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Aziza:
was a teen Kurdish girl who survived the attack on
her village, Aikmala. With a few other survivors,
she painfully went over the mountains, making it to
the Turkish border. In doing so, her small fragile
body was raked by severe coughing, vomiting,
diarrhea and internal bleeding.
It has hardly been given attention internationally,
that five million Kurds living in south Kurdistan
(Iraqi Kurdistan) have over the years suffered
greatly at the hands of various regimes in Baghdad.
We the Kurds are from the Iranian branch of
Indo-Europeans, and practice many religions but
mainly Islam. The estimated 40 million Muslims
worldwide are spread throughout the mountainous area
between Turkey, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan and northern
Iraq. Our languages and traditions are distinct from
Persians, Turks, and Arabs who control our country.
Within borders of our occupiers in Iraq, Iran,
turkey and Syria, we Kurds are the largest minority
group.
After the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end
of World War I, the Kurds were promised self
government in (1920) Sevres Treaty. But the treaty
was never ratified and it was completely eliminated
by the Lausanne Treaty. This treaty set the
boundaries of Turkey, Syria and Iraq, dividing
Kurdistan among them in 1923. This made Iraqi Kurds
rebel in southern Kurdistan now (North of Iraq)
against the British mandate government of King
Faisal 1 in Baghdad.
Their eyes on the region’s riches of oil and
agriculture, Arab regimes in Baghdad are not letting
northern Iraq become an independent Kurdistan.
In December 1925, under pressure of the British
government, the League of Nations ruled against
Kurdish statehood. Baghdad had already said much
more; in 1924 the Iraqi governments (with Britain’s
help) brutally put down the Kurdish rebellion.
From there on a bloody pattern established, a
pattern that intensified after Iraq achieved
independence from Britain in 1932. When the Baath
Party took power in 1968 they started
“resettlements,” or, “Arabization,” and razed towns
and villages to the ground while the deportation and
mass killing of Kurdish men and women ensued.
To Arabs in general, and to the Iraqi Arabs
especially, promoting Kurdish identity was seen as
promoting separatism, chauvinism, and racism. This
is seen as a traitorous act. That’s whey the Iraqi
army and the secret police were ordered and trained
to deal with Kurds as such. To paralyze the Kurdish
gorilla activities after 1975, the Baathist
government started an evacuation program along the
borders of Iran and Iraq, and later along Iraq and
Turkey also. By the mid 80’s, when Iraq was at war
with neighboring Iran, not only were villages in the
border areas erased, but also those in the
oil-producing regions in the heart of southern
Kurdistan.
The infamous Anfal!!
With the start of the Anfal campaign things got even
worse. Simply being a Kurd who lived in an area
newly designated as a prohibited for security
reasons (which virtually covered all rural areas in
Kurdistan), became a death sentence.
Kanan Makiya: The author of The Anfal, (Uncovering
an Iraqi campaign to exterminate the Kurds) wrote
“Everywhere I traveled during the three weeks I
spent in northern Iraq, in large cities and in the
smallest villages I heard the word al Anfal.”
In the secret police documents and transcripts of
Iraqi military communiqués, the reference is always
to the heroic operation of Anfal. I have read of the
first, second, and third Anfal operations. There are
also documents like this dated later, (1988) of
“khatimat al- Anfal”. The phrase means the end of
Anfal).
Before the Iraqi campaign, most Kurds like me didn’t
know what “al Anfal” meant. To know the meaning, one
would have to know a perfect Arabic language, the
Koran, and Arab history. The Anfal is the name of
the eighth sura, the 75 verse revelation that comes
to the profit Muhammad after the great battle of
Muslim faith at Bader (A.D. 624). It was in the
village of Bader that a group of 319 Muslims routed
about 1,000 Meccan unbelievers. This victory was
seen by Muslims as a result of intervention by God.
In this sura “al Anfal” means spoils of battle.
The revelation sura al- Anfal, is believed by
Muslims to have been sent down from God in order to
govern booty. In the eyes of Arab chauvinists or at
least in the eye of the Anfal architect, the Kurds
are unbelievers, embodied now in Pan-Arabism. It is
written in the eighth sura. “They shall be punished
for their unbelief.”
The Anfal campaign was not born suddenly. The
history of oppression and the brutal treatment of
non-Arabs in Iraq go back to the very first day of
the formation of that state. It is not possible to
unveil the brutality of over eighty year’s in the
history of that Arab state in an article like this,
but it’s worth mentioning. In the spring of 1963 as
I remember very well, the Iraqi Army surrounded the
city of Sulaimani. Soldiers went door to door and
arrested every adult male for no reason, keeping
them in under barbed wires and under the sun for
weeks. They later executed over eighty prisoners
(including my physics teacher) by a firing squad
before let the others go!
