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Halabja a monument to man's inhumanity to
man
15.3.2010
By Michael Jansen in Halabaja |
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The
Iraqi Kurdish city is scarred by a 1988 atrocity
that left 5,000 Kurdish civilians dead, writes
Michael Jansen in Halabja
March
15, 2010
HALABJA,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — The shimmering
white and gold city of Halabja sprawls across a
broad green plain a few kilometres from Iraq’s
fateful frontier with Iran.
Halabja is more than a place on a map. Halabja is a
monument to man’s inhumanity to man.
On March 16th, 1988, during the desperate closing
days of the eight-year Iraq-Iran war, this
substantial city, then inhabited by 80,000 people,
was attacked by the Iraqi air force.
Five-thousand civilians, the majority elderly men,
women and children, were killed and 10,000 injured.
Halabja became another atrocity in the annals of
Iraq’s long and violent history.
The memorial to this event, a modern circular
building with a high ribbed tent-like roof, stands
on the outskirts of the city. It was inaugurated in
2003 after the US conquest of Iraq. Among the
dignitaries who attended was then US secretary of
state Colin Powell.
Inside the building is a rotunda with the colours of
the Kurdish flag draped at the centre. A wall of
black granite bears the names of the victims of the
attack. Tewfiq,www.ekurd.netthe
guide, who was 10 at the time of the raid, says the
bombing began at 11.35am with napalm shells. “People
were not alarmed because they had used napalm many
times,” he says.
But on that day, the Iraqis also dropped a cocktail
of poisonous gases that enveloped entire
neighbourhoods.
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Tewfiq, whose family fled to Iran after the 1988
attack.
The Mitterrand memorial.
Photo:
Michael Jansen, The
Irish Times |
The exhibits in adjacent
rooms feature photographs taken soon after the raid,
as well as paintings of houses where mannequins of
men, women and children lie in attitudes of dying
and death.
Tewfiq’s family fled to Iran on foot along with
thousands of other survivors.
Ali Hassan al-Majid – former Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein’s cousin, known as “Chemical Ali” – was
executed on January 27th this year for ordering the
Halabja attack.
While the use of chemical weapons was unjustified
and a vicious violation of the laws of war, Halabja
was a legitimate military objective held by Kurdish
peshmerga guerrillas who were fighting on Iran’s
side. Iranian troops may also have been in the town,
according to an investigative journalist who
conducted interviews with survivors in 1993.
The monument, constructed by Kurdish leader Jalal
Talabani, is resented by the people of Halabja, who
claim they never received funds donated to help
rebuild their city and reclaim their lives.
“We saw none of this money,” says Tewfiq.
On March 16th, 2006, several thousand Halabja
residents rioted and burnt the memorial, which has
since been restored.
The city, jerry-built by its impoverished citizens,
is a jumble of unplanned, unpaved roads and
unfinished breeze-block houses roofed with sheets of
plastic held in place with rocks. Only the well-
to-do can afford to plaster walls and construct
proper roofs.
Men in baggy boiler suits with their heads enclosed
in neat turbans mind shops displaying apples from
Iran, cucumbers from Syria, aubergines and peppers
from Turkey, bananas from Ecuador, and locally grown
radishes as large as oranges.
Women in long dresses, heads covered with scarves,
flock to shops selling material and clothing.
Conservative Halabja is a Muslim fundamentalist
stronghold.
A second memorial to Halabja’s victims stands on a
hill overlooking the ruins of the stone-built
village of Anap.
This monument, commissioned by Danielle Mitterrand,
wife of France’s late president, consists of white
geometric concrete structures representing the
bombing of the city.
Spring has graced the site with tiny yellow and pink
flowers.
The 360-degree view is spectacular. To the northwest
looms the rugged snow-capped Zagros range and its
green velvet foothills. A few degrees south lies
Halabja, veiled in dust; on its far side Talabani’s
memorial museum. Running east is the brown ribbon of
road to the Iranian border travelled by white
pick-ups loaded with plastic jerry cans of petrol
strapped atop stacks of tyres. Here smuggling is
open and carried on in daylight, reinforcing the
connection with Tehran, as close today as it was
that fatal March day in 1988 when Halabja paid a
high price for fighting against Baghdad.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
The Irish Times | irishtimes com
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