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Saddam can't be blamed for Halabja's
latest convulsions
2.3.2007
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The
destruction by atrocity survivors of their own
monument shows how deep frustrations with the new
regime run.
March 2, 2007
Even the most terrible memories fade. New worries
intrude, covering the pain of the past. Generations
that only know at second hand tire quickly. "Stop
going on about the war, Daddy. It's boring," they
think - and sometimes dare to say. The passage of
history has never struck me so forcefully as on a
recent visit to Halabja. The site of one of the
grimmest atrocities of modern times, this small town
in eastern Kurdistan lost 5,000 people to a gas
attack ordered by Saddam Hussein. He can no longer
answer for it, but his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid -
the so-called Chemical Ali - who was in direct
charge, will have to do so shortly. On trial in
Baghdad for other crimes against the Kurds, he will
face the Halabja case next.
An impressive memorial to the victims was opened by
Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state, in
2003. Shaped like hands wringing in agony, its
pinnacle still towers over the impoverished town.
But the lower half is in ruins, its roof gutted by
fire. Victims' names used to line the central
rotunda, bearing testimony to a community, including
hundreds of women and children, that met a slow and
appalling death. Now the names are blackened by
smoke, rendering most unreadable.
Astonishingly, the fire that ruined the monument
last year was lit deliberately - by survivors of the
very families shattered by the gas attack. For
victims to destroy their own monument is almost
unprecedented. This was iconoclasm on a tragic
scale, a kind of collective self-mutilation, as
though Jews were to destroy the Auschwitz museum.
Image-conscious officials of the Kurdistan regional
government initially blamed Kurdish Islamists or
infiltrators from Iran. They confiscated video
footage and briefly detained journalists. Now it is
recognised that the arson was the unplanned climax
of a student-led protest at Halabja's years of
neglect. The monument was targeted because people
felt officials were exploiting the stream of
high-profile visitors who came to lay wreaths. They
complained donations disappeared into unknown
pockets; a place for reflection and mourning had
become a cash machine for the corrupt.
Local students had warned the authorities not to
invite foreign dignitaries this time. They wanted to
hold their own commemoration and demand faster
reconstruction for the ruined town. Things went
badly wrong when security forces fired over the
heads of the oncoming crowd - a panicky move that
only enraged people - and fled as furious protesters
approached the monument before setting it ablaze. A
student was found dead of a gunshot wound.
"We didn't use weapons against the demonstrators. If
we fired, we did it over their heads so they would
disperse. The man who died was a long way off,"
Colonel Wahib Aziz, Halabja's security chief, told
me. He was on duty on the fateful day last March,
the 18th anniversary of the Iraqi gas attack. No
inquiry was held, and the soldiers who fired were
questioned but not punished.
In the only visible sign of progress, workers have
laid concrete slabs along Halabja's muddy main
street to create pavements; other roads are due for
asphalting. Saddam's forces demolished Halabja after
the attack, and it still has no running water supply
or sewerage.
Since the protest the Kurdistan government has
allocated L18m to Halabja. Khadar Karim Mohammed,
the council chairman, denies the charge that foreign
help went missing. "Even the Kurdish community in
Europe thought a lot of money was coming because of
the monument, but it isn't true. We got lots of
empty promises from visitors. The only money we got
was to build two schools," he says.
Ibrahim Howramani, the museum's former director, has
mixed feelings about the arson, which he watched
helplessly. "I resigned. I felt the museum had been
desecrated," he says. But he agrees with the
frustration of local people who kept being summoned
to welcome foreign delegations but saw no results.
Ministers from Baghdad and Kurdistan itself were
equally guilty of making empty promises, he says.
The Halabja authorities are not yet repairing the
monument. Anger is still too high. "If they rebuild
it a thousand times, I will burn it down a million
times," said one young man, who lost half his family
in the 1988 atrocity.
Halabja's outburst of rage was not Kurdistan's only
recent example of protest with a heavy-handed
response. Marchers in several cities last summer
denounced low pay, shortages of electricity and
water, joblessness and corruption. Several leaders
were arrested, and on at least one occasion police
used firearms. "2006 was the year of protest," says
Asos Hardi, the editor of the independent weekly
Awene.
Compared with the rest of Iraq, Kurdistan is a
relative success story. The region is stable and
secure. It is beginning to develop its own oil. But
impatience is rising against the two big parties
that ran it as fiefdoms, in the east and west. In
spite of a nominally united government, critics say
nepotism is strong. "Until Saddam Hussein's collapse
in 2003 the authorities used the excuse that,
although we had autonomy, we were under sanctions.
Now the borders are open. Foreign investors are
coming in. Where are the results?" asks Hardi.
'We have to compare ourselves with other countries,
not with Saddam's time. Why don't they build power
stations here, so we don't have constant cuts? No
one denies there is corruption, not even the
politicians, yet we have never seen charges brought.
We have security, so why no progress?"
The Halabja atrocity was the worst single episode in
Saddam's brutal tyranny. Western governments rarely
recall the blind eye they turned at the time. Saddam
was their ally against Iran, and some of the gas
came from western companies. But if the new
generation in Halabja puts most blame on the
government of Kurdistan for its problems, there's a
powerful lesson for all rulers.
From a moral standpoint no one can equate the
destruction of a town and the murder of 5,000 people
with a town's economic neglect. But just as Bush and
Blair cannot take credit for removing Saddam and
then wash their hands of the bloodshed that has
ensued, Kurdistan's authorities have to do more to
share the fruits of the post-Saddam era fairly. The
time for dumping every complaint on the old regime
is over.
guardian co.uk
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