Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan-Iraq, --
Upon its arrival in Sulaymaniyah (Kurdistan-Iraq) in late May, a
generous host picked up the small Christian Peacemaker team at the
airport and drove them to a comfortable guest house where they would
live free of charge.
He mentioned, en route, that every neighborhood in Sulaymaniyah, a
city of about one million people, keeps careful watch, and notes who
comes or goes in "strange cars" and then reports the newcomers to
the police. He says that they want to protect themselves from
infiltration by wrongdoers.
CPT spent most of the next morning with a man named Azad who was a
nurse working for the Kurdish Health Authority in a small village
near Sulaymaniyah when the Anfal Operations began. (See the 1993
Human Rights Watch report for a grim summary of gross human rights
violations committed during the Anfal Operation between 1988-89.)
Azad's village was shelled with chemical weapons on 21 March 1988.
He and fourteen others in the health care team helped lead 600
people in a dangerous and difficult escape over mountains, on foot.
They ate grasses and occasional bits of bread until they reached a
refugee camp near the Iranian border in June of 1988.
Azad then crossed into Iran, needing medical care himself, and
remained there for four years.
At one point, the CPTers mentioned that Voices in the Wilderness had
organized a bus tour across the USA called "Remembering Omran," to
commemorate an Iraqi shepherd boy killed by a U.S. missile outside
Najaf in 1999. At that point, Jalal joined the conversation, saying,
"I must interfere, please allow me. Why is there always this talk
about the children of Kerbala, the children of Basra? What about the
Kurdish children?
Thousands and thousands of Kurdish children were killed, villages
destroyed. Who raised a voice?!"
Jalal said that the U.N. was not truthful in reporting. He said
their figure of 50,000 "excess deaths" of children each year under
economic sanctions was not true, and the U.N. was not fair in
distributing funds earned under the oil for food deal.
With construction booming, promising economic prospects, and more
autonomy than they have experienced before, the Kurds with whom CPT
spoke know that they are far better off than most other Iraqis. But
the memories of past oppression and cruelty, plus perceived
indifference on the part of the U.N. and other internationals, stay
with them.
cpt org Top |
® 