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Halabja: Lessons of a tragedy, interview
with Joost Hiltermann
15.3.2008
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March 15, 2008
HALABJA, Kurdistan region 'Iraq'
Joost Hiltermann was the primary researcher for
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the 1987-88 Al-Anfal
campaign by Saddam Hussein's regime -- a campaign
that sought to annihilate northern Iraq's Kurdish
population. The March 16, 1988, chemical attack on
the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja, which killed an
estimated 5,000 people, is the subject of
Hiltermann's latest book, "A Poisonous Affair:
America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja."
Hiltermann, now the International Crisis Group's
deputy program director for the Middle East and
North Africa, spoke to RFE/RL Iraq analyst Kathleen
Ridolfo ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Halabja
attack.
RFE/RL: Could you share with us your thoughts about
the significance the 20th anniversary of the Halabja
chemical attacks and what it means to you as someone
who closely studied what had happened there? |
Joost Hiltermann was the primary researcher for
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the 1987-88 Al-Anfal
campaign by Saddam Hussein's regime |
Joost Hiltermann: It's
been 20 years. That's not such a long time. The
events that transpired in 1988 are still very fresh
in the memories of those who lived through these
terrible times in Iraqi Kurdistan. I was there a
month ago, and the scars are very visible.
Interestingly,www.ekurd.net
the Kurdistan Regional
Government is only now starting to draw
international attention to these events -- obviously
for political reasons. But it is very important that
the memory of these events be kept alive. What
happened was, first of all, a chemical attack on a
major town that killed thousands. The first such
attack in history. So far the only one; hopefully,
it will always be the only one. Secondly, [it was
part of] a counterinsurgency campaign that involved
the systematic murder of tens of thousands of
civilians -- Kurdish civilians -- in an act of
genocide that also is relatively unknown in the
world.
I have published on this. Human Rights Watch, of
course, as an organization has published on this.
But until now, very few people know what happened.
Some key elements of these events remain disputed,
or controversial. What is most important maybe [is]
that no significant help has come to the victims. It
hasn't come from the Kurdistan regional government.
It hasn't come from the international community. And
that's a terrible thing. People feel abandoned,
forgotten.... They feel they've paid for something
that they weren't part of, really -- for example,
the Iranian incursion into Halabja that provoked the
chemical attack, or the Kurdish insurgency by
Kurdish parties in the rural areas of [Iraqi]
Kurdistan that maybe was supported by people in a
lukewarm sort of way -- but that they weren't really
part of in fighting terms, and they paid the price.
RFE/RL: Why do you think it took so long for the
reports of the chemical strikes during Halabja to
actually hit the radar screens of people in the
West? In your book, you talk about how it took a
fair amount of time for people to become aware of
[the chemical attacks], and even then it was never
seen for the severity of what was taking place.
Hiltermann: We were dealing with two countries --
Iran and Iraq -- that were closed, at least at the
time, and access for independent observers was
almost impossible. There are some notable exceptions
to that. But they are so limited that they just
simply didn't have the magnitude to reach a larger
audience. And so, the fact of the matter is that
when chemical strikes began -- when Iraq began using
chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers [as part
of the Iran-Iraq war] -- even though this was known
at the time, nobody really cared because these were
Iranian soldiers and Iran was in the doghouse,
having gone through the Islamic revolution, [having]
taken American hostages, started kidnapping people
through Hizballah in Lebanon, etc. It was not a
country that was part of the international community
as such. So whatever happened to Iran was
irrelevant.
Secondly, when chemical-weapons attacks started
against Iraqi Kurds, Iraqi Kurdish parties tried to
publicize this. But these accusations were deemed
biased and ungrounded. And so no one really --
except for a very small group of people -- believed
that these allegations were true. And again,www.ekurd.net
there was no access. So
nobody could verify it. And when the large chemical
attack on Halabja took place in March 1988, it took
about a week before the Iranians managed to get
foreign journalists into Halabja, which they
controlled. So the images of the death scenes in
Halabja were available in people's living rooms
through television within a week. But, because it
was the Iranians who organized this, it allowed the
elements in the Reagan administration to accuse Iran
of being partly to blame for what had happened --
including for carrying out chemical strikes in
Halabja. So the whole picture was muddied and there
was never really any clarity as to who was really
responsible for the chemical attack in Halabja. So
international opinion turned elsewhere.
RFE/RL: In your book, you write about the Iraqi
regime's ultimate responsibility for what happened.
But you also say the Kurdish peshmerga put civilians
in Halabja in danger because of their entry into the
town -- and, of course, facilitating Iranian troop
movements toward the town. So who do you think was
responsible?
Hiltermann: There's a debate going on within the
Kurdish community about the level of responsibility
on the part of the Iraqi Kurdish parties. Clearly,
the perpetrator is the guilty party: Saddam
Hussein's regime carried out a chemical attack
against a defenseless population. It is guilty of
that attack.
