorism list again, since “its
use of chemical weapons against the Kurds amounts to state terrorism,” but this action
was advised against because it would “have a sharp negative impact on our ability to
Secretary for Near East and South Asian Affairs, to NSC staffer John Negroponte bluntly
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was asked by the White House Policy
Review Group to assess the impact of potential sanctions. The agency concluded that it
would be minimal because “other suppliers … will be eager to fill in for the US and
CIA also warned that “continued Iraqi servicing of its $2.5 million debt guaranteed by the
USG will be at risk” if the Prevention of Genocide Act was passed.158 The lack of a
156
Secret Internal Paper, “Overview of U.S.-Iraqi Relations and Potential Pressure Points,” Department of
State, Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, Northern Gulf Affairs, 9 September 1988, DNSA
doc. no. IG00632.
157
Confidential Information Memorandum, “Update on the Status of HFAC Legislation on Iraq CW,”
National Security Council, William J. Burns to John D. Negroponte, 20 September 1988, folder “Iraq
[1987-1988],” box 91849, Burns Files.
158
Secret Information Memorandum, “CIA Analysis on Impact of US Economic Sanctions on Iraq,”
National Security Council, William J. Burns to John D. Negroponte, 23 September 1988, folder “Iraq
[1987-1988],” box 91849, Burns Files.
76
Iraqi Foreign Minister Saadoun Hammadi regarding CW use.159 Although many others in
the State Department and CIA did not support this move, Shultz would later claim in his
memoirs, he decided to take this step for humanitarian reasons.160 At this point, the U.S.
government had to at least appear to care about the use of chemical weapons on Kurdish
civilians. On the same day, State Department spokesman Charles Redman publicly called
Iraq’s use of poison gas against the Kurds “abhorrent and unjustifiable,” the first public
U.S. condemnation of Iraq for chemical weapons use since March; the statement made
The administration pressured Iraq to make private if not public assurances that it
would not use CWs in the future. In an example of how officials focused on preventing
future use rather than punishing past use, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie told
Iraq would assure the international community it would no longer use CWs that “the
the 65,000 Iraqi Kurdish refugees stranded on the border. He spent 11–17 September
1988 investigating whether Saddam Hussein’s regime had indeed used chemical
September. He concluded that Iraq had used chemical weapons on 25 August; until
159
Secret Cable, “Secretary’s Meeting with Iraqi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Saadoun Hammadi,”
George Shultz to U.S. Embassy, Iraq, 10 September 1988, DNSA doc. no IG00633.
160
George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1993), 235–245.
161
Julie Johnson, “U.S. Asserts Iraq Used Poison Gas Against the Kurds,” New York Times, 9 September
1988, A1.
162
Secret Cable, “Iraqi CW Use: Ambassador’s Meeting with Hamdun,” April C. Glaspie to U.S.
Department of State, 10 September 1988, DNSA doc. no. IG00634.
77
subsequent human rights work in 1991, Galbraith’s trip was a key component of the
On 13 September Ambassador Glaspie cabled Shultz and reported that the Iraqi
government had called the Senate’s genocide bill “part of a Zionist conspiracy to
embarrass and undermine Iraq.” In an example of the lack of solidarity industry would
have shown with a campaign to punish Saddam Hussein for chemical weapons use,
Glaspie also informed Secretary Shultz that Bechtel representatives in Baghdad had
assured the Iraqi Minister of Industry that, if the economic sanctions became law,
Iraq.” Glaspie made no mention of any official consequences for those plans to defy the
sanctions.164
Meanwhile, Burns wrote National Security Advisor Colin Powell that the
impending sanctions bill was “rapidly becoming a crisis point in US/Iraqi relations” and
urged him to consider “how to limit the damage to our bilateral relationship if/when this
legislation passes. Iraq will be highly disappointed if the President doesn’t veto the
bill.”165
163
U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Chemical Weapons Use in Kurdistan: Iraq’s Final
Offensive: A Staff Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, October 1988
(Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1988).
164
Confidential Cable, “Minister of Industry Blasts Senate Action,” April C. Glaspie to U.S. Department of
State, 13 September 1988, DNSA doc. no. IG00639.
165
Secret Information Memorandum, “Iraqi CW Use—Proposed Letter to Congress,” National Security
Council, William J. Burns to Colin L. Powell, 13 September 1988, folder “Iraq [1987-1988],” box 91849,
Burns Files.
78
proving Iraq had used poison gas against the Kurds.166 In response, Tariq Aziz reportedly
stated that Baghdad “respects and abides by” all international agreements banning
chemical weapons use. Deputy Asst. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Peter
Burleigh claimed that Aziz’s statement proved diplomatic efforts were working and that
sanctions were not necessary.167 Rep. Tom Lantos questioned why the administration
would accept such a statement on face value and also said he found the State
President Reagan never had to exercise his veto, but it appeared that his
administration was prepared to use this power of the executive branch. Burns wrote
Negroponte that “State has sent a memo to Secretary Shultz suggesting he recommend to
the President that the Iraq CW bill be vetoed.” This same memo reiterates the economic
concerns the State Department had: “State has also prepared talking points for White
House LA [Legislative Affairs] to use with Senator Dole (and possibly others)
concerning the impact of agricultural sanctions against Iraq ($1 billion in credits would
Before members of the NSC knew the bill would fizzle out, they had contingency
plans in case it was attached to legislation the President did not want to veto. The White
House strategy was to “have the President sign the bill and certify [that Iraq was no
166
Robert Pear, “U.S. Says It Monitored Iraqi Messages on Gas,” New York Times 15 September 1988,
A12.
167
John Felton, “Less Sweeping Than Senate Version: House Panels Advance Bill Imposing Sanctions on
Iraq,” Congressional Quarterly, 24 September 1988, 2634, accessed via CQ Weekly Online
http://library.cqpress.com (accessed August 14, 2007).
168
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, “Legislation to Impose Sanctions Against
Iraqi Chemical Use: Markup Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, One
Hundredth Congress, 2d sess., on H.R. 5337, 22 September 1988 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1988), 12.
169
Confidential Information Memorandum, “Update on Proposed Iraq CW Legislation,” National Security
Council, William J. Burns to John D. Negroponte, 7 October 1988, folder “Iraq [1987-1988],” box 91849,
Burns Files.
79
longer using chemical weapons] on the same day, thereby nullifying the sanctions.” It
also planned to urge the Iraqi government, through Ambassador Glaspie, “to exercise
restraint in the wake of Congressional action.”170 These back-door maneuvers would have
limited damage and insured that Congress would be prevented from achieving its
In a memoir published five years after Halabja, Shultz claimed his efforts to get
tough on Iraq were not supported by subordinates at the State Department or CIA and
that the U.S. allied with Iraq for balance-of-power reasons. The concern at the time was
to prevent Iran from threatening the oil-rich Gulf States and Israel.171 Colin Powell, in his
autobiography published in 1995, does not mention Halabja by name but does reveal
knowledge of CW use.
We knew that Saddam had used both mustard and nerve gases in his war against
Iran. We knew that he had used gas on Iraq’s rebellious Kurdish minority in 1988,
killing or injuring four thousand Kurds. 172
Like many other U.S. officials, Powell lumps civilians with guerrillas in his assessment.
He, too, justified American policy towards Iraq with a balance-of-power strategy, in a
discussion concerning the 1991 Gulf War: “However much we despised Saddam and
what he had done, the U.S. had little desire to shatter his country. For the previous ten
years, Iran, not Iraq, had been our Persian Gulf nemesis. We wanted Iraq to continue as a
threat and a counterweight to Iran.” Neither Shultz nor Powell expressed any regrets over
2003, then Secretary of State Powell spoke at a ceremony at the Halabja Memorial after
170
Confidential Information Memorandum, “Impact of Congressional Sanctions on Iraq,” National Security
Council, William J. Burns to John D. Negroponte, 11 October 1988, folder “Iraq [1987-1988],” box 91849,
Burns Files.
171
George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 235-245.
172
Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), 455.
80
the U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein. He said, “I cannot tell you that the world
should have acted sooner. You know that.” He added, “I will always remember
Halabja.”173
In 1989, after the first Bush administration took the reigns of American power,
credits were doubled to Iraq from $500 million to $1 billion. This policy was enacted in
spite of the fact that in December 1988 the CIA had labeled Iraq’s treatment of the Kurds
Schifter, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs—
called Iraq’s human rights record “abysmal” in 1988 for its “grave” human rights
Schifter’s position, often at odds with other State Department officials and an
example of the divisions within the U.S. government concerning Iraq, may have been
Schifter stated simply, “Mr. Chairman, I have not added a great deal of emotion to this
statement. Let me simply say to you that it is not necessary for me to do so. My own
father and mother are two of the six million,” referring to the death of his parents during
the Holocaust.175
173
“Secretary Powell Honors Halabja Victims,” Kurdistan Newsline, 16 September 2003, Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan website, http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/paul_halabja030915.html, accessed 6 June
2007.
174
Central Intelligence Agency, “Iraq’s National Security Goals: An Intelligence Assessment,” December
1988, p. 11, CIA Electronic Reading Room, National Security Archive,
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchive/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/ accessed 8/26/07; and U.S. Department of State,
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988: Reports Submitted to the Committee on Foreign
Relations, U.S. Senate and Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives by the
Department of State (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1989), 1355-1365.
175
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Genocide Convention Implementation Act.
Hearing before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law of the Committee on
the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 100th Cong., 2d sess., H.R. 807, 16 March 1988 (Washington,
D.C.: 1988) 15.
81
administration averse to displeasing the Iraqi government. Officials wanted to prevent the
erosion of relations between the two countries, that had been warming ever since Iraq
was removed from the list of states sponsoring terrorism in 1984, and maximize the
potential for economic trade. Iran was considered a greater threat to Persian Gulf oil, and
the American economy was dependent on fossil fuels as its primary source of energy.
Human rights in such a framework were a side issue, requiring lip service but not
The United Nations was informed about the Halabja attacks, sent a team to
investigate Iran’s charges that Iraq had used chemical weapons, blamed both Iran and
Iraq for the continued use of poison gas, and pleaded with both sides to stop. These pleas,
however, fell on deaf ears and were completely ineffectual in stopping the Anfal from
proceeding unhindered.
