"Unfortunately, we'll never know how
many people were killed or exposed," said Dr. Joanne al-Talabani,
who for the past three years has visited the area to study the
long-term health problems of Kurdish children exposed in the
attacks, including scarred lungs and eyes as well as birth defects.
"There are no medical records from that time — none. Most people
can't remember: they were delirious, running, in shock."
The study of chemical weapons is an arcane, imperfect corner of
forensic science, where lab results and doctors' physical exams
yield hints of exposure, but rarely direct legal proof. Chemical
weapons break down quickly in the environment or in the body, and
scientists are unsure what, if any, tracks they should look for
nearly 20 years after the fact.
Mr. Hussein is already on trial in Baghdad in another case,
involving the execution of 148 Shiite men and youths after an
abortive assassination attempt against him in Dujail in 1982. That
trial, which began eight months ago, moved into closing arguments on
June 19, with the prosecution demanding the death penalty for Mr.
Hussein.
Iraqi prosecutors have said they expect the so-called Anfal case —
the term, meaning "spoils" in Arabic, was the code name for the
Iraqi military's attacks on the Kurdish villages — to begin this
summer or in early autumn. The formal indictment focuses on attacks
in 1988 that are suspected of killing 50,000 Kurdish villagers,
though Kurdish leaders say that perhaps three times as many Kurds
died in the attacks.
The Anfal trial, which includes the chemical weapons charges, "will
be the most important public reckoning, but in court you can't just
say, 'I know it happened,' " said Alastair Hay, a professor of
chemical pathology at the University of Leeds in England who has
studied soil samples from Kurdistan. "You need solid, irrefutable
scientific evidence. But it's very difficult to establish something
like nerve-gas exposure at this stage. I can't tell you how
frustrating this is, since nothing concrete has ever appeared."
An American-led team of forensic specialists working for the Iraqi
court spent weeks examining one mass grave of victims at Hatra, near
Mosul, a northern city. But those deaths, including women and
children, were the result of gunfire at the grave site, not chemical
weapons.
Almost all experts now contend that Mr. Hussein's armies used
chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians: mustard gas and probably
two nerve agents, tabun and sarin. C.I.A. documents refer to
chemical weapons use, and former top Iraqi military officers have
confirmed the suspicion, said Joost Hiltermann, a former senior
researcher at Human Rights Watch whose exhaustive book on the topic
is scheduled to appear in 2007. Mr. Hussein has repeatedly denied
the allegation.
Iraq's use of chemical weapons, banned by the 1926 Geneva
Convention, against Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq war of
1980-88 was confirmed in a series of United Nations verification
reports. Iran is still monitoring 30,000 people who were exposed.
But it is more complicated to tally the effect of such banned
weapons against the Iraqi Kurds. Estimates of the number of victims
range from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands.
"Twenty years later it is difficult to prove on the basis of
physical evidence, but the total picture in my eyes doesn't leave
any doubt that it occurred," said Dr. Jan Willems, a retired
professor of environmental medicine at Erasmus Hospital in Brussels.
He said he examined several Kurdish patients who had traveled to
Europe shortly after gas attacks in 1988, displaying burns
associated with mustard gas.
Testimonials are plentiful: Iraqi Kurds have consistently described
how, in 1998, Mr. Hussein's warplanes delivered bombs filled with
sweet-smelling gases to put down the Kurdish insurgency, with
harrowing results.
Shorsh Haji, a researcher who now lives in London, still recalls the
night of Feb. 22, 1988, when the bombardment went on for two hours
near his home in the Jafati Valley; he assumed it was conventional
weapons. When he emerged in the morning, he discovered otherwise.
"People on the streets were coughing, vomiting, their eyes were
weeping," Mr. Haji said. "Some had blisters on their legs and under
their arms."
"A family of five down the road had died instantly," he said.
The United Nations did not investigate charges of chemical use
against the Kurds in those early days, when it would have been far
easier to prove, because it was regarded as an internal Iraqi
conflict, Mr. Hiltermann said.
