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Kurds Turn Violent in Protest Against
Their Leaders
17.3.2006
By ROBERT F. WORTH
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HALABJA, Kurdistan-Iraq, March 16 -- For nearly
two decades, Kurds have gathered peacefully in this
mountainous corner of Kurdistan (northern Iraq) to
commemorate one of the blackest days in their
history. It was here that Saddam Hussein's
government launched a poison gas attack that killed
more than 5,000 people on March 16, 1988.
So it came as a shock when hundreds of
stone-throwing protesters took to the streets here
on the anniversary today, beating back government
guards to storm and destroy a museum dedicated to
the memory of the Halabja attack. The violence,
pitting furious locals against a much smaller force
of armed security men, was the most serious popular
challenge yet to the political parties that have
ruled Kurdistan for the past 15 years.
Coming on the day the new Iraqi Parliament met for
the first time, the episode was a reminder that the
issues facing Iraq go well beyond fighting Sunni
Arab insurgents and agreeing on cabinet ministers in
Baghdad.
Although Kurdistan remains a relative oasis of
stability in a country increasingly threatened by
sectarian violence, the protests here — which left
the renowned Halabja Monument a charred, smoking
ruin — starkly illustrated those challenges even in
Iraq's most peaceful region.
Many Kurds have grown angry at what they view as the
corruption and tyranny of the two dominant political
parties here. They accuse their regional government
of stealing donations gathered to help survivors of
the poison gas attack. The town's residents chose
today to close off the town's main road and rally
against government corruption. When government
guards fired their weapons over the protesters'
heads, the crowd went wild and attacked the
monument.
The sudden and deliberate destruction of such a
well-known symbol of Kurdish suffering clearly
stunned officials with the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, which governs the eastern part of the
Kurdish region. But many local people, including
survivors of the 1988 attack — said the P.U.K. was
to blame, having transformed the monument into an
emblem of its own tyranny and greed.
"All the money given by foreign countries has been
stolen," said Sarwat Aziz, 24, as he marched in a
crowd of furious, chanting young men on their way to
the museum. "After 18 years, Halabja is still full
of debris from the war, we don't even have decent
roads."
There have been several protests in recent months
against both the P.U.K., led by Iraq's president,
Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party,
which runs western Kurdistan and is led by Massoud
Barzani. But nothing has come close to the violence
that erupted in Halabja today.
Apparently rattled by the prospect of publicity,
party militia members twice tried to confiscate the
cameras of a New York Times photographer who was
leaving Halabja by car this evening, and only
desisted after an appeal to high-ranking party
officials.
At a hastily-arranged news conference in Halabja,
Emad Ahmad, the acting regional prime minister and a
P.U.K. official, said the party would "try to
address any defects and corruption that exist within
the administration." He said the demonstration had
started peacefully only to be overtaken by
outsiders, and he hinted that Islamic radicals might
be to blame.
"There is a hand behind this, and we must cut off
the hand," Mr. Ahmad said.
There is an Islamic opposition movement in Halabja,
though there were no visible signs it had a role in
organizing the demonstration.
By all appearances, the attack on the Halabja
Monument was an authentic expression of popular
rage. There were young and old in the crowd, men and
women. Most seemed to view the museum — which was
inaugurated in September 2003 at a ceremony attended
by then Secretary of State Colin Powell — as the
prop of an unjust government.
"That monument over there has become the main
problem for Halabja," said Bakhtiar Ahmad, nodding
at the museum, with its distinctive yellow
crown-shaped roof. "All the foreign guests are taken
there, not to the city."
Nearby, Tara Rahim, a quiet 19-year-old dressed in a
neat black cloak and head scarf, said she had come
both to honor her sister Zara, killed in the 1988
attack, and to stop the P.U.K. from taking advantage
of the anniversary.
"Kurdish officials used Halabja to gather money,"
she said, standing with a group of eight other
identically dressed young women. "Millions of
dollars has been spent, but nothing has reached us."
The protest began at about 9 a.m. local time, when
local people poured onto Halabja's main road and
began setting fire to tires. Later, as the crowd
gathered in size, protesters moved toward the
monument and began hurling rocks at a big sign
outside it that reads, in Kurdish, "No Baathists
Allowed Here." The sign soon collapsed in pieces.
The 40-odd P.U.K. guards, gathered around the
monument, began firing long machine gun bursts into
the air. The sound echoed like thunderclaps against
the towering wall of snow-capped mountains that
forms the Iranian border, a few miles away.
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Memorial building of the victims of the 1988 gas
attack in Halabja, a small town of Halabja in the
northern province of Sulaymaniya (Kurdistan-Iraq),
March 16, 2006. Hundreds of Kurdish protesters
destroyed the memorial in Halabja Photo:Reuters
Heavy black smoke billows from the memorial
building, constructed to commemorate the victims of
the 1988 gas attack in the Iraq Kurdistan town of
Halabja. Phoro: AFP
Angry demonstrators gather near fire during riots in
the Iraq northern Kurdish town of Halabja. Phoro:
AFP
Iraqi Kurds mourn over the coffin of a 14-year-old
boy who was killed when Iraqi security forces fired
into a massive crowd of Kurds rioting in northern
town of Halabja on the anniversary of Saddam
Hussein's gas attack. Phoro: AFP
Smoke rises after Iraqi Kurdish protestors set fire
to a memorial. Photo:Reuters |
That only enraged the crowd, and as the guards
retreated in a panic, the protestors reached the
monument and began smashing its windows and glass
display cases with stones. Inside, they poured out a
can of propane and set fire to it. Within minutes,
flames were licking from the windows and a thick
column of black smoke was twisting into the bright
blue sky.
The security guards moved back toward the monument,
and some began firing their weapons into the
retreating crowd. One bullet sliced through the
chest of Kurdistan Ahmed, a 17-year-old high school
student, and he collapsed onto the grass, dying.
By noon, it was over. One protester was dead, six
were wounded, and most of the P.U.K. guards had
retreated to their compound on the edge of town,
leaving the monument a blackened hulk of broken
glass and shattered tiles.
At the hospital, anxious mothers searched for their
sons. "I fled the gas attack with no shoes, and now
I must come here to see if my relatives have been
shot," cried Roshna Sidiq, 31, her face heavy with
grief.
The violence made a surreal contrast with the
peaceful mountain landscape, where shepherds in
traditional Kurdish dress could be seen only a few
hundred yards away, tending their sheep on fields as
green as Eden.
Later, family members and friends gathered in a
Halabja mosque to recite Koranic prayers over the
dead youth's body, wrapped in a blanket on the
floor. Many of them sobbed uncontrollably, repeating
the boy's name again and again.
"Kurdistan," they wailed, clutching their faces in
their hands. "Oh, my Kurdistan."
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