The first notice the UN received about Halabja was from Iran. Ambassador
Mohammad Ja’afar Mahallati wrote a brief letter to UN Secretary General Javier Pérez
de Cuéllar on 17 March—five days before the story was widely publicized in the media
—in which vague references to Halabja appear. “The criminal and savage Iraqi régime
also deployed chemical weapons in the operational theatre of Valfajr on the said date [16
March],” Mahallati wrote; “several civilians were martyred and injured.” The letter ends,
82
as do each of these diplomatic missives, with the standard request that “it would be
highly appreciated if this letter were circulated as a document of the Security Council.”176
Mahallati continued writing to the Secretary General, sending him six letters over
seven days between 17 March and 25 March. The foreign minister’s second letter
expanded on the first, saying, “I have the honour and the sad duty to inform you that …
Iraq used chemical weapons on a massive scale in Val Fajr 10 operational theatre and
also against Iraqi Kurdish areas.” The ambassador called the attacks “inhuman” and a
“flagrant violation” of the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of
Poisonous, Asphyxiating and Other Gases. Mahallati charged the UN as a whole and the
to uphold” the protocol’s authority and asked the UN to compel the “criminal Iraqi
regime” to stop using chemical weapons. The letter also hinted at an Iranian CW
capability by pleading with the Secretary General to “relieve the Government of the
On 18 March Mahallati sent Pérez de Cuéllar more details about Halabja, this
time citing an exponentially higher statistic of fatalities. He reported that “the Iraqi
chemical bombardment resulted in the death of some 4,000 residents and wounded
thousands others, including women and children.”178 The ambassador also mentioned
176
Letter Dated 17 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran
to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 17 March 1988, UN document
no. S/19637.
177
Letter Dated 17 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran
to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 17 March 1988, UN document
no. S/19639.
178
Letter Dated 18 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran
to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 18 March 1988, UN document
no. S/19647.
83
Iran’s ongoing evacuation operation. Relatively soon after the attacks, the UN knew
Mahallati’s next letter enclosed a copy of an article from Jane’s Defence referring
to Iraq as the “Middle East’s biggest chemical weapon producer.” Obviously the Iranian
diplomat kept up with English-language media. He again referred to the Halabja attacks:
“I have the honour to draw your attention to the madness of the Iraqi regime which has
not even spared its own citizens from blind and massive chemical attacks…” and urged
Minister for Foreign Affairs, in which it is clear that Iran intended to use the Halabja
attacks to turn international opinion against Iraq in the context of the Iran-Iraq war.
Velayati criticizes the Security Council for failing to take “any effective measures” in
response to repeated CW use and refers to the council’s “irresponsible and indifferent
attitude” which he charges has “encouraged and emboldened Iraq to employ chemical
weapons even against innocent Iraqi civilians.” He calls the attacks war crimes and
rhetorically asks if the silence of the UN has not turned the UN Charter, the Universal
Declaration on Human Rights and other international instruments into “empty and
ineffective slogans.” 180 Halabja had obviously given the Iranian government—notorious
for its own human rights violations—an opportunity to appear to be taking the high moral
road. In another example of Iran’s use of Halabja’s propaganda value, Tehran declared
179
Letter Dated 18 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran
to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 18 March 1988, UN document
no. S/19648.
180
Letter Dated 19 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran
to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 21 March 1988, UN document
no. S/19664.
84
Saturday, 26 March 1988, a day of national mourning “in the memory of the victims of
the chemical bombing of Halabja by the Ba‘athist regime of Iraq” and asked that the
Iran then threatened to boycott peace talks with the Secretary General on the Iran-
Iraq war if an investigative team was not sent to see the victims of Halabja. Pérez de
Cuéllar, citing “considerable and most serious evidence in the public domain” that Iraq
had again used poison gas, finally agreed. His spokesman referred to the Secretary
and wherever this may occur.”182 Several members of the UN Security Council, including
the U.S. and France, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the Secretary General not to send a
team, arguing that the visit would “divert attention from the peace process.”183
On 4 April the Secretary General received three letters from Tehran and one from
Baghdad. In the first, Iran sent dozens of photographs of the corpses lining the streets of
Halabja, which it now called “genocide.” The graphic photographs mostly depict women
and children with liquid oozing from their eyes and mouths; some feature journalists
walking among the dead. The accompanying letter, from Ambassador Mahmoud S.
Madarshahi, states “it is impossible even to try to justify the silence and inaction of the
diplomats raised legitimate concerns. Iran also gave the UN a videotape of the “carnage”
181
Letter Dated 25 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran
to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 25 March 1988, UN document
no. S/19690.
182
Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair, 8.
183
“U.N. to Study Poison-Gas Charge,” New York Times, 26 March 1988, A2; and Hiltermann, A
Poisonous Affair, 125.
184
Letter Dated 4 April 1988 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic
Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 4 April 1988,
UN document no. A/43/279, S/19726.
85
in Halabja, which it said also showed the “hospitality” of the people of the town to
Iranian combatants who “liberated the city without even one shell.”185
weapons attacks (the second Anfal) to Pérez de Cuéllar and continued to poignantly
Is there any doubt for the international community that the continued silence of
the United Nations and its lack of effective action are responsible for
emboldening Iraq to continue its genocide against its Kurdish civilians? How
many more Halabjas and Ghareh-Daghs are required to bring the United Nations
system out of its political expediency? How many innocent civilians have to be
martyred before any effective preventive and punitive measures are adopted
against Iraqi criminals? In the opinion of any objective observer, the time for
effective action is long overdue, and the price for this silence is enormously
high.186
Iraq, meanwhile, continued to deny using chemical weapons at Halabja and went
on a diplomatic offensive, accusing Iran of CW use on the city. Deputy Prime Minister
Tariq Aziz requested on 4 April that the UN send a team to Baghdad to see the Iraqi
soldiers injured by the poison gas.187 Iran responded swiftly to these charges,
categorically rejecting them and accusing Iraq of trying to divert attention from their own
guilt for the Halabja attacks. As evidence that Iraq’s claims were not credible, Velayati
cited the fact that Iraq had not requested a UN mission be sent to Halabja but only to
Baghdad and argued that an investigation that did not include a visit to Halabja would be
incomplete. Velayati also complained that, while the UN waited two weeks before
185
Letter Dated 4 April 1988 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic
Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 4 April 1988,
UN document no. A/43/280, S/19727. A copy of the videotape was made available for consultation at the
Reference and Bibliography Section of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, room L-211.
186
Letter Dated 4 April 1988 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic
Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 4 April 1988,
UN document no. A/43/281, S/19733.
187
Letter Dated 4 April 1988 from the Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations addressed to
the Secretary-General, United Nations, 5 April 1988, UN document no. S/19730.
86
deciding to send a mission to Iran to investigate Halabja, the Secretary General responded
On 20 April Iran sent the UN a long report on Iraq’s chemical weapons use over
the last eight years. The table lists more than two hundred separate poison gas incidents
by place, date, means (artillery, mortar shell, aircraft), number of victims, and substance
(nerve gas, mustard, blister, blood gas). The data covers the time period from 13 January
1981 to 18 April 1988 and runs fourteen pages long. Nearly all of the attacks occurred in
Iranian territory. A sharp escalation in the number of attacks can be traced beginning in
1987. 189 The cover letter accompanying the list sounds more exasperated than diplomatic:
“The Iraqi regime seems to have abandoned all logic and sanity in deploying this most
Halabja attacks. For the fifth time in four years, he asked Dr. Manual Dominguez, a
colonel in the Spanish Army Medical Corps, to head the team. A professor of preventive
atomic, biological and chemical weapons injuries. He was accompanied by James Holger,
The team left London on 27 March, spent three days interviewing and examining
patients in Iran, flew to Geneva and began to prepare their report. While in Geneva, the
188
Letter Dated 5 April 1988 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic
Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General, United Nations, 5 April 1988,
UN document no. A/43/288, S/19741.
189
The break-down of the number of attacks by year is as follows: 1981-5, 1982-6, 1983-33, 1984-19,
1985-52, 1986-37, 1987-77, 1988-23 (as of 18 April). Letter Dated 20 April 1988 from the Acting
Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-
General, United Nations, 21 April 1988, UN document no. S/19816.
87
asked Dominguez and Holger to return to the region, which they did, arriving in Baghdad
on 7 April, where they spent three days as well. They were not, however, permitted by
the Iraqi government to go to Halabja, which greatly hampered their investigation. In Iran
they saw civilians as well as soldiers with CW injuries; in Baghdad they only saw
soldiers with similar symptoms. They returned to Geneva on 11 April and submitted their
findings in two parts: on 25 April Dominguez turned in his 26-page report; on 10 May he
submitted an appendix which listed case notes for each of the 70 patients examined in
Dominguez concluded that the patients he examined in Iran had been affected by
chemical weapons and that “a considerable number of those affected were civilians.”191
As for which type of gas was used, he reported that yperite (mustard gas) plus an
military personnel—had also been affected by chemical weapons, with substances similar
to those seen affecting the patients in Iran. Dominguez lamented that the use of chemical
weapons appeared to be on the rise, an observation which he found all the more
disturbing for the “apparent increase in the number of civilian casualties.” Crucially,
Dominguez stated that “it was not possible to make an independent determination in
either of the two phases of the investigation of the extent of chemical warfare agents and
the means by which the chemical agents had been delivered.” In other words, based on
190
Report of the Mission Dispatched by the Secretary-General to Investigate Allegations of the Use of
Chemical Weapons in the Conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq, United Nations, 25 April
1988, UN document no. S/19823; and Report of the Mission Dispatched by the Secretary-General to
Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Conflict between the Islamic Republic of
Iran and Iraq, United Nations, 10 May 1988, UN document no. S/19823/Add.1.
191
UN document no. S/19823, p. 16.
88
the evidence, he could not say how many victims were killed or injured at Halabja, nor
Security Council on 25 April along with prefatory remarks which expressed his “deep
sense of dismay and foreboding” at the report’s conclusions: “that chemical weapons
continue to be used in the conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq and that
their use in recent days has evidently been on an even more intensive scale than before.”
Referring as well to the increase in civilian casualties, Pérez de Cuéllar expressed his
“grave concern” that “such use could further escalate and seriously undermine the
Geneva Protocol of 1925.” He urged the two parties to allow UNSC resolution 598
Thus, the UN did not single out Iraq for its responsibility for the attacks on
Halabja, and when both countries were named Iran was always cited first (the countries
were likely named in alphabetical order to foster a sense of evenhandedness). Both Iran
and Iraq were treated equally, sharing the blame for the attacks in particular and for
chemical weapons use in general, despite the lack of evidence of Iranian use. The UN
was following the lead of the Reagan administration, which had claimed Iranian
culpability without producing any evidence of Tehran’s involvement. Once the UN report
came out, there was little international will to hold Iraq accountable.
Both the Secretary General and the investigators recognized the limitations of
such UN missions. Pérez de Cuéllar cited a passage from a previous investigation, the 6
192
Ibid., 6.
193
Ibid., 3.
89
May 1987 UN report, which alluded to the need for political efforts rather than repeated
medical investigations if the global community wanted to stop CW use. The specialists
wrote:
We have done all that we can to identify the types of chemicals and chemical
weapons being used in the Iran-Iraq conflict. … Technically there is little more
that we can do that is likely to assist the United Nations in its efforts to prevent
the use of chemical weapons in the present conflict. In our view, only concerted
efforts at the political level can be effective. …194
Without leadership on the Security Council, from the U.S. and other members, there was
When asked why the report did not state who carried out the Halabja attack, Pérez
de Cuéllar said experts could not detect “the nationality of the weapons.”195 The UN
failed to indict Iraq because the international body gave immense weight to U.S. charges
that Iran too had used chemical weapons, even though evidence backing that claim was
never presented. Iraq thus encountered no obstacles to its continued chemical weapons
use against the Kurds during the spring and summer of 1988.
