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Poisoned Kurdish town wants Saddam's
chemical suppliers to pay
17.5.2006
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HALABJA, Kurdistan-Iraq, May 17, 2006 (AFP) - An
X-ray of Kamil Abdel Qader's lungs show a lower
third that is entirely scarred -- lasting damage
from the poisonous gas that rained down on his Iraqi
Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.
Doctors say he needs to get a fist-size chunk of
tissue removed from his damaged lungs if he is going
to survive, but he still considers himself the lucky
one.
The rest of his family of eight died as they fled
the gas, some dropping before his very eyes as they
tried to flee into the hills.
Abdel Qader wants payback -- for his dead family,
his shattered lungs and most of all for battered
survivors of an attack that claimed 5,000 lives and
destroyed a town.
The Halabja Chemical Victims' Society, Abdel Qader's
small non-profit organisation, wants the companies
and governments which helped Saddam Hussein amass
his stockpiles to pay compensation.
The funds would go to the few hundred survivors of
the attack that came in the waning days of the
Iran-Iraq war that raged between 1980 and 1988.
Though Abdel Qader blames the attack on Saddam and
the mastermind of a sweeping anti-Kurd campaign, Ali
Hassan al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali" for this
attack and others, he said commercial enterprises
from around the world shared responsibility for
helping arm the regime.
"We are trying to find the companies that helped the
Iraqi government get chemical weapons for Saddam. We
are trying to tell the world what happened here,"
said an emaciated Abdel Qader as he sat cross-legged
on a carpet in his home.
The names of specific firms which sold Iraq the
equipment and expertise needed to assemble its
chemical arsenal have never been released.
A UN special disarmament commission UNSCOM set up
after the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait to investigate
Saddam's weapons arsenals protected its sources in
order to encourage disclosure.
It is believed that just as the US government
provided Saddam with intelligence and dual-use
technology, such as helicopters, to combat Iran, a
long list of Western firms made fortunes exporting
chemicals and armaments to Washington's one-time
ally.
Abdel Qader has suffered severe health problems for
the past 18 years, including chronic bronchitis,
severe pulmonary fibrosis and opacity of the left
cornea -- conditions that doctors said affect a high
number of Halabja residents.
Saddam is currently on trial on charges of ordering
the killing of 148 Shiite villagers in the
mid-1980s, after which he will face charges of
genocide for the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds
in which an estimated 100,000 died.
Prosecutors are expected to press charges linked to
Halabja in a separate case, but Abdel Qader and
other Kurdish activists said the courts should also
prosecute those who gave Saddam the tools of his
trade.
"Those who are suffering need a lot of money to get
treatment in Western hospitals. We want to see those
who helped Saddam punished and our rights restored,"
said Abdel Qader, who needs costly medical treatment
abroad.
Abdullah Mahmud, a Kurdish author who has spent most
of the past two decades cataloguing the debris from
Saddam's numerous campaigns against the Kurds, said
the US, Britain, France, ex-West Germany, the former
Soviet Union and a handful of other countries helped
arm the former dictator.
"At that time Saddam had a good economy because of
Iraq's oil wealth and he could afford pretty much
any weapons he wanted," Mahmud said. "The people
deserve to be compensated, and these companies
should be uncovered."
But Iraqi authorities have not made clear whether
they plan to probe into issues that could
potentially ruin the reputations of major
international companies.
Asked if he expected such information to come out of
the Saddam trial, chief investigating judge Raed al-Juhi
said: "I cannot answer this question at the time to
protect the investigation ... Everybody involved in
the crime will be brought to trial."
Doctors said they believed cases of lung disease,
therapeutic abortions and cancers were off the
charts in Halabja, though the studies have not been
done to prove it.
And while infertility rates are high, those women
who do manage to conceive are likely to be faced
with an early termination of their pregnancy because
of abnormalities in the spinal cords or oversized
heads in fetuses.
"There are still chemicals in the ground and in the
food. Nobody has done anything to try to clean up,"
said Dr Shnow Hussien, a gynecologist in Halabja
Hospital.
Even those with no obvious problems linked to the
chemical attack have been angered by the Kurdish
regional government's lack of attention to local
concerns.
On March 16, the anniversary of the chemical attack,
a group of thousands of rampaging youths burned down
the city's towering memorial to the victims,
protesting, among other things, the authorities' use
of the tragedy as a propaganda tool.
Visiting officials have used the occasion to make
generous promises but have never followed through,
said Habat Nawzad, a local journalist.
"Every year March 16 is like a supermarket that
opens for one day but closes before you have time to
carry anything out," Nawzad said.
AFP
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