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Halabja massacre

Coordinates: 35°11′N 45°59′E / 35.183°N 45.983°E / 35.183; 45.983 (Halabja Poison Gas Attack)
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Halabja poison gas attack
Part of Iran-Iraq War
Operation Zafar 7
File:Chemical weapon2.jpg
Aftermath of the Halabja chemical attack
DateMarch 16, 1988
Location
35°11′N 45°59′E / 35.183°N 45.983°E / 35.183; 45.983 (Halabja Poison Gas Attack)
Halabja, Iraqi Kurdistan
Result Kurds and Iranian forces abandon the city, capture and demolition of Halabja by Iraqi forces
Belligerents
 Iraq  Iran
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
Commanders and leaders
Iraq Ali Hasan al-Majid Iran Ali Sayad Shirazi
Kurdistan Region Nawshirwan Mustafa
Casualties and losses
Up to 15,000 killed and injured (mostly civilians)

The Halabja poison gas attack (Kurdish: Kîmyabarana Helebce) was a genocide massacre occurred in the period of March 16–17, 1988, during the closing days of the Iran-Iraq War, when chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government forces in the Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan. The attack quickly killed thousands of people and animals (around 5,000 dead) and injured around 10,000, most of them civilians;[1] [2] thousands more died of complications, diseases, and birth defects in the years after the attack.[3] The incident, which some define as an act of genocide, was as of 2010 the largest-scale chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history.

The Iraqi High Criminal Court recognized the Halabja massacre as genocide on 1 March 2010, which were welcomed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. <red> [1] <red/>

Background

Main articles: Al-Anfal Campaign and Operation Zafar 7

It was an event that is historically separate from the Operation Anfal (the 1986-1989 campaign conducted by the Saddam Hussein's regime's in order to terrorize the Kurdish rural population and end the peshmerga rebellions by brutal means), as the Iranian troops allied to the rebels were also involved in the Halabja events. Nevertheless, the victims of the tragedy are often included in accounting the deaths attributable to the Anfal campaign, which was characterised by the widespread and indiscriminate use of chemical weapons by Iraq.[4]

Chemical attack

The five-hour attack began early in the evening of March 16, 1988, following a series of indiscriminate conventional (rocket and napalm) attacks, when Iraqi MiG and Mirage aircraft began dropping chemical bombs on Halabja's residential areas, far from the besieged Iraqi army base on the outskirts of the town. According to regional Kurdish rebel commanders, Iraqi aircraft conducted up to 14 bombing sorties of seven to eight planes each; helicopters coordinating the operation were also seen. Eyewitnesses have told of clouds of smoke billowing upward "white, black and then yellow"', rising as a column about 150 feet (46 meters) in the air.[1] Survivors said the gas at first scented with the smell of sweet apples;[5] they said people died in a number of ways, suggesting a combination of toxic chemicals (some of the victims "just dropped dead" while others "died of laughing"; while still others took a few minutes to die, first "burning and blistering" or coughing up green vomit).[6] It is believed that Iraqi forces used multiple chemical agents during the attack, including mustard gas and the nerve agents sarin, soman, tabun and VX;[7] some sources have also pointed to the blood agent hydrogen cyanide (most of the wounded taken to hospitals in the Iranian capital Tehran were suffering from mustard gas exposure).[1]

Discovery by Iranians

File:Halabja1.jpg
Chemical attack victims

The first images after the attack were taken by Iranian journalists who later spread the pictures in Iranian newspapers - film of the atrocity was also shown worldwide via news programmes. Some of those first pictures were taken by Iranian photographer Kaveh Golestan. Recalling the scenes at Halabja, Kaveh described the scene to Guy Dinmore of the Financial Times. Kaveh was about eight kilometres outside Halabja with a military helicopter when the Iraqi MiG-23 fighter-bombers flew in. "It was not as big as a nuclear mushroom cloud, but several smaller ones: thick smoke," he said. He was shocked by the scenes on his arrival in the town, though he had seen gas attacks before during the brutal Iran-Iraq War:

It was life frozen. Life had stopped, like watching a film and suddenly it hangs on one frame. It was a new kind of death to me. You went into a room, a kitchen and you saw the body of a woman holding a knife where she had been cutting a carrot. (...) The aftermath was worse. Victims were still being brought in. Some villagers came to our chopper. They had 15 or 16 beautiful children, begging us to take them to hospital. So all the press sat there and we were each handed a child to carry. As we took off, fluid came out of my little girl's mouth and she died in my arms.[8]

Saddam Hussein's government officially blamed Iran for the attack. The international response at the time was muted and the United States even suggested Iran was responsible.[9] The United States, who, at the time, were allies of Iraq in their war with Iran, said the images could not be verified to be the responsibility of Iraq.