Other Actors
While Iraq denied using chemical weapons on Halabja and Iran exploited the
attacks for their own purposes (evening flying patients to Europe and the U.S. for
treatment to maximize publicity), how did other governments in the Arab/Muslim world
react?196 After all, Halabjans were fellow Muslims, part of the umma or global Muslim
194
Report of the Mission Dispatched by the Secretary-General to Investigate Allegations of the Use of
Chemical Weapons in the Conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq, United Nations, 8 May
1987, UN document no. S/18852.
195
“U.N. Sets No Blame in Gulf War Gas Attack,” New York Times, 27 April 1988, A10.
196
Jennifer A. Kingson, “Victims of Gulf War Treated at Queens Hospital,” New York Times, 6 April 1988,
A14; Teddie Weyr, “Kurds Apparently Suffering from Mustard Gas Wounds Arrive For Treatment,”
Associated Press, 29 March 1988; and Ben Dobbin, “Kurds in Europe, New York for Treatment of
Apparent Gas Wounds,” Associated Press, 29 March 1988.
90
community. Iran had called the attacks “a disgrace for the Middle East,” yet no Arab
country condemned Iraq for Halabja, an indication of the influence Saddam Hussein had
in the region. 197 In fact, at a conference held in Jordan ten days after Halabja, Iran was
condemned. The 46-nation Islamic Conference Organization denounced Iran for riots in
Mecca the year before and for failing to sign the ceasefire agreement with Iraq. The
Western governments fell in step behind the United States. On 23 March the
British government, for example, said it condemned the atrocity but had no independent
evidence of who was guilty.199 Ottawa also condemned the attacks. Canada’s External
Affairs Minister Joe Clark said he was appalled at the “atrocious and inhuman attacks”
against the Kurds, but promised action against both governments, pledging to promote an
later that summer, West Germany invited Tariq Aziz to Bonn in July ostensibly to
mediate an end to the war. Aziz disclosed that Iraq had used chemical weapons but that
Iran had used them first. While in Bonn, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl quietly
reopened a credit line of $167 million to Iraq, which had been suspended due to
nonpayment.201 Chemical weapons use, evidently, did not get in the way of such financial
arrangements.
Many European governments did offer humanitarian help to the victims, however.
The Belgian government sent two physicians to Tehran. Dr. Aubin Heyndrickx examined
197
Alan Cowell, “Iran Charges Iraq with Gas Attack,” New York Times, 24 March 1988, A10.
198
“Islamic Nations End Meeting with Denunciations of Iran,” New York Times, 26 March 1988, A32.
199
“The Town where Thousands Died,” The Guardian (London), 24 March 1988.
200
Andrew Bilski, “Under a Cloud of Death,” Maclean’s, 4 April 1988, 18.
201
Serge Schmemann, “Iraq Acknowledges Its Use of Gas But Says Iran Introduced It in War,” New York
Times, 2 July 1988, A3.
91
survivors, took a helicopter tour of the zone, and concluded that chemical weapons had
been used and that there was “no doubt that these bombings were made by Iraq.” 202 His
conclusions contrast sharply with the UN report but were not widely publicized.
who assist victims of international conflicts or disasters, sent a team to Iran in March and
reported preliminarily at least 2,000 dead and 5,000 wounded from the Halabja attacks.203
The group of doctors, from 15 Western countries, blamed Iraq solely for the use of
Later that year, Physicians for Human Rights, an American group of health
professionals concerned about human rights abuses “regardless of the ideology of the
chemical weapons attacks (the Final Anfal) which had sent so many Kurds to the Turkish
border. The team included three physicians: Robert Mullan Cook-Deegan of Georgetown
Services Director of the Northwest Medical Center in Detroit, who served as translator
202
A. Heyndrickx, “Clinical Toxicologic Reports and Conclusions Concerning the Biological and
Environmental Samples Brought to the Department of Toxicology and the State University of Ghent for
Toxicologic Investigation,” Report no. 88/Ku2/PJ881, in Documentation of the International Conference
on “Human Rights in Kurdistan”: 14-16 April 1989, Hochschule Bremen by International Conference on
Human Rights in Kurdistan, (Bremen, Germany: The Initiative for Human Rights in Kurdistan, 1989), pp.
210–225.
203
Marian Houk, “Iran Enlists US Help in Treating Victims of Chemical Attack,” Christian Science
Monitor, 1 April 1988, 12. MSF reportedly obtained water, soil, and human tissue samples from Halabja
but I was unable to access any subsequent report. “A Terrible Survival,” Maclean’s, 11 April 1988, 22.
204
“Iraq Uses Chemical Weapons, Doctors Say,” Japan Economic Newswire, 27 March 1988.
92
and observer. The group tried to enter Iraq, but the government refused them entry. The
mission was in Turkey from 7–16 October. One method of data collection consisted of
having twenty-seven refugees fill out a 120-question survey. Based on the questionnaire,
Their report also criticized several Turkish physicians, under duress no doubt
from their own government, who had told Western journalists they did not find evidence
of poison gas after examining refugees along the border.205 “The inability of Turkish
physicians either to carry out their own complete investigation or, perhaps more likely, to
disclose the full results of such investigations is a chilling reminder of the political
pressure that can be brought to bear on medical inquiry,” the trio later wrote. “It also
raises the question of whether physicians have an ethical obligation to report violations of
In November 1988, a British journalist, Gwynne Roberts, with the help of the
KDP, secretly entered Iraq to obtain samples to determine whether poison gas had been
used. He collected bomb fragments, soil and wool samples, which were then examined in
a private British laboratory as well as the UK’s Chemical Defence Establishment; both
205
Physicians for Human Rights, Winds of Death: Iraq’s Use of Poison Gas Against Its Kurdish
Population: Report of a Medical Mission to Turkish Kurdistan by Physicians for Human Rights,
(Somerville, Mass.: Physicians for Human Rights, 1989).
206
Howard Hu, Robert Cook-Deegan, and Asfandiar Shukri, “The Use of Chemical Weapons: Conducting
an Investigation Using Survey Epidemiology,” Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 4
August 1989, vol. 262, no. 5, pp. 640–43.
207
Alastair Hay and Gwynne Roberts, “The Use of Poison Gas Against the Iraqi Kurds: Analysis of Bomb
Fragments, Soil, and Wool Samples,” Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 23 February
1990, vol. 263, no. 8, pp. 1065-1066. Roberts also produced, along with Wykeham Films, a documentary
video on the attacks called Winds of Death which was broadcast on the British television show
Despatches, channel 4 TV, on 23 November 1988. I was unable to obtain a copy or transcript of this video.
93
Human rights organizations also responded but at the time were not major
Security Council to stop the “massacre” of Kurdish civilians by Iraqi forces, but not until
September of 1988. They stated the killings were part of a “systematic and deliberate
policy by the Iraqi government to eliminate large numbers of Kurds” and a “flagrant
Rights Watch founded one of its five watch committees, Middle East Watch, in 1989 and
published its first report on the attacks in 1990 based on interviews with exiles before the
organization was able to visit Iraq.209 Later, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and the
subsequent Gulf War of 1991, the United States created the “no-fly zone” over the
northern third of Iraq to protect the Kurds. This de facto autonomy gave the Kurds some
breathing space; many Western observers first entered northern Iraq during this period.
The opening created the opportunity for Middle East Watch to obtain evidence from
But by that point, all efforts could only work towards holding the Ba‘athist regime
accountable for the atrocities of Halabja and Anfal. The window of opportunity for
preventing them was over. Neither the efforts of journalists to tell the stories of the
victims of Halabja, nor the urgent pleas from some members of Congress could overcome
the UN’s inertia or the Reagan administration’s apparently deliberate obfuscation of the
208
Elaine Sciolino, “Shultz to See Iraqi on Reported Gassing of Kurds,” New York Times, 8 September
1988, A16.
209
Human Rights Watch began in 1978 with the founding of Helsinki Watch by a group of publishers,
lawyers and other activists. In 1993, when it published this report, it had offices in New York, Washington,
D.C., Los Angeles, London, Moscow, Belgrade, Zagreb and Hong Kong and conducted investigations of
human rights abuses in sixty countries. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, xi-xii.
94
Chapter 5: Accountability
Who or what entities have been held accountable for Halabja? Who or what
entities have not been held accountable? And what long-term affects, if any, have
the Ba‘athist government have gone to trial and been sentenced. Most companies, largely
from the West, that sold Iraq the technology and supplies used to make the chemical
weapons have not been penalized or charged with any crime. And the legacy of Halabja
lingers in the high incidence of health problems experienced by the survivors in addition
For many years after Halabja, different constituents attempted to charge Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein and others with war crimes under international law. The U.S.
Congress repeatedly advocated for such a trial. In 2000 the U.S. Senate passed a
resolution (S. Con. Res. 95) commemorating the victims of Halabja on the twelfth
anniversary of the attacks, noted the failure of the U.S., UN and other bodies of the
and cited sixteen previous occasions in which the Senate and the House “called upon
prosecute the war crimes of the Iraqi regime.”210 None of these administrations,
210
Congressional Record, Senate, 9 March 2000, p. S 1436, cited in Meho, 396–97. Notably, the resolution
lists 5,000 civilians killed at Halabja compared to the mere hundreds cited in 1988.
95
Human Rights Watch (HRW) tried in vain to find a state willing to bring a case to
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the Iraqi regime. The organization viewed
an ad hoc criminal tribunal modeled after the Rwanda and Yugoslav tribunals—and the
Anfal campaign as genocide under the Genocide Convention of 1948. 211 Any one state
that has signed onto the Convention can petition the ICJ; non-state actors, however, like
the Kurds, can not. HRW staff felt the U.S. would not be seen as an “impartial litigant,”
so they sought out other governments. Two states were willing, but only as part of a
coalition that included at least one European state. But no major European power was
In 1994, HRW attempted to garner U.S. political support for an ICJ case against
Iraq. The State Department’s legal advisor determined that there was a genuine case of
genocide under the Genocide Convention and that an ICJ was winnable.213 Secretary of
State Warren Christopher wrote a departmental memo in support of the effort, but no
The need for a tribunal was also expressed by Kurdish leaders. At the August
2003 Memorial Service for the Victims of Saddam held in Washington, D.C., for
example, Kurdish Regional Government representative Howar Ziad listed four broad
211
Genocide has multiple, shifting definitions. Under the Genocide Convention of 1948, genocide means
“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the
group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the UN General Assembly (9 December 1948), article 2.
Peter Ronayne, Never Again? The United States and the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide since the
Holocaust (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001) 211–12.