What make Anfal different from other heroic Arab
operations carried out, was the bureaucratically
organized and administered mass killing. It isn’t
clear when the campaign began, but a decree signed
by Saddam Hussein establishing the legalistic
framework for the operation is dated March 29, 1987;
and was issued in the name of the Revolutionary
Command Council (the twenty two-member Baath junta)
which ruled Iraq at the time.
During the last weeks of August 1988, another 520
Kurdish villages from Balisan and the Bassay Valley
were attacked by air with chemical weapons. In
Bassay Valley, 200 families were reported as having
been wiped out. In a genocide attempt over four
thousand Kurdish Villages were razed to the ground
by Iraqis.
In his comments about Anfal, Makiya asks “Is every
Arab responsible? Millions of Arabic words have been
written about more than 300 Palestinian villages
destroyed in the creation of Israel. And justly so;
would that I could add a million more words. But why
is it that not one Arab intellectual has written
about the elimination of more than 3,000 Kurdish
villages by an Arab state?”
The almighty has brought many plagues and
catastrophes on his people like floods, hail,
locust, slaying of the first born, earthquakes,
AIDS, malaria and….ext. Yet none of them were
chemical. Did God know about chemicals? That is very
unlikely, (perhaps poison weapons seemed so vile,
God wished people might never find them, if so the
hope has been disappointed).
On April 22nd 1915 Germans used chlorine gas on
French solders, later; all the major powers used it
in conflict. As the war continued, additional agents
were developed.
By the end of World War 1, chemical agents had
caused 1.3 million casualties. This horrible
experience prompted efforts to ban the use of
chemical and biological weapons.
The Geneva protocol in 1925 prohibited the use of
chemical and biological weapons. Although the U.S.
had been a signatory, it didn’t ratify it until 1975
(50years later). A decade after ratification, the
U.S. recommended an expended research and
development efforts on both chemical and biological
agents.
In the late 80’s, when the U.S was politically
competing on ethical principals, it offered no
protest against Iraq’s use of chemical weapons
against Kurdish civilians in the city of Halabja, on
March 16, 1988. The instant death toll exceeded
5,000 and over10,000 mostly women and children were
injured. Many died later and some are maimed for
life. This was the most horrifying criminal act
against humanity, since the bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. What makes one want to condemn the U.S
more is:
First, the U.S. Administration at the time granted
$2.8 billion to Iraq for building its’ arsenals.
Second, the history and current realities suggest
the key to preventing chemical and biological
weapons (C B W) wares lies in American policy. It is
true that, the former Soviet Union contributed
significantly, but it is the U.S. that played the
dominant role in both the development and regulation
of all weaponry since WW2.
Lastly, it was the U.S. who stood in the way of the
UN for condemning Iraq, although they had evidence
that Iraq was violating every international
agreement.
One wonders why humanity is still mute after
obtaining 18 tons of written documents, (now in the
hands of authorities in the US proving that the
Iraqi leadership had conducted genocide against the
Kurdish population) and yet they are not considered
criminals against humanity. How many more mass
graves need to be discovered?
Most of the books I have read on the chemical
warfare describe the chemistry, the hardware, and
the protective devices and so on, but ignore another
significant element. The sensitive and vulnerable,
yet adaptable animal that constitutes the primary
target of (CBW), yes it was the colonial people like
Kurds in third world countries who were the primary
target of those weapons. But that was before the
tragedy of (9/11), today the target is all of
mankind.
One can’t judge precisely the threat that chemical
weapons pose, and what the people of Halabja went
through, but it is worthy to know very few other
methods of waging war are as specific to the target
as chemical warfare. It is quite possible to kill
all human beings in an area with a volatile nerve
agent without damaging plants or any material
structure at all. The only weapons that approach the
chemicals in selectivity are the Neutron bomb and
the Biological weapons.
The question that arises here then is, Is the effect
of chemical weapons hereditary and do they have
lasting effects like Nuclear weapons?
The only essay I could find about the subject is
written by Dr Christine Gosden, a British medical
specialist who visited Halabja 10 years after the
bombing.
She wrote; “What I found was far worse than any
thing I had suspected, devastating problems
occurring 10 years after the attack.” She mentioned
an increasing number of children are dying each year
of Leukemia; the Cancers tend to occur in much
younger people in Halabja than elsewhere. There were
no women in “normal” labor and no one had recently
delivered a normal baby.
Genetic cases occurring in children born years after
the chemical attack, suggest that the effect from
these chemical agents are transmitted to succeeding
generations.
Personally, I was only 14 when they took me out of
my class room, tortured and imprisoned me for a year
with no charges laid.
Can anyone give me one good reason to become Iraqi
again?
www.KurdistanObserver.com
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