Aftermath

Destruction and partial restoration of the city

After the city was retaken from the hands of the Iranian and Kurdish forces, Iraqi troops in NBC suits came to Halabja to study the effectiveness of their weapons and attacks. The town, littered with unburied dead, was then systematically razed by the Iraqi forces using bulldozers and explosives. It was partially rebuilt by the returning Kurds later, even as chemical weapons contaminated the food and water supplies,[10] soil, and animal populations.[11] In 2003, some 50,000 people lived in the city, compared to some 80,000 in 1988. As of 2008, it's believed there are still undiscovered mass graves in Halabja.

Medical and genetic consequences

Long-term medical effects included permanent blindness, disfigurement, respiratory, digestive, and neurological disorders, leukemia, lymphoma, and colon, breast, lung, skin, and other cancers, increased miscarriages and infertility and severe congenital disorders and other birth defects.[12] Many survivors suffered from mental disorders. Some of those who survived the attack or were apparently injured only lightly at the time, later developed medical problems stemming from the chemicals, and there are increasing fears that the attack may be having a lasting genetic impact on the Kurdish population.[13]

Trials

On December 23, 2005, a Dutch court sentenced Frans van Anraat, a businessman who bought chemicals on the world market and sold them to Saddam's regime, to 15 years in prison. The Dutch court ruled that Saddam committed genocide against the people of Halabja;[14] this was the first time a court described Halabja attack as an act of genocide. On 12 March 2008, the government of Iraq announced plans to take further legal action against the suppliers of chemicals used in the poison gas attack.[15]

Neither Saddam Hussein nor his cousin Ali Hasan al-Majid (who commanded Iraqi forces in northern Iraq in that period, which earned him a nickname of "Chemical Ali") were charged by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for crimes against humanity relating to the events at Halabja. However, the Iraqi prosecutors had "500 documented baskets of crimes during the Hussein regime" and Hussein was condemned to death based on just one case (the 1982 Dujail Massacre).[16] Among several documents revealed during the trial of Saddam Hussein, one was a 1987 memorandum from Iraq's military intelligence seeking permission from the president's office to use mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin against Kurds. A second document said in reply that Saddam had ordered military intelligence to study the possibility of a "sudden strike" using such weapons against Iranian and Kurdish forces. An internal memo written by military intelligence confirmed it had received approval from the president's office for a strike using "special ammunition" and emphasized that no strike would be launched without first informing the president.[17]

On 18 December 2006, Saddam Hussein told the court:

In relation to Iran, if any military or civil official claims that Saddam gave orders to use either conventional or special ammunition, which as explained is chemical, I will take responsibility with honor. But I will discuss any act committed against our people and any Iraqi citizen, whether Arab or Kurdish. I don't accept any insult to my principles or to me personally.[18]

Ali Hasan al-Majid ("Chemical Ali") was condemned to death by hanging by an Iraqi court in January 2010, after being found guilty of orchestrating the Halabja massacre. Majid was first sentenced to hang in 2007 for his role in a 1988 military campaign against ethnic Kurds, codenamed Operation Anfal; in 2008 he also twice received a death sentence for his crimes against the Iraqi Shia Muslims, in particluar for his role in crushing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and his involvement in the 1999 killings in the Sadr City (then Saddam City) district of Baghdad. He was executed on January 25, 2010.[19]

International sources for technology and chemical precursors

The know-how and material for developing chemical weapons were obtained by Saddam's regime from foreign firms.[20] The largest suppliers of precursors for chemical weapons production were in Singapore (4,515 tons), the Netherlands (4,261 tons), Egypt (2,400 tons), India (2,343 tons), and West Germany (1,027 tons). One Indian company, Exomet Plastics (now part of EPC Industrie Ltd.) sent 2,292 tons of precursor chemicals to Iraq. The Kim Al-Khaleej firm, located in Singapore and affiliated to United Arab Emirates, supplied more than 4,500 tons of VX, sarin, and mustard gas precursors and production equipment to Iraq.[21]

The provision of chemical precursors from United States companies to Iraq was enabled by a Ronald Reagan administration policy that removed Iraq from the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Leaked portions of Iraq's "Full, Final and Complete" disclosure of the sources for its weapons programs shows that thiodiglycol, a substance needed to manufacture mustard gas, was among the chemical precursors provided to Iraq from US companies such as Alcolac International and Phillips. Both companies have since undergone reorganization and Phillips, once a subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum is now part of ConocoPhillips, an American oil and discount fossil fuel company, while Alcolac International has since dissolved and reformed as Alcolac Inc.[22]

Controversies

Allegations of Iranian involvement

An investigation into responsibility for the Halabja massacre, by Dr Jean Pascal Zanders, Project Leader of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute concluded in 2007 that Iraq was the culprit, and not Iran. The U.S. State Department, however, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, took the official position based on examination of available evidence that Iran was partly to blame.[9]

A preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) study at the time reported that it was Iran that was responsible for the attack, an assessment which was used subsequently by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for much of the early 1990s. The CIA's senior political analyst for the Iran-Iraq war, Stephen C. Pelletiere, co-authored an unclassified analysis of the war[23] which contained a brief summary of the DIA study's key points. The CIA altered its position radically in the late 1990s and cited Halabja frequently in its evidence of weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Pelletiere claimed that a fact that has not been successfully challenged is that Iraq was not known to have possessed the cyanide-based blood agents determined to have been responsible for the condition of the bodies that were examined,[24] and that blue discolorations around the mouths of the victims and in their extremities,[25] pointed to Iranian-used gas as the culprit. Some opponents to the Iraq sanctions have cited the DIA report to support their position that Iraq was not responsible for the Halabja attack.