212
Joost Hiltermann, “Elusive Justice: Trying to Try Saddam,” Middle East Report, no. 215 (summer
2000): 32–35.
213
Ibid., 34; and Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair, 213.
96
steps he believed Iraqis should take: honor the victims and prevent recurrence yet
recognize that not every crime can be tried; that Iraqis of middle and low rank as well as
high-ranking Iraqi leaders should be put on trial; that Iraqis should run the tribunal; and
that a truth commission be set up to educate those Iraqis who doubt the veracity of some
of Saddam Hussein’s crimes. Ziad noted that some Shi‘i Arabs loathed the former regime
but had never heard of Halabja. He also dismissed claims that Iraqis were not qualified to
run the tribunal. “Some human rights groups with short memories have claimed that we
are not objective enough to try our oppressors, a view that many Iraqis find frankly rather
patronizing,” he said and referred to the Nuremberg tribunal after World War II as a
successful precedent.214
After the U.S.-led Coalition of the Willing overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime
during the Iraq War launched in 2003, a tribunal was put in place to try the multiple
crimes of the Ba‘athist government. The Iraqi High Tribunal (also known as the Iraqi
Special Tribunal) was set up by the Iraq Interim Government in 2004 under the watchful
eye and financial support of the U.S., which provided $150 million, tight security and
lawyers from the Justice Department. The latter gathered evidence and developed
Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was initially tried in the Dujail case, in
which he was charged with killing 148 Shi‘i men and boys in southern Iraq after a failed
assassination attempt against him in 1982.216 Hussein was also a defendant in a second
214
Howar Ziad, “Ba‘athist Genocides: Lest We Forget,” Remarks made at The Memorial Service for the
Victims of Saddam, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 2 August 2003. Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan website http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/hawar030803.html (accessed 6 June 2007).
215
John F. Burns, “Chemical Ali Denies Role in Gas Attacks on Kurds,” International Herald Tribune, 14
May 2007.
216
John F. Burns, “Hussein’s Cousin Sentenced to Die for Kurd Attacks: Found Guilty of Genocide,” New
York Times, 25 June 2007, A1.
97
trial which focused on crimes committed during the Anfal campaign. In November 2006,
while the Anfal trial was underway, Hussein was sentenced to death for the Dujail crimes
and swiftly hanged on 30 December 2006. Three other former officials, including his
half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, were also hanged.217 Many felt Hussein was
executed by his Shi‘a enemies before he was made to pay for crimes against Kurds.218
If Saddam Hussein held ultimate authority for the repression of the Kurds, Ali
Hassan al-Majid was the campaign’s principle architect. Known by the nickname Ali
Kimiawi (Arabic for “Chemical Ali”), al-Majid was found guilty of genocide, war
crimes, and crimes against humanity and sentenced to death on 24 June 2007. His
sentence was upheld by the Iraqi High Tribunal’s appellate court on 4 September 2007
and ordered to be carried out within thirty days. The death sentences of two other
upheld.
At the time of this writing, all three executions have been put on hold indefinitely.
Reportedly the U.S. government, which has custody of these convicted Sunni prisoners,
believes their executions may jeopardize recent alliances with Sunni tribal leaders in what
had been the volatile Anbar province; in addition, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has stated
his personal reservations about capital punishment. It appears at this point that Sultan
Hashem, who is widely respected by senior U.S. military officials, may have his sentence
217
Burns, “Chemical Ali Denies Role in Gas Attacks on Kurds,” International Herald Tribune, 14 May
2007.
218
Andrew Wilson, “Halabja: ‘They’ve Suffered So Much,’” Sky News, Inside Iraq Series, 17 March 2007,
Kurdistan Regional Government website, http://www.krg.org/articles/article_print.asp?ArticleNr=16772
(accessed 21 May 2007).
98
Farhan Motlak al-Jabouri—received life imprisonment for their roles in the Anfal. 220
preparation along with at least ten other trials under the jurisdiction of the Iraqi High
Tribunal. The Intifada trial will concentrate on the suppression of the Shi‘a uprising
across southern Iraq in 1991 in which 150,000 people were killed. Two of the defendants
for that trial will include Saddam Hussein’s chief bodyguard, Abid Hamid Mahmud al-
Tikriti, and Saddam’s half-brother, the former director of the security agency
(Mukhabarat) Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti. Other upcoming trials will center on the
Barzanis, in 1983 and the persecution of Shi‘a marsh Arabs in southern Iraq.221
The highest authorities in the former Iraqi government are thus being held
accountable for crimes against the people of Iraq: Saddam Hussein for his repression of
the Shi‘a—and not the Kurds—and “Chemical Ali” for the Anfal—not Halabja. If al-
Majid is executed before the Halabja trial begins, then middle-ranking military officers
and government officials will likely be prosecuted for their supportive roles in the 16
March attacks. But while former Iraqi officials have been publicly paraded into a court of
law, other parties, with less visible, more indirect roles—such as the companies that
supplied Iraq with the means to make chemical weapons—have managed to deflect
When journalist Kevin McKiernan visited Halabja in 2003, one of the Kurds he
spoke with was Ibrahim Hawrahmani, a man who had witnessed the chemical attack from
a nearby mountain. Hawrahmani asked the reporter, “Did you know that 287 companies
got contracts for the chemical weapons that were used against us? … You news people
that sold Iraq the materials and technology to manufacture chemical weapons in the
1980s has largely been absent. There have been a few cases, however.
Two individuals have been charged and convicted for crimes relating to the sales
of chemical weapons to Iraq. Frans van Anraat, a Dutch businessman, was charged with
complicity in war crimes for supplying chemicals that were used by the Iraqi government
against the Kurds. Acting as a middleman, van Anraat arranged for the shipment of
countries such as Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore. According to the Dutch
dealings with Iraq. The court said van Anraat knew the materials would be used to make
poison gas and continued to supply Iraq with CWs after the Halabja attacks.222
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had been investigating van
Anraat since 1984 and turned over significant evidence to Dutch authorities. ICE agents
determined that van Anraat had sold Iraq thousands of tons of thiodiglycol, a known
precursor to mustard gas, and that he had bought these chemicals from Alcolac, a
company then based in Baltimore, Maryland. 223 After a U.S. indictment in 1989 for
222
Marlise Simons, “Vendor Tied to Gas Attack Is Convicted,” New York Times, 24 December 2005, A5.
223
“17 Years for Supplying Chemicals to Iraq,” Summary of the Judgment of the Court of Appeals, English
translation, 9 May 2007, http://www.rechtspraak.nl (accessed 3 October 2007); and “Fact Sheets: Select
ICE Arms & Strategic Technology Investigations,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, March 2006,
http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/ICEarmsstrategic.htm (accessed 6 June 2007).
100
export violations, van Anraat fled to Iraq where he lived under Saddam Hussein’s
During his trial an Iraqi special security forces memo was entered as evidence. It
indicated that van Anraat had been granted an Iraqi passport with the name “Faris
Mansour” as a reward for his “valuable services” providing “our institutions and the
military industry with chemical and other rare materials.”224 On 23 December 2005 the
court found him guilty of complicity in war crimes and gave him the maximum sentence
however, saying it could not be proved that he knew the chemicals would be used for
genocide. His intent, they said, was greed. He appealed the decision. On 9 May 2007 the
Dutch Court of Appeals in The Hague not only denied his appeal but extended the
sentence of the 65-year-old to 17 years.225 The van Anraat case was especially significant
because it was the first time a court had ruled that the attack on Halabja was genocide.226
The other person to be charged in connection with chemical sales to Iraq was
Christopher Drogoul, a banker based in Atlanta. Drogoul was a bank manager for the
Atlanta branch of the Italian bank, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), and was
convicted of fraud for illegally granting Saddam Hussein more than $5 billion in secret
loans, which in turn were mostly used to make arms purchases. Drogoul was sentenced to
three years and one month in prison on 10 December 1993; his trial was part of what
became known as the Iraqgate scandal. Allegations, never proven in court, were made
against the first Bush administration for arranging the loans. Hearings on the BNL
224
“Dutch Businessman Who Sold Chemicals to Saddam Appeals War Crimes Conviction,” International
Herald Tribune, 1 April 2007.
225
Marlise Simons, “World Briefing Europe: The Netherlands: Stiffer Sentence for Iraq Poison Gas,” New
York Times, 10 May 2007, A14; and “Frans Van Anraat,” Facts and Legal Procedure, Trial Watch
http://www.trial-ch.org/trialwatch/profil_print.php?ProfileID=286&Lang=en (accessed 3 October 2007).
226
Simons, “Vendor Tied to Gas Attack is Convicted.”
101
scandal were held on Capitol Hill, revealing a complex web of economic deals between
the U.S. and Iraq during the 1980s. President George H. W. Bush was subpoenaed to
testify in person at Drogoul’s trial, but the banker decided to plead guilty in exchange for
a reduced sentence; Bush did not have to appear in court. In 1990, after Hussein’s
invasion of Kuwait, Iraq defaulted on the multi-billion dollar loans; on 18 February 1995
the federal government agreed to pay $400 million to BNL to settle their claim for $450
million in unpaid loans to Iraq. These loans had been guaranteed by American taxpayers
Drawing a direct line, however, between the BNL players and the attacks at Halabja is
problematic. What is certain, however, is that the billions of dollars in U.S. government-
backed loans enabled Saddam Hussein to be able to afford massive arms purchases
during the 1980s, including chemical weapons materials and technology. In other words,
without the cash, Hussein may have had to resort to more conventional means in
suppressing the Kurdish peshmerga during and after the Iran-Iraq war, which may have
Relatively few companies have had legal action taken against them, and none
Alcolac, which illegally sold van Anraat tons of thiodyglycol in 1987–1988, pled guilty
227
Iraqgate largely focuses on fraud and risky credit lending rather than the use of chemical weapons on
civilians. See Neil A. Lewis, “Bank Official Gets Reduced Term Over Iraq Loans,” New York Times, 10
December 1993; “Settlement Reached on Loans Made to Iraq,” New York Times, 18 February 1995; U.S.
