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Kurdish North Texans Happy With Saddam
Sentencing
6.11.2006 |
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News of Saddam's
sentencing has sparked a day of celebration for
people who've been harmed by his dictatorship.
In North Texas, members of the Kurdish community are
praising the verdict.
Bakh Dargali stayed up all night to watch Saddam
Hussein's sentencing live on satellite TV.
“It was a great verdict. It should have come sooner
and it should be implemented very soon,” Dargali
says. “The sooner Saddam goes to hell, the sooner
stability to will go to Iraq."
While there is dancing in the streets of Iraq there
is quiet, but happy, resolve at Southern Recipe Café
in Richardson. |
Bakh Dargali
CBS - VIDEO in Flash
Photo:CBS |
The restaurant is where Dargali and his Kurdish
friends met to discuss the news.
"The Kurdish people is happy. We have been waiting
for this day all of our life," said Omar Barzani,
who moved to the U.S. from Kurdistan in the 1970's.
Mohamad Zibari, agrees, "I think today’s verdict is
a victory for justice and peace in the Middle East
and my prayer and my hope would be for Iraq to unite
to become one voice."
All of the men have suffered as a result of Saddam
Hussein’s dictatorship. As a child Dargali was
forced to hide in caves with his family for
survival.
Similar memories haunt each of them. “Any Kurd you
ask, the family members has been killed or hanged or
disappeared," said Barzani. "My mom's side, she lost
more than 100 relatives.”
Dargali tried to paint a picture of the suffering,
saying, "If somebody came to America and attacked
with weapons, chemical gas, and butchered about 25
percent of the people in America, they will know
what Saddam looks like. That’s what he did to Iraq
and Kurdistan. He butchered them."
Now, with Saddam sentenced to death by hanging,
there's a sense of justice.
"Saddam's many victims are at peace because he will
go to hell soon. So we are very happy,” said
Dargali.
Saddam conviction relieves Iraqis who fled to
Nashville
His trial drew rapt television
audience among Kurds here
Isa Chalky watched the Saddam Hussein trial come to
its final climax on Kurdish satellite television
from his southeast Nashville home until the verdict
was announced early Sunday.
When the news came, the feeling was not of surprise,
but relief, he said. The verdict was announced 15
years to the day that his family settled in
Nashville after fleeing Hussein's army.
"It was a very emotional verdict — to hear such a
brutal dictator get his fate declared," said Chalky,
33.
Bellevue resident Pakeza Alexander was among other
members of Nashville's 8,000-strong Kurdish
community glued to their television sets. "This
conviction falls in line with the fall of (Adolf)
Hitler, (Joseph) Stalin and the many monsters that
have come before them," said Alexander, 40.
Hussein was found guilty and sentenced to death by
hanging for ordering the deaths of 148 Shiite
residents of the village of Dujail, north of
Baghdad, after a 1982 assassination attempt.
An appeals process can take weeks, but if the
sentence is upheld it must be carried out within 30
days, according to published reports.
Chalky hopes that Hussein doesn't face death until
he can be tried for other genocidal campaigns.
In 1988, a 16-year-old Chalky fled Kurdistan, the
northern region of Iraq, with his parents and
siblings in the dead of night to escape the killings
of Hussein's Anfal campaign, a government offensive
in Iraq's Kurdish region.
Currently, Hussein is charged with genocide and on
trial in that case.
Chalky lost at least 15 relatives in the Anfal
offensive and that is what motivated his father to
leave with his family permanently, he said.
It took them three days on foot, walking only under
the cover of darkness to get to the border between
Iraq and Turkey.
"The whole image was terrible; it was horrifying to
see all these people on foot walking through rugged
mountains and running for their lives," he said. "We
were afraid we wouldn't be able to make it."
At the border, rumors of being returned to Hussein's
military frightened some to take their lives for
fear of being caught, tortured and killed, Chalky
said.
Alexander, president of the Nashville-based Kurdish
Humanitarian Organization, has a similar memory of
fleeing her homeland.
In 1975, she remembers walking 21 days as a
10-year-old girl through the mountains to make it to
a refugee camp in Iran, one she likened to a German
concentration camp, she said.
"We not just walked, we ran for our lives," she
said. "Dozens of family members left behind were
killed because everybody couldn't leave."
Since leaving Alexander has been back twice, most
recently in 2003 as deputy director of the Iraqi
Reconstruction Development Council to help rebuild
the country, she said.
Chalky doesn't plan on going back right away.
"It's been 15 years since we made it to safety," he
said. "I really am not looking forward to go back …
because as long as there is a country called Iraq,
there will be no safety for us (Kurds). I'm just not
looking forward to going back any time soon."
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