However there is some complicity there, not only by
the United States, which allowed Iraq to use
chemical weapons and even assisted [Iraq] with
satellite intelligence. But the Iraqi Kurdish
parties did make a mistake by bringing Iran into
Iraqi territory during a war that was in many ways
existential to both countries. This was, of course,
an act of treason from an Iraqi point of view, and
this justified -- in their eyes, in the Iraqi
regime's eyes -- the retaliation that they carried
out. Again, attacking a defenseless city of
civilians is not legal. It's clearly a war crime, a
crime against humanity. And the perpetrators have
been or will be put on trial for that.
The other argument is a moral argument. The Kurdish
parties: Should they have done this -- brought the
Iranians into the town, knowing as they did, that
the Iraqi regime would retaliate for that? Of
course, nobody knew exactly what the Iraqi regime
would do. But they knew the brutality of that
regime, and they knew whatever the regime would do
would be brutal and would be...mostly against the
civilians, because the peshmergas -- the Kurdish
fighters -- had ways of protecting themselves
relatively well, including against chemical attacks.
And so this is the debate. And I think it is very
important and very healthy that this debate take
place -- and that people come clean about why they
took certain decisions at the time.
RFE/RL: What were the discussions on Al-Anfal about
during your trip to cities like Kirkuk, Irbil, and
Al-Sulaymaniyah?
Hiltermann: I attended a conference on Anfal in
Irbil at the end of January, and there were some
people there who were victims of Anfal. Otherwise,
there were a number of researchers who gave
presentations. And there were a lot of Kurdish
intellectuals who take an active interest in these
issues and who were there to debate the various
issues that came out in the presentations. There was
a lively debate over Anfal and Halabja and those
issues. And my book was released in Kurdish on the
final day of the conference. So hopefully that also
will set in motion a further debate in terms not
only of who perpetrated the attack but what were the
enabling circumstances at the time.
RFE/RL: What is being done now to help the victims
of Anfal? Are there long-standing effects on the
next generation because of the chemical attacks?
Also, media reports during the past two or three
years indicate that people in Halabja are very
unhappy with the regional government and the lack of
services for the population.
Hiltermann: First of all, I should say that there's
absolutely no evidence of birth defects resulting
from the use of chemical weapons in 1988 in Halabja.
Whatever problems have been seen there, no one has
been able to prove any connection to the chemical
attack. It may well be environmental factors
involved here.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't a serious
situation for the victims. First of all, victims of
mustard gas who survive do tend to show long-term
effects. And if you go to Iran today, you find that
people continue to die two decades after exposure to
mustard gas from the delayed after-effects. They are
in very painful conditions. And that we see with all
victims in [Iraqi] Kurdistan as well.
The second issue is that people were not only
attacked with chemical weapons, but they were also
systematically murdered otherwise. And those who
survived lost their entire families in many cases --
and in most cases, their breadwinners. So they are
widowed, with large numbers of children usually, and
[living] in indigent circumstances, with very few
resources, no real income, totally dependent on
charity and the goodwill of the regional government.
The complaint has been that the regional government
has ignored the plight of these people, by and
large; it hasn't addressed their real social and
economic problems. Secondly, in the case of Halabja,
the people accuse the regional government of
bringing in foreigners to see the mass graves, the
monument [built to honor the victims of Halabja],
etc. -- but not extending any aid that they think
these foreigners are bringing. They think this money
disappears into the coffers of the regional
government. It may or it may not. But the perception
is that it does. This has led [Halabja residents]
even two years ago, during the annual commemoration
on March 16, to burn down the memorial that was
erected there in their honor. They burned down their
own memorial out of outrage over the regional
government's neglect of this very important issue --
the issue that defines their lives.
RFE/RL: What is the lesson of Anfal?
Hiltermann: There are a number of lessons from Anfal.
One is that if you build up a dictator, that
dictator will do things that you may not have wanted
him to do. You wanted a dictator to contain Iran by
stopping [the Iranians] at the border, including
with chemical weapons. But that dictator then turns
around and uses those chemical weapons against
defenseless civilian populations. This is, of
course, I doubt, what was intended. But it was
totally embarrassing, clearly, as it was to the
Reagan administration -- which explains the
dissimulation that occurred subsequently.
Secondly, I would say that if justice is not done
to...ensure that people who committed these acts are
punished appropriately, then there is no effective
deterrent. And other leaders, elsewhere, may take
away the lesson that they can act with impunity. And
that's a very dangerous precedent, especially in the
case of a chemical attack on a major town.
And thirdly, I would say for political actors and
non-state actors such as the Kurdish parties were at
the time, to ally themselves with a neighboring
state, with which their own government -- which, of
course, they don't recognize as a legitimate
government, fair enough -- but with which their own
government is at war, and...place themselves in the
midst of a civilian population, then it is
predictable that that regime will take revenge
against the population in order to drain the sea in
which the peshmerga fish [were] swimming. And this
can only be brutal, and that means that these
parties have a certain responsibility as well, in
order to prevent harm to the civilians. Because they
were [in effect] using the civilians as shields. And
that, of course, is clearly out of order.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
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