House of Representatives, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Iraqi and Banca Nazionale
del Lavoro Participation in Export-Import Programs, Hearing before the Committee on Banking, Finance
and Urban Affairs, House of Representatives, 102nd cong., 1st sess., 17 April 1991, (Washington, D.C.:
GPO, 1991); Congressional Record, House of Representatives, “Concerns About Foreign Bank Regulation,
BNL Loans to Iraq, and BNL Loans to Iraqi Front Companies,” 31 July 1992, p. H7137-7144; Said
Aburish, Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000), 361; and
Stephen J. Hedges and Brian Duffy, “Iraqgate: How the Bush Administration Helped Saddam Hussein buy
His Weapons of War and Why American Taxpayers Got Stuck with the Bill,” U.S. News & World Report,
18 May 1992.
102
in 1989 to federal export violations involving shipment of chemicals that could be used to
make mustard gas (the guilty plea was actually for a shipment that was headed for Iran,
but prosecutors said the company shipped more to Iraq). The company was fined nearly
$438,000 in 1990 and has since restructured. Alcolac Inc. is currently based in Georgia
and owned by a French-based firm, Rhodia Inc., whose U.S. operations are located in
middlemen between a chemical’s manufacturer and its ultimate buyer. Responsibility for
end-use is also made more complex because many chemicals have dual uses, both
civilian and military. Nerve gas is made up of the same components as common
pesticide, for example. In Iraq’s case, however, a red flag was the massive quantities
ordered.
nerve gas—seized by U.S. Customs in 1984 before it reached Iraq’s State Establishment
for Pesticide Protection (SEPP), widely regarded as one of many front entities used by
Sahib Abd al-Amir al-Haddad, an Iraqi-born, naturalized American citizen; he was never
228
“Md. Chemical Manufacturer Fined,” Washington Post, 27 May 1990, D7; “Guilty Plea in Gas Sale to
Iran,” Washington Post, 14 February 1989; Eric Rich, “Baltimore Firm Part of Probe of Poison Gas: Dutch
Authorities Tracking Chemicals Used by Iraq,” Washington Post, 9 November 2005; Seth Carus, The
Genie Unleashed: Iraq’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Program, Policy Papers no. 14 (Washington,
D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1989), 43n2; and Jim Crogan, “Made in the USA,
Part III: The Dishonor Roll: America’s Corporate Merchants of Death in Iraq,” LA Weekly, 24 April 2003.
103
charged with a crime for this shipment, as U.S. export controls had not yet come into
Litigation was also directed toward companies in Germany which supplied Iraq
with equipment and ingredients for chemical weapons. Twenty-five defendants from
thirteen firms were investigated including the company Pilot Plant, a subsidiary of
laboratory equipment supplier Karl Kolb. Three Karl Kolb employees were charged with
violating German export laws but were all found not guilty. A Dutch company,
Melchemie Holland B.V., was convicted of selling restricted chemicals without a license
and fined $30,000. One of the chemicals it sold to Iraq’s SEPP was phosphorous
oxycholoride, a nerve gas component. But such legal judgments do not link these
suppliers with specific attacks. More documentation, company memos and Iraqi military
records perhaps, will have to surface before direct connections can be made.
As recently as 2006 a French news article quoted Kamil Abdel Qader, head of the
Halabja Chemical Victims’ Society, as saying the list of companies that supplied Saddam
Hussein had not been made public, and the reporter, surprisingly, seemed to agree.230
Apparently Qader and this reporter were both unaware at that time that the list had been
leaked, was published by a German paper and is available online. Although there has
been relatively little litigation of companies that supplied Iraq, the list of companies from
the U.S. and Europe has indeed been reported; perhaps word of the leaked list has not
been widespread.
229
John J. Fialka, “Outlawed Weapons—A Scourge Returns—Fighting Dirty: Western Industry Sells Third
World the Means to Produce Poison Gas—Germans in Particular Supply the New ‘Pesticide Plants’ in
Volatile Mideast Region—Nabbing a Cargo at Kennedy,” Wall Street Journal, 16 September 1988, 1;
Philip Shenon, “Suppliers: Declaration Lists Companies That Sold Chemicals to Iraq,” New York Times, 21
December 2002, A11; and Crogan, “Made in the USA.”
230
Simon Ostrovsky, “Halabja Wants Saddam’s Chemical Suppliers to Pay,” Agence France-Presse, 20
May 2006, in The Centre of Halabja, C.H.A.K., http://www.nawandihalabja.com (accessed 24 June 2007).
104
The list was leaked in the following manner. In the context of meeting UN
demands for full disclosure of its weapons of mass destruction capability, the Iraqi
government produced two massive reports, one in 1996 and another in 2002, which
included long lists of the companies that had armed Iraq. One copy of the 11,000-page
document was provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the other
to the UN. Under pressure from Western governments, the UN declined to release the list
to the public. The U.S., however, reportedly obtained the UN copy, distributed unedited
versions to select permanent members of the Security Council, and distributed edited
copies, with the sections referring to international corporations omitted, to the press.231
The attempt at censorship failed, however, and the unedited list leaked out.
Andreas Zumach, the Geneva-based UN correspondent for the Berlin alternative daily
newspaper Die Tageszeitung, obtained the top-secret unedited list which his paper
companies as having illegally supplied Iraq with weapons. (For a list of the American
companies, see Appendix 7.) Germany had the most companies on the list at eighty.
France had ten companies on the list; the total came to more than 150 foreign companies
supplying Iraq with nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional weapons from 1975
to 2001.232
231
Tony Paterson, “Leaked Report says German and US Firms Supplied Arms to Saddam,” The
Independent, 18 December 2002. For a list of the twenty-four American companies in the list, see
Appendix 6.
232
Ibid.; Andreas Zumach, “Fremde Hilfe fur Saddam (Strange Assistance for Saddam),” Die Tageszeitung
(Berlin), 17 December 2002, http://www.taz.de/index.php?
id=archivseite&dig=2002/12/19/a0080&type=98, (accessed 3 October 2007); and “Top Secret Iraq
Weapons Report Says the U.S. Government & Corporations Helped to Illegally Arm Iraq, Part Two,”
Democracy Now! 19 December 2002, http://www.democracynow.org/print.pl?sid=03/04/07/0315209,
(accessed 3 October 2007).
105
Two German companies on the list with chemical weapons links were Preussag,
later called TUI, which provided Iraq with thirty tons of phosphorus oxychloride (sarin
nerve gas component) and Hoechst, which sold Iraq ten tons of the same chemical. Both
specifically supplied Iraq’s chemical weapons program (as opposed to nuclear, biological
and conventional weapons): Alcolac. But later investigative reporting by Jim Crogan of
LA Weekly, after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, produced a more comprehensive
list of ninety-one American companies or foreign companies with U.S. affiliates selling
arms to Iraq; among these are eighteen with ties to chemical weapons manufacturing,
sales, and technology (for a list of the eighteen companies, see Appendix 8).234
Several of these American companies are household names while others are
obscure. Bechtel Group, based in San Francisco, California, served as the engineering
Complex 2. The company has deep ties to former and current U.S. officials, including
Secretary of State George Shultz, Bechtel’s former president and member of the board of
directors, and former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, Bechtel’s general counsel,
among others. Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, California, provided more than
Industry and Military Industrialization (MIMI) which was responsible for Hussein’s
chemical weapons programs. Honeywell, based in Morristown, New Jersey, sold more
than $353,000 worth of computers to MIMI and supplied a “process flow controller” used
233
Shenon, “Suppliers: Declaration Lists Companies that Sold Chemicals to Iraq,” New York Times.
234
Crogan, “Made in the USA.”
106
in Iraq’s CW program.235 Lummus Crest Inc., formerly based in Bloomfield, New Jersey,
provided more than $250,000 worth of equipment to MIMI used for a multibillion-dollar
Some other examples from the group of eighteen include Nu Kraft Mercantile
Corp., a front company and subsidiary (reportedly no more than an empty warehouse) for
Brooklyn-based United Steel and Strip Corp., an import/export firm. Nu Kraft allegedly
transferred more than 300 tons of thiodiglycol from Alcolac to Iraq via stops in Antwerp,
Belgium and Jordan and is no longer in business. Phillips Export, now part of Houston-
based ConocoPhillips, sold 500 tons of thiodiglycol to Iraq’s SEPP via the Dutch firm
KBS Holland. Union Carbide, formerly based in Danburry, Connecticut, and which later
merged with Dow Chemical Company based in Midland, Michigan, shipped the chemical
xylene to Iraq which was also used in its CW program. And finally, Unisys Corp., based
In 2003 the New York Times published a map of the world showing the origins by
country of Iraq’s chemical weapons program. The graphic was produced by Gary
tracks WMD. No American firms appeared on the map, but Milhollin noted that they
“show up on lists of suppliers of anthrax strains to Iraq, and of advanced electronics for
nuclear and missile sites.”237 What the map does show is only part of the picture, since it
is based on Iraq’s own declaration. In addition to Western sources, Asian suppliers also
appear on the map. The major role of Singapore may be deceptive; van Anraat, for
235
Ibid.
236
Ibid.
237
Gary Milhollin and Kelly Motz, “The Means to Make the Poisons Came From the West,” New York
Times, 13 April 2003.
107
example, had used Singapore as a stop between the country of origin and the final
destination.
The Iraqi-supplied data was broken down into three categories: ingredients,
equipment, and munitions. Iraq declared imports of 17,602 tons of chemicals (that were
technically dual-use); Singapore sold Iraq the most (4,515 tons), followed by the
Netherlands (4,261 tons) and Egypt (2,400 tons). Iraq declared imports of 340 pieces of
CW equipment; Germany sold the most equipment (52 percent), followed by France (21
percent) and Austria (16 percent). The declaration said that between 1983 and 1989 Iraq
imported more than 200,000 artillery shells, aerial bombs, and rockets designed for
chemical weapons delivery. Italy was the country that sold Iraq the most munitions
Thus, the components of the chemical weapons program responsible for the
attacks on Halabja evidently had their origins in numerous parts of the globe, mostly in
Europe, but with substantial contributions from the United States. Accountability among
such a maze of trails is daunting. One individual, however, unrelated to Iraq’s chemical
weapons use on the Kurds, is attempting to hold Western companies accountable: Gary
against many of the larger companies, alleging they may be responsible for the veterans’
health problems.239 His ongoing lawsuit has made documents available which before had
been under wraps. It is unclear, however, whether Halabja survivors will be successful in
their attempts to get compensation from such companies for the loss of relatives and
238
Ibid.
239
Shenon, “Suppliers: Declaration Lists Companies That Sold Chemicals to Iraq,” New York Times.
108
What long-term affects have survivors of the attacks experienced, and what
efforts have been made to alleviate them? And what do the Kurds of Halabja want from
One of the largest problems affecting Halabjans is the lack of in-depth, systematic
studies on the health of survivors and environmental impacts on soil and water.
Preliminary studies have concluded that Halabjans experience dramatically higher rates
of cancers, vision and respiratory problems, miscarriages, and children born with
deformities compared to towns nearby that were not gassed. Access to sophisticated
healthcare treatments has been limited, and many people, especially women, suffer from
depression. The people of Halabja are frustrated with the lack of assistance they have
received from both local Kurdish government officials as well as the international
community.
The little research that has been carried out on these impacts was spearheaded by
two physicians, one British and the other Kurdish. In 1999, Dr. Christine M. Gosden,
Fouad Baban, a pulmonary and cardiac specialist and one of Kurdistan’s best-known
doctors, formed the Halabja Post-Graduate Medical Institute (HMI). The institute consists
of four centers dedicated to the study and treatment of long-term affects of chemical,
biological, and radiological weapons on men, women, and children.240 With support from
HMI as well as the Washington Kurdish Institute, the State Department, the UK’s
240
Treatment & Research Programs for WMD Survivors in Iraqi Kurdistan, Halabja Post-Graduate Medical
Institute (HMI), http://www.kurd.org/halabja (accessed 6 October 2007). HMI’s four centers were founded
at the three medical colleges (Dohuk, Erbil, Suleymaniya) and the town of Halabja.
