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Halabja: We Hold
Sacrosanct the Memory of your Massacre and We Vow to
Bring the Perpetrators to Justice
In late December the dramatic Al-Jazeera posted the
provocative article What happened in Kurdish Halabja?
by Mohammed al-Obaidi . The article was full of
lies, distortions, and pure hate towards the Kurds,
and raised the ire of many decent people - Kurds and
non-Kurds alike.
Unfortunately, the rabble-rousing style of Anti-Kurdishism
displayed in the article, both in tone and in
content, has become a hallmark of the rhetoric of
many of the Arab Uber-Nationalists and Saddam
rehabilitators who are regularly allowed media
exposure on Arab television and through the print
media.
In the Al-Jazeera piece, al-Obaidi unabashedly
denies and belittles the cold-blooded murder of over
5,000 Kurds in Halabja and thousands more in scores
of other places as political manipulations and lurid
imagination. He further compounds his claims by a
slanderous and personal attack on the Washington
Kurdish Institute, its Founder, its Board of
Directors, and its Executive Director.
The writer s litany of cheap shots and baseless
accusations is in reality no more than a collection
of standard clichés torn from the pages of the
conspiracy theories that the Arab media are so fond
of, and so full of, these days.
These personal attacks aside, his incredulous denial
of the massacre of Halabja is a grave matter for all
peace loving people and is a desecration of the
memory of the thousands of innocent Kurdish women
and children murdered by Saddam and his minions
during his tyrannical reign.
This bizarre denial of recently witnessed events
transcends the pale of human tolerance and
forgiveness. Indeed, it is sadly reminiscent of the
fabrications of the propaganda machine of Joseph
Goebbels in trying to put a civilized face on the
rape of Europe or on Hitler’s Final Solution to the
Jewish problem. This should come as no surprise,
however. Did these not provide the inspiration for
the slogan Arabism Uber Alles, championed by the
founder of the Ba’ath party Michael Aflak and fellow
travelers?
Mr. al-Obaidi bases his allegations on the oft
quoted, and as often repudiated and discredited,
report by the CIA analyst Stephen Pellitiere, the
sum total of which he apparently reveres as the
absolute gospel truth. Little does he realize, or
care to find out, that when it comes to the chemical
wars waged by Saddam against the Kurds, the report
is utterly flawed – a collection of self-assured
assertions by a politician turned scientist, who by
venturing into the realm of chemistry and medicine
without proper footing, reaches all the wrong
conclusions.
Pellitiere’s arguments for throwing the blame for
Halabja on the Iranians (reiterated by the author)
do not take into account Saddam’s record of raining
chemical terror on over forty other Kurdish
locations, and of Iraq s use of a cocktail of
chemical agents (Sulfur Mustard, Tabun, Sarin, Soman,
VX) whose clinical signs were very much consistent
with all the ill effects suffered by the victims,
including the cyanosis and hypoxia that he
mistakenly attributes solely to Hydrogen Cyanide or
blood gases (wherever he got that term!); something
which he says that the Iranian (but not the Iraqi)
army possessed. Further, it completely ignores the
telltale signs of the long-term effects (teratogenicity,
mutagenicity, carcinogenicity etc.) of the chemical
agents’ cocktail used by the Iraqi army in its
attempt to annihilate or subjugate the Kurds. A fact
that has been amply documented by, among others, Dr.
Christine Gosden in hands-on studies at Halabja and
elsewhere in Kurdistan.
Additionally, the Iranian army had no reason to gas
its own soldiers who had occupied Halabja at the
time, but the Iraqi army had ample reasons to do so
inasmuch as chemical warfare had by then become part
and parcel of the notorious Anfal operations aimed
at a final solution for the irksome Kurdish prick in
their side.
As trivial as these insolent remarks may seem, they
are troubling and are disturbingly more than skin
deep. For, in addition to their being a distortion
of history, they manifestly reveal the chauvinism
still harbored in the heart of some Arab zealots and
extremists in Iraq and elsewhere in Arab world. Such
sentiments do not bode well for the future of the
Kurds in Iraq and are ominous signs of what is to
come.
The Kurdish National Congress of North America (KNC)
strongly denounces this malicious attack against a
celebrated Kurdish institution and condemns all
similar desperate and vengeful adventures by fringe
groups such as the Al-Kifah al-Shabi (the author s
stated affiliation) that are aimed at derailing the
liberation of Iraq and its peaceful procession
towards democracy.
In denouncing these outrageous attempts at
discrediting the revered Washington Kurdish
Institute (WKI), the Kurdish National Congress
wishes to reaffirm its admiration, complete trust
in, and high regard for the valuable work carried
out by WKI, its president Dr. Najmaldin Karim, its
Executive Director Mr. Mike Amitay, and its Board of
Directors.
The Kurdish National Congress of North America
January 2005.
The Kurdish National Congress of North America
P.O. Box 1663, Lake Forest, CA 92630 USA
P.O. Box 7033, Windsor, ONT, N9A 2N9, CANADA
Tel/Fax: 949-583-1417
www.kurdishnationalcongress.org
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