Joost Hiltermann, who was the principal researcher for the Human Rights Watch between 1992-1994, conducted a two-year study of the massacre, including a field investigation in northern Iraq. According to his analysis of thousands of captured Iraqi secret police documents and declassified U.S. government documents, as well as interviews with scores of Kurdish survivors, senior Iraqi defectors and retired U.S. intelligence officers, it is clear that Iraq carried out the attack on Halabja, and that the United States, fully aware of this, accused Iran, Iraq's enemy in a fierce war, of being partly responsible for the attack.[9] This research concluded there were numerous other gas attacks, unquestionably perpetrated against the Kurds by the Iraqi armed forces. According to Hiltermann, the literature on the Iran-Iraq war reflects a number of allegations of chemical weapons use by Iran, but these are "marred by a lack of specificity as to time and place, and the failure to provide any sort of evidence". Hiltermann called these allegations "mere assertions" and added that "no persuasive evidence of the claim that Iran was the primary culprit was ever presented."

Halabja memorial riot

File:Halabja-monument.jpg
Memorial to the victims of the Halabja gas attack in 2005

In March 2003, a controversial Monument of Halabja Martyrs was built on the outskirts of the still largely-ruined city. On March 16, 2006, a few thousand of Halabja residents rioted at the site in protest of what they perceived as the neglect of the living and capitalizing on the tragedy by the Kurdish leadership. The memorial was set on fire; one of the rioters was shot dead by the police and dozens of people were injured.[26]

  • The industrial band Skinny Puppy included a track called "VX Gas Attack" on their album VIVIsectVI, based on the Halabja poison gas attack. The backing video for this song used on their Too Dark Park album tour featured various video clips showing victims of the attacks being treated for their injuries, as well as the bodies of those who perished in the attacks.
  • The Dutch death metal band The Monolith Deathcult composed a track about the gassing on the album "Trivmvirate", called "Wrath of the Ba'ath".
  • The 2006 documentary film Screamers about the Armenian American band System of a Down featured a significant segment on the Halabja gas attack.
  • The 2002 British horror film 28 Days Later features a scene where the protagonist walks into a deserted diner and finds a dead mother clutching her dead child on the floor; the director's commentary reveals the scene was inspired by footage and pictures of the Halabja gas attack.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c BBC ON THIS DAY | 16 | 1988: Thousands die in Halabja gas attack Cite error: The named reference "die" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Halabja, the massacre the West tried to ignore"
  3. ^ Death Clouds: Saddam Hussein’s Chemical War Against the Kurds
  4. ^ Iraqi Kurds grieve Halabja victims, Al Jazeera, 16 March 2008
  5. ^ The Smell of Apples, BBC, 06/07/06
  6. ^ Whatever Happened To The Iraqi Kurds?, HRW, March 11, 1991
  7. ^ Death Clouds: Saddam Hussein’s Chemical War Against the Kurds
  8. ^ A committed defender of free expression
  9. ^ a b c Halabja: America didn't seem to mind poison gas, IHT, January 17, 2003
  10. ^ Death Clouds: Saddam Hussein’s Chemical War Against the Kurds
  11. ^ Long term hazards of chemical weapon agents: Analysis of soil samples from Kurdistan
  12. ^ 16 March 1988
  13. ^ Kurds look back with fear, BBC News, 22 July 2002
  14. ^ Saddam's 'Dutch link', BBC News, 23 December 2005
  15. ^ Iraq says to sue Halabja chemical weapons suppliers, LA News, March 27, 2003
  16. ^ Hussein executed with 'fear in his face', CNN, December 30, 2006
  17. ^ Saddam says responsible for any Iran gas attacks, Boston Globe, December 18, 2006
  18. ^ Saddam admits Iran gas attacks, The Age, December 19, 2006
  19. ^ 'Chemical Ali' executed in Iraq after Halabja ruling, BBC News, 25 January 2010
  20. ^ German and European firms were involved
  21. ^ What Iraq Admitted About its Chemical Weapons Program
  22. ^ Made in the USA: A guide to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
  23. ^ FMFRP 3-203 - Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War
  24. ^ IRAQ'S CHEMICAL WARFARE
  25. ^ Iran Chemical Weapon Update - 1998
  26. ^ Memorial to Gas Attack Victims Spurs Controversy, PBS, September 2006

Literature

  • Joost R. Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (2007) ISBN 0521876869
  • Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (2003) ISBN 0-06-054164-4
  • Lawrence Potter, Gary Sick, Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War (2004) ISBN 1-4039-6450-5
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