109
research which was reported by Gosden in testimony before a U.S. Senate Judiciary
victims of poison gas attacks when the precise nature of the compounds used was an
mustard gas, and the nerve agents sarin, tabun, and VX,” she told the senators.241 She
noted that there is no known antidote for any of these poison gases and that some
medical literature in the annex accompanying her written statement, she testified that the
appearance of genetic mutations and cancer rates were comparable to those who were one
to two kilometers from ground zero in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Gosden described the
lingering affects on the survivors of Halabja, at that time, ten years after the attacks:
and palate requiring surgeons to repair these defects and speech therapists)
241
Testimony of Christine M. Gosden, Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology,
Terrorism and Government and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Chemical and Biological
Weapons Threats to America: Are We Prepared? 22 April 1998,
http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/gosden.htm (accessed 3 October 2007).
242
Ibid.
110
gas victims)
• skin and eye problems (mustard gas burns causing life-long pain requiring
Gosden’s research revealed a high incidence of blindness and four times the rate of
compared to a nearby town that had not been gassed and that no chemotherapy or
radiation therapy (among other needed treatments) was available in the region.244
During her testimony, Gosden noted that medicine’s basic tenets consist of
maintaining health, relieving human suffering, and preventing death from disease. She
said, “In the case of Halabja, all these seem to have been overlooked or forgotten and we
have so far failed to understand what has happened to these people or helped them
effectively.”245
Mental health problems in particular plague the people of the town. Writer
Christiane Bird traveled to Kurdistan in 2002 and reported that “in the last six-seven
years ‘suicide through burning’ had become alarmingly widespread in Iraqi Kurdistan.”246
estimated that between 1991 and 2000 fourteen-hundred women had tried to burn
themselves to death. “The victims were usually young village women suffering from
243
Ibid.
244
Christine Gosden, “Why I Went, What I Saw,” Washington Post, 11 March 1998, A19.
245
Ibid.
246
Christiane Bird, A Thousand Sighs, A Thousand Revolts: Journeys in Kurdistan, (New York: Random
House, 2004), 225.
111
society post-Anfal.”247
overthrow of Hussein in 2003) for her research in Halabja but continued her work long-
distance from London. She assisted the victims by secretly bringing Iraqi doctors to the
UK where they received training tailored to the Kurds’ medical complications.248 She also
lobbied on behalf of the chemical weapons victims, decrying in one Op-Ed the “appalling
lack of detailed scientific information on damage to [the Kurdish] people and their
environment” and warned that “severe health problems reported throughout Iraq and
There have been other attempts by various parties, local and foreign, to help
Karim, an Iraqi Kurdish-American brain surgeon, received a grant from the State
“interested in the Kurdish holocaust” was then WKI’s executive director. Major funding
from the U.S. government for the project, however, mysteriously ended before the results
implicated in such a study may have persuaded the State Department to pull the plug on
WKI’s funding. No other funders have stepped up to fill the gap. 250
Other projects focused on Anfal survivors (called anfalakan). In 1999 the Kurdish
regional administration established the Ministry of Human Rights, Displaced Persons and
247
Ibid., 226.
248
“Mercy Mission to Save Ailing Kurds,” BBC News, 3 February 2002,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1793791.stm (accessed 6 October 2007).
249
Christine Gosden and Mike Amitay, “Lesson of Iraq’s Mass Murder,” Washington Post, 31 May 2002.
250
Kevin McKiernan, The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
2006), 351.
112
Anfal in Sulaimaniya. Director Kak Mansour claimed it was the first ministry to
methodically provide for the survivors, coordinating social services, landmine removal,
and returning families to destroyed villages. The ministry is also trying to improve access
to healthcare facilities and provides Anfal survivors with a pension of $40 per month per
family and educational benefits, including a preference for the children of anfalakan in
Another program was run by the Kurdistan Women’s Union (KWU), a group
formed in 1953 in Baghdad, home to one million Kurds. Jula Hajee, president of the
Dohuk branch of the KWU, focuses on war widows who are burdened with psychological
and economic problems and tries to provide them jobs in order to give these women, she
says, a reason for living. One project run by young women involved the distribution of
sheep to 270 villages. The 13,000 sheep contributed wool, mutton and income to 2,300
families and resulted in healthier pregnancies and a lower infant mortality rate, according
to the group. Another project, funded by the World Food Program, provided one hundred
Victims who did not survive the attacks have been honored through the
construction of a memorial. In 2003 the $3 million Halabja Memorial was built with U.S.
funds (for a photograph see Appendix 9). A metal sculpture rose sixteen feet in the air,
symbolizing the sixteenth of March, from its base of locally quarried marble. The names
of five thousand victims were reportedly engraved into the marble. A sculpture of the
Kurdish flag was next to sixteen hands, a planet Earth, and four electric candles,
symbolizing the four regions of Kurdistan in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria. The fingers on
251
Kerim Yildiz, The Kurds in Iraq: The Past, Present and Future, (London: Pluto Press/Kurdish Human
Rights Project, 2004), 131.
252
Mike Tucker, Hell Is Over: Voices of the Kurds After Saddam, (Guilford, Conn.: The Lyons Press,
2004), 155.
113
the hands were of varying thicknesses, correlating to the percentage of the Kurdish
population in each country: the thickest finger represented Turkey and the thinnest Syria.
The memorial originally included a building that housed a theater, seminar rooms, and a
photo exhibit.253 A separate room housed a life-sized scene of the attacks, with bodies of
children, women and men sprawled on top of one another, attempting to flee. A mist
sprayed into the room, depicting clouds of poison gas.254 Each year on the 16 March
anniversary, dignitaries and accompanying journalists annually made the trek to the
Halabja Memorial.
The victims of Halabja were remembered in another symbolic way which gave
of Iraq’s new constitution, approved by national referendum in 2005. Part of a long list of
… inspired by the tragedies of Iraq’s martyrs, Shiite and Sunni, Arabs and Kurds
and Turkmen … and recollecting the darkness of the ravage of the holy cities and
the South in the Sha’abaniyya uprising and burnt by the flames of grief of the
mass graves, the marshes, Al-Dujail and others and articulating the sufferings of
racial oppression in the massacres of Halabcha, Barzan, Anfal and the Fayli Kurds
… so we sought hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder to create our new Iraq, the
Iraq of the future free from sectarianism, racism, locality complex, discrimination
and exclusion. …255
Despite these official and honorary forms of recognition, observers have detected
a simmering discontent among the Halabja survivors. Foreign journalists have often
noticed a lack of the routine hospitality and courtesy normally extended to visitors. One
woman told reporter Kevin McKiernan, “Look, the journalists always come here and tell
253
McKiernan, The Kurds, 350.
254
“Secretary Powell Honors Halabja Victims,” Kurdistan Newsline, 16 September 2003, Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan website, http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/paul_halabja030915.html (accessed 6 June
2007).
255
Associated Press, “Full Text of Iraqi Constitution,” Washington Post, 12 October 2005. The text was
translated from the Arabic by the UN’s Office for Constitutional Support and approved by the Iraqi
government.
114
us they will get help, but nothing ever happens—what is the use of talking to them?”256
Nasreen Jaffar, who is partially blind and has trouble breathing, said she has ceased to see
any point in telling her story to foreigners, saying, “We are like laboratory rats here in
Halabja. Everyone comes to interview us and hear our tragedy and look at us, but no one
helps us.”257 In 2006, Habat Nawzad, a local Kurdish journalist, described to a French
reporter how visiting officials use the Halabja anniversary to make generous promises but
have never followed through. “Every year March 16 is like a supermarket that opens for
one day but closes before you have time to carry anything out,” he said.258
mass graves had been postponed due to lack of funding (possibly WKI’s project). “There
has been a great lack of international cooperation,” he said. “Where is the United Nations
on this matter? The UN has only proven that it manages problems, and does not solve
them. The UN is doing nothing to aid the investigation of war crimes and mass graves in
Iraq! Where are the Germans with the lessons of their own Holocaust?”259
Discontent in Halabja boiled over one day in March 2006. All across Iraq a
minute of silence was observed to commemorate the poison gas attacks in 1988. But in
Halabja demonstrators, angry with the Kurdish government, blocked the entry of officials
into a ceremony at the Halabja Memorial. Demonstrators handed out flyers that read,
“This is a city, not a mass grave.” Kurdish security officers fired on the crowd, killing a
17-year-old teenager and injuring a dozen more Kurds. By the time order was restored,
256
McKiernan, The Kurds, 353.
257
Omar Sinan and Kathy Gannon, “In Town that Saddam Gassed, Bitter Times Abound,” Associated
Press, 19 February 2007, http://www.kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=14091.
258
Simon Ostrovsky, “Halabja Wants Saddam’s Chemical Suppliers to Pay,” Agence France Press, 20 May
2006, in The Centre of Halabja, C.H.A.K., http://www.nawandihalabja.com (accessed 24 June 2007).
259
Faisal Rostinki Dosky, director, KDP intelligence, interviewed by Mike Tucker. Tucker, Hell Is Over,
99.
115
the three-year-old memorial had burned down, destroying documents that had been
challenged to provide for freedoms of speech and assembly for demonstrators as well as
the press, and the people of Halabja have grievances they feel remain unmet. Journalists
who covered the unrest were beaten and detained by PUK police. One Kurdish reporter,
Mariwan Hama-Saeed, said officials should not have been surprised by the protest since
the student-demonstrators had alerted them of their plans three weeks ahead of time.261
Said Eddin, a shop owner and survivor of the 1988 attacks, said the demonstrators had
reason to complain. “We haven’t had any reconstruction here. The people of Halabja are
very, very angry.”262 There were only two new buildings in town: the memorial and office
of the PUK. Others complained of lack of proper medical care. Hama-Saeed said the
people are frustrated by the government’s failure to provide services or stop corruption.
“They have been doing well to liberate us, but they have failed to serve us. I don’t need
slogans like, ‘Baath is terrible, Arabs are chauvinists.’ I need universities and I need
roads paved. I don’t need to see officials with ten million dollar houses while people are
suffering.”263 Obviously the economic boom in Iraqi Kurdistan is not trickling down to
260
David Enders, “Unrest in Halabja,” Mother Jones, 23 March 2006; “Kurdistan Islamic Scholars Union
Condemns Burning of Halabja Monument,” Kurdistan Nuwe, 21 March 2006, trans. NTIS, U.S.
Department of Commerce from the newspaper of the PUK; and Amanj Khalil, “Iraq: Journalists Arrested,
Harassed at Halabja Monument,” Hawlati, 22 March 2006, trans. NTIS, U.S. Dept. of Commerce.