The world viewed with some skepticism testimonials from Kurdish
guerrillas. At the time, Mr. Hussein was an ally of the United
States, and the components of his chemical arms were often supplied
by European businessmen.
On the medical side, proof of the attacks is scant because Kurds
were afraid to go to local Iraqi hospitals, where doctors had been
told not to treat them, said Dr. Talabani, who emigrated in 1977 and
is now a pediatrician with the British National Health Service.
Those who slipped over the border to Iran for diagnosis and
treatment often destroyed their medical records documenting chemical
exposure before returning, for fear it would open them to
persecution, the doctor said. Also, while Iran quickly sent hundreds
of its soldiers to hospitals in Belgium and Austria, which helped
prove attacks there, only a very few Kurds got out for evaluation.
In the days after an attack, mustard gas exposure is relatively easy
to document. Used extensively in World War I, it causes unusual
blistering burns of the skin as well as severe irritation of the
eyes and lungs. Breakdown products of the gas can be detected for
weeks in the urine, making recent exposure simple to prove in a
sophisticated lab.
The use of nerve agents like tabun and sarin, the chemical used in
the Tokyo subway attacks in 1995, is far trickier to prove because
these gases are short-lived and deadlier. "Mustard leaves lots of
physical evidence," Mr. Hiltermann said. "With sarin, people die or
get better fast, so it's very difficult to prove."
Despite charges by Kurdish groups of mass killings by chemical
weapons in 1988, the only specific physical proof is four soil
samples collected in 1992, from two bomb craters near the Kurdish
village of Birjinni, by a team from Middle East Watch and Physicians
for Human Rights that included Mr. Hay.
After meticulous testing at the Porton Down Naval Laboratory in
England, two samples were found to contain degradation products of
mustard gas, and two showed breakdown products of sarin. Other
attempts to analyze soil samples after the fact have all turned up
negative.
"We looked in the bomb crater itself — in one case under a piece of
shell — where concentrations were higher," Mr. Hay said.
The long-term health problems of patients from the area offer
indirect evidence of chemical weapons use. But survivors tend to
have vague conditions, like chronic bronchitis or pain, that have
many other possible causes. Mustard gas causes breathing problems,
but no studies have been performed to define the link between
exposure to nerve gases and long-term health problems, experts said.
Dr. Talabani said that more than 300 patients she has been studying,
who were exposed in childhood, seemed to have an "extremely high
incidence of illness." She determined exposure according to the
history patients relayed: a history of chemical burns indicated
exposure to mustard gas, while lack of coordination or seizures
after an airstrike indicated a nerve agent.
"Unfortunately little is known because this is the first group
studied," Dr. Talabani said. "There are very severe breathing
problems, skin problems and eye problems, such as corneal scarring
that has already required transplants."
Over the years, a large number of former Iranian soldiers and a
smaller number of Kurds who say they were exposed to chemical
weapons have been seen at European hospitals with a broad range of
medical complaints. There are no blood tests that serve as markers
for chemical exposure, though scientists like Mr. Hay say such
"tracks" could be discovered with research.
"Diagnosis was based on clinical history and signs and symptoms,"
Mr. Willems said.
Because of the lack of hard data and the imprecise testing, there is
some disagreement about how many people were affected and what
chemical compounds were used.
Dr. Heyndrickx says he believes that the Iraqi Army used cyanide and
biological toxins as well as mustard gas and sarin, making him
somewhat of a maverick in the field, since most other scientists
feel that the evidence doesn't support this claim.
Still, he was one of the few Western experts in Halabja just after
the attack, and the samples in his lab, particularly the clothing,
could still provide valuable clues if they were properly sealed and
stored, Mr. Hay said.
"People now tend to say it's obvious that Saddam committed crimes,
but for legal and international standards we need to have evidence,"
said Mr. Haji, the researcher, whose testimony has been accepted by
the court. "Only then can people who were exposed be compensated."
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