261
Enders, “Unrest in Halabja.”
262
Ibid.
263
Ibid.
116
While many Halabjans are angry, the trials of Saddam Hussein and “Chemical
Ali” did evoke a sense of justice among many Kurds. When al-Majid’s death sentence
was announced, one Kurdish woman said, “I am very happy today … I want them to be
hanged in Kurdistan. I do not want Chemical Ali and others to die in a split second,
because our men and sons were suffering from bullet injuries for days and our women
and children were dying from thirst in the prisons.” A Kurdish man said, somewhat less
vividly, “I salute the court that has served justice in Iraq. I feel I am a true citizen when I
see the court of law is passing lawful sentences.” Another sought to rid himself of the
genocide. … We do not need the dirty label of Anfal on us. We are martyrs of the
trenches.”264 Others were less enthusiastic. Rizgar Mohgadeh Basher, 24, whose father
was disappeared by Iraqi soldiers during the Anfal, said when Saddam Hussein’s trial
began, “We’re nearing justice, but it’s too late.”265 Nokham Mohammed, a Halabja
survivor who lost eight family members in the attacks, has a persistent cough, burns on
his skin and is blind in one eye. He needs surgery but can’t afford it. He says people still
fear that the vegetables they sell to each other in the markets are grown in poisoned soil
Another Halabja survivor, Kamil Abdel Qader, whose lungs are severely
damaged, formed the Halabja Chemical Victims Society, a small nonprofit organization.
He wants the companies and governments that helped Hussein to pay compensation to
264
“Iraqi Kurds React to Death Sentence of ‘Chemcial Ali,’” KurdSat, PUK satellite TV, Al-Suleimaniyah,
24 June 2007, trans. NTIS, U.S. Dept. of Commerce. All speakers in this transcript are unidentified by
name.
265
Sudarsan Raghavan, “For Kurds, A Long Wait for Justice: Hussein Begins Trial Today for 1988
Offensive That Used Chemical Attacks,” Washington Post, 21 August 2006, A1.
266
Sky News, “Halabja: ‘They’ve Suffered So Much,’” 17 March 2007, Kurdistan Regional Government
website, http://www.krg.org/articles/article_print.asp?ArticleNr=16772 (accessed 21 May 2007).
117
the victims who are still living. “Those who are suffering need a lot of money to get
treatment in Western hospitals,” he said. “We want to see those who helped Saddam
called for by Kurds in Iraq and in the diaspora. Washington Kurdish Institute president
Hussein’s repression of the Kurds. “Now is the time for a full study of the Anfal. I hope
that American institutions will lead this effort,” he said.268 When then-Secretary of State
Colin Powell attended the Halabja Memorial inauguration in 2003, Suhayba Abdul-
Rahman, a survivor, showed him a photograph of her five children and husband killed in
the attack. She thanked Bush for launching the war but asked Powell to help get her
medical attention to try to restore her sight.269 And Kamil Abdul Qadir said, with a cough,
“I believe the world has forgotten about us. The Americans and the British did half the
job when they got rid of Saddam Hussein. We thought they would come and help us and
Nearly two decades later, the legacy of the attacks on 16 March 1988 indeed lingers.
267
Ostrovsky, “Halabja Wants Saddam’s Chemical Suppliers to Pay.”
268
Washington Kurdish Institute, “Washington Kurdish Institute President Commends Anfal Trial Verdict,”
29 June 2007, WKI Press Release, http://www.krg.org/articles/detail.asp?
smap=02010200&1ngnr=12&rnr=73&anr=18748 (accessed 30 June 2007).
269
“Secretary Powell Honors Halabja Victims,” Kurdistan Newsline, 16 September 2003, Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan website, http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/paul_halabja030915.html, (accessed 6 June
2007).
270
Caroline Hawley, “Halabja Survivors Seek Justice,” BBC News, 19 October 2005.
118
Chapter 6: Conclusion
reports, U.S. government documents, and media coverage, it is clear that at least 3,200
and perhaps as many as 5,000 Iraqi Kurdish civilians, disproportionately children and
women, were killed on 16 March 1988 and thousands more wounded as a result of
chemical weapons dropped by the Iraqi military under the authority of Ali Hassan al-
Majid and Saddam Hussein. The attack appears to have been collective punishment for
the alliance of the Kurdish guerrillas, peshmerga, with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. The
Kurds have historically been in a frequent state of rebellion against the central
governments that have ruled over them in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria since the breakup
The evidence also shows that the Reagan administration not only failed to take
action to prevent further poison gas attacks on civilians by their de facto ally, Iraq, but
indeed actively sought to prevent other bodies from sanctioning the Ba‘athist
government. Their motive for such a policy, as is clear from their own memos, was
companies and governments, especially West Germany but also the United States,
ingredients, and technology or the capital to purchase such goods and services without
corporate officials with access to television or print news can credibly claim they did not
119
know about the attacks on Halabja, nevertheless many survivors feel neglected by the
studies, and some Iraqi Kurds are demanding compensation from the companies that
profited from chemical supplies and technology sales. Although a handful of former Iraqi
officials have been tried for war crimes and genocide, it remains unclear how far the
reach of the upcoming Halabja trial under the jurisdiction of the Iraqi High Tribunal in
Baghdad will go and whether survivors will indeed obtain financial settlements from the
What implications can be drawn from this study of the attacks on Halabja?
Certainly this is a story that depicts the brutality of Saddam Hussein and his regime. It
also shows what the consequences can be if men and women working in corporate
noncombatants such as unarmed civilians and especially children, women, and the
elderly. It raises the necessity of enforcing a global ban on the use, stockpiling, and
States and those of other Western democracies to avoid giving other nations the double-
Human rights and international law, which were apparently so easily dismissed by
many persons in positions of authority in this story, are increasingly becoming harder for
governments to ignore as voters are more aware of human rights abuses all over the
271
Senator Hatfield called for the “complete and final destruction of the world’s nerve gas arsenals” in
1988. The U.S. ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1998, but attached many reservations that,
Hiltermann charges, “effectively rendered US adherence to the treaty meaningless.” Congressional Record,
Senate, 24 June 1988, pp. 15918–21, cited in Meho, 40; and Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair, 242.
120
technology; e.g., satellite television and the Internet are accessible to more and more
households across the planet. These better-informed voters in turn pressure government
officials to act or face the reality of being voted out of office (the loss of many
Congressional seats in the 2006 post-hurricane Katrina election, for example). The
Reagan administration, in contrast, was apparently able to look the other way, block
Faisal Rostinki Dosky, director of KDP intelligence, insightfully observed, the UN often
seems to be satisfied with managing problems rather than solving them.272 Since 1988
other cases have occurred that have been labeled as genocide, including Rwanda, Bosnia,
and the Darfur region of Sudan. If the international community wants to effectively
prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing rather than attempting only to punish such crimes,
the UN system, particularly the Security Council framework, will have to undergo
inconvenient to support the Kurds in 1988. Western government leaders and the
272
Tucker, Hell Is Over.
273
Peretz, “Cambridge Diarist: Neighborhood Bullies,” The New Republic. Although Peretz coined this apt
phrase, the rest of the observations in this paragraph are mine.
121
corporate donors who funded their campaigns did not allow Kurdish civilian deaths to
objective was to protect Persian Gulf oil from any threat—at the time they considered
Iran to be the greatest danger to the unencumbered, free flow of black crude. From the
U.S. government’s perspective, Iraq was a convenient, proxy military force to act as a
buffer between the hostile Islamic Republic of Iran and the more pliable Gulf States. The
fact that their alliance with Iraq in effect required U.S. policymakers to tolerate the
gassing of children and women did not prevent them from pursuing their strategic
objectives. And for that callous calculus, many have yet to be held accountable.
122
List of Appendices
1. The Kurdish language shall be, alongside the Arabic language, the official language in
areas with a Kurdish majority; and will be the language of instruction in those areas
and taught throughout Iraq as a second language.
2. Kurds will participate fully in government, including senior and sensitive posts in the
cabinet and the army.
5. Kurds shall be free to establish student, youth, women’s and teachers’ organizations of
their own.
7. Pensions and assistance will be provided for the families of martyrs and others stricken
by poverty, unemployment or homelessness.
10. The Constitution will be amended to read ‘the Iraqi people is made up of two
nationalities, the Arab nationality and the Kurdish nationality.’
11. The broadcasting station and heavy weapons will be returned to the Government.
13. The Governorates (Provincial) Law shall be amended in a manner conforming with
the substance of this declaration.
15. The Kurdish people shall share in the legislative power in a manner proportionate to
its population in Iraq.
Muhammad M N/A JG
Nouri Hama Ali M N/A JG
Awat Omer M 20 JG
Muhammad Ahmed Fattah M 20 JG
Salah Fattah M N/A JG
Bahar Jamal F N/A JG
Hamida Mahmoud F N/A JG
Dashneh Mahmoud F 2 JG
Jamila Abdullah F 28 NB
Abdul Rahman M 60 NB
Soman Mohammed M 14 PK1
Haj Ali Rasa M 50 PK2
Mohamed Mahmoud Bharam M 35 JB
Aras Abed M N/A CH
Key to sources
1. Honeywell (R, K)
2. Spectra Physics (K)
3. Semetex (R)
4. TI Coating (A, K)
5. Unisys (A, K)
6. Sperry Corp. (R, K)
7. Tektronix (R, A)
8. Rockwell (K)
9. Leybold Vacuum Systems (A)
10. Finnigan-MAT-US (A)
11. Hewlett-Packard (A, R, K)
12. Dupont (A)
13. Eastman Kodak (R)
14. American Type Culture Collection (B)
15. Alcolac International (C)
16. Consarc (A)
17. Carl Zeiss-U.S. (K)
18. Cerberus Ltd. (A)
19. Electronic Associates (R)
20. International Computer Systems (A, R, K)
21. Bechtel (K)
22. EZ Logic Data Systems, Inc. (R)
23. Canberra Industries Inc. (A)
24. Axel Electronics Inc. (A)
Source: Andreas Zumach, “Fremde Hilfe fur Saddam” (Strange Assistance for Saddam),
Die Tageszeitung (Berlin), 17 December 2002, http://www.taz.de/index.php?
id=archivseite&dig=2002/12/19/a0080&type=98.
127
Source: This list is culled from a longer version compiled by Jim Crogan, “Made in the
USA, Part III: The Dishonor Roll: America’s Corporate Merchants of Death in Iraq,” LA
Weekly, 24 April 2003.
128
129
Bibliography
Archival Sources
William J. Burns Files. Box 91849, folder 1, “Iraq, 1987-1988.” Near East and South
Asia Affairs Directorate, National Security Council. Ronald Reagan Library, Simi
Valley, California.
Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Electronic Briefing Book. CIA Electronic
Reading Room. National Security Archive.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/.
Primary Sources
Aburish, Saïd K. Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge. New York: Bloomsbury
Publishing, 2000.
Barzani, Massoud, ed. Ahmed Ferhadi. Mustafa Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation
Movement (1931-1961). New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.
Dutch Court of Appeals. “17 Years for Supplying Chemicals to Iraq,” Summary of the
Judgment of the Court of Appeals, English translation, 9 May 2007,
http://www.rechtspraak.nl.
Francona, Rick. Ally to Adversary: An Eyewitness Account of Iraq’s Fall from Grace.
Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1999.
Galbraith, Peter W. The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War
without End. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Halabja Post-Graduate Medical Institute (HMI). Treatment & Research Programs for
WMD Survivors in Iraqi Kurdistan. http://www.kurd.org/halabja.
Hay, Alastair and Gwynne Roberts. “The Use of Poison Gas Against the Iraqi Kurds:
Analysis of Bomb Fragments, Soil, and Wool Samples.” Journal of the American
Medical Association. 23 February 1990, vol. 263, no. 8, pp. 1065-1066.
Hu, Howard, Robert Cook-Deegan and Asfandiar Shukri. “The Use of Chemical
Weapons: Conducting an Investigation Using Survey Epidemiology.” Journal of
the American Medical Association. 4 August 1989, vol. 262, no. 5, pp. 640-643.
Human Rights Watch/Middle East. Iraq’s Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign
Against the Kurds. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.
Middle East Watch. Human Rights in Iraq. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1990.
Middle East Watch, a Division of Human Rights Watch. Bureaucracy of Repression: The
Iraqi Government in Its Own Words. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994.
_____. Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign against the Kurds. New York: Human
Rights Watch, 1993.
Middle East Watch, a Division of Human Rights Watch, and Physicians for Human
Rights. The Anfal Campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan: The Destruction of Koreme.
New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993.
Physicians for Human Rights. Winds of Death: Iraq’s Use of Poison Gas against Its
Kurdish Population. Report of a Medical Mission to Turkish Kurdistan by
Physicians for Human Rights. Somerville, Mass.: Physicians for Human Rights,
1989.
Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1993.
131
Trial Watch. “Frans Van Anraat,” Facts and Legal Procedure. http://www.trial-
ch.org/trialwatch/profil_print.php?ProfileID=286&Lang=en.
United Nations. Letter Dated 17 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative
of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-
General. 17 March 1988. UN document no. S/19637.
_____. Letter Dated 17 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the
Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-
General. 17 March 1988. UN document no. S/19639.
_____. Letter Dated 18 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the
Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-
General. 18 March 1988. UN document no. S/19647.
_____. Letter Dated 18 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the
Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-
General. 18 March 1988. UN document no. S/19648.
_____. Letter Dated 19 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the
Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-
General. 21 March 1988. UN document no. S/19664.
_____. Letter Dated 25 March 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the
Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-
General. 25 March 1988. UN document no. S/19690.
_____. Letter Dated 4 April 1988 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent
Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the
Secretary-General. 4 April 1988. UN document no. A/43/279, S/19726.
_____. Letter Dated 4 April 1988 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent
Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the
Secretary-General. 4 April 1988. UN document no. A/43/280, S/19727.
_____. Letter Dated 4 April 1988 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent
Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the
Secretary-General. 4 April 1988. UN document no. A/43/281, S/19733.
_____. Letter Dated 4 April 1988 from the Permanent Representative of Iraq to the
United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General. 5 April 1988. UN document
no. S/19730.
_____. Letter Dated 5 April 1988 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent
Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the
Secretary-General. 5 April 1988. UN document no. A/43/288, S/19741.
132
_____. Letter Dated 20 April 1988 from the Acting Permanent Representative of the
Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-
General. 21 April 1988. UN document no. S/19816.
U.S. Department of State. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988: Reports
submitted to the Committee on Foreign Relations U.S. Senate and Committee on
Foreign Affairs U.S. House of Representatives by the Department of State.
Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1989.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Fact Sheets: Select ICE Arms & Strategic
Technology Investigations,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, March
2006, http://www.ice.gov/pi/news/factsheets/ICEarmsstrategic.htm.
_____. Threats to America: Are We Prepared? Hearings before the Senate Judiciary
Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government and the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence on Chemical and Biological Weapons. Testimony of
Christine M. Gosden. 22 April 1998.
http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/gosden.htm.
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs. Iraqi
and Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Participation in Export-Import Programs.
Hearing before the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, House of
133
Representatives. 102nd cong., 1st sess., 17 April 1991. Washington, D.C.: GPO,
1991.
_____. Legislation to Impose Sanctions against Iraqi Chemical Use. Markup before the
Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives. 100th cong., 2nd sess., on
H.R. 5337. 22 September 1988. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1988.
White House. Office of the Press Secretary. “President Delivers ‘State of the Union.’” 28
January 2003. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-
19.html.
Yildiz, Kerim. The Kurds in Iraq: The Past, Present and Future. London: Pluto
Press/Kurdish Human Rights Project, 2004.
Ziad, Howar. “Ba‛athist Genocides: Lest We Forget.” Remarks made at The Memorial
Service for the Victims of Saddam, George Washington University, Washington,
D.C., 2 August 2003. Patriotic Union of Kurdistan website
http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/hawar030803.html
Al Jazeera English
Associated Press
BBC Summary of World News
Christian Science Monitor
Congressional Quarterly
Democracy Now!
Die Tageszeitung (Berlin)
134
Secondary Sources
Abdullah, Thabit A. J. A Short History of Iraq: from 636 to the Present. London: Pearson
Longman, 2003.
Afshari, Reza. Human Rights in Iran: The Abuse of Cultural Relativism. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Ahmed, Mohammad M. A. and Michael M. Gunter, eds. The Kurdish Question and
International Law: An Analysis of the Legal Rights of the Kurdish People.
Oakton, Virg.: Ahmed Foundation for Kurdish Studies, 2000.
Anderson, Liam and Gareth Stansfield. The Future of Iraq: Dictatorship, Democracy, or
Division? New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Bush, Joseph A. Looking for Kurdistan in the Images of Halabja: The Construction of
National Identity through Visual Narratives of Violence. Harrisonburg, Virg.:
James Madison University Library, 2002.
Carus, W. Seth. The Genie Unleashed: Iraq’s Chemical and Biological Weapons
Program. Policy Papers no. 14. Washington., D.C.: The Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, 1989.
Chaliand, Gerard, ed. A People without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan. Trans.
Michael Pallis. London: Zed Books, 1993.
Charny, Israel W., ed. The Widening Circle of Genocide. Genocide: A Critical
Bibliographic Review, vol. 3. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers,
1994.
Cordesman, Anthony H. and Abraham R. Wagner. The Lessons of Modern War. Vol. 2:
The Iran-Iraq War. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990.
Curtiss, Richard. “Iraq and Iran: Rush to Judgment.” Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs. Vol. 7, no. 6 (31 October 1988):51.
Farouk-Sluglett, Marion and Peter Sluglett. Iraq since 1958: from Revolution to
Dictatorship. London: KPI Limited, 1987.
Friedman, Alan. Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally
Armed Iraq. New York: Bantam Books, 1993.
Goldberg, Jeffrey. “The Great Terror: Saddam Hussein Against the Kurds.” The New
Yorker. 25 March 2002.
Gunter, Michael M. The Kurds of Iraq: Tragedy and Hope. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1992.
Hansen, Henny Harald. The Kurdish Woman’s Life: Field Research in a Muslim Society,
Iraq. Ethnografiske Kaekke no. 7. Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 1961.
Hassanpour, Amir. “The Making of Kurdish Identity: Pre-20th Century Historical and
Literary Sources” in Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism. Abbas Vali,
ed. Kurdish Studies Series no. 4. Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 2003.
Hiltermann, Joost. “America Didn’t Seem to Mind Poison Gas.” International Herald
Tribune. 17 January 2003.
_____. “Elusive Justice: Trying to Try Saddam,” Middle East Report, no. 215 (summer
2000): 32–35.
136
_____. A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Hyman, Anthony. Elusive Kurdistan: The Struggle for Recognition. Conflict Studies no.
214. London: The Centre for Security and Conflict Studies, 1988.
Islamic Republic of Iran, Supreme Defense Council. Bloody Friday: Chemical Massacre
of the People of Halabja by the Iraqi Regime. Tehran: War Information
Headquarters, 1988.
Makiya, Kanan. “The Anfal: Uncovering an Iraqi Campaign to Exterminate the Kurds.”
Harper’s Magazine. May, 1992, vol. 284, no. 1704.
_____. Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World. New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1993.
_____ [Samir al-Khalil]. Republic of Fear: The Inside Story of Saddam’s Iraq. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1989.
Marr, Phebe. The Modern History of Iraq. 2nd edition. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
2004.
Maynard, Deanne E. “Iraq: United States Response to the Alleged Use of Chemical
Weapons Against the Kurds.” Harvard Human Rights Yearbook. 1989, vol.
2:179-186.
McKiernan, Kevin. The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland. New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 2006.
McDowall, David. A Modern History of the Kurds. 3rd revised edition. London: I.B.
Tauris, 2005.
Meiselas, Susan and Martin van Bruinessen. Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History. New
York: Random House, 1997.
Mojab, Shahrzad. “Kurdish Women in the Zone of Genocide and Gendercide.” Al-Raida.
Vol. 21, no. 103 (fall, 2003): 20-25. http://www.lau.edu.lb/centers-
institutes/iwsaw/raida.html.
137
_____ ed. Women of a Non-State Nation: The Kurds. Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda
Publishers, 2001.
Natali, Denise. International Aid, Regional Politics, and the Kurdish Issue in Iraq after
the Gulf War. The Emirates Occasional Papers no. 31. Abu Dhabi, UAE: The
Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 1999.
_____. The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran.
Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2005.
O’Shea, Maria T. Trapped between the Map and Reality: Geography and Perceptions of
Kurdistan. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Packer, George. The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2005.
Peretz, Martin. “Cambridge Diarist: Neighborhood Bullies.” The New Republic. vol. 198,
no. 17 (25 April 1988): 43.
Powell, Colin with Joseph E Persico. My American Journey. New York: Ballantine
Books, 1995.
Power, Samantha. “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. New
York: Basic Books, 2002.
Ronayne, Peter. Never Again? The United States and the Prevention and Punishment of
Genocide since the Holocaust. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
Tirman, John. Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America’s Arms Trade. New York: The
Free Press, 1997.
Tucker, Mike. Hell Is Over: Voices of the Kurds After Saddam. Guilford, Conn.: The
Lyons Press, 2004.
Vali, Abbas, ed. Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism. Kurdish Studies Series
no. 4. Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 2003.
van Bruinessen, Martin. Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of
Kurdistan. London: Zed Books, 1992.
Audio-Visual Source
McKiernan, Kevin. Good Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends but the Mountains. Santa
Barbara, Calif.: Access Productions, 2000. VHS tape.