Kurds bombed with chemicals

[kurds at gn.apc.org]

	=EVERY INDIVIDUAL ACCORDING TO HIS SPECIALITY=


   ARAB BA'ATH SOCIALIST PARTY
   COMMAND OF ZAKHO BRANCH
   NATIONAL DEFENCE BATTALIONS COMMITTEE

   Strictly confidential and Personal
   Subject: Directive

Comradely greetings.  [I refer to] the letter of National Defence
Battalions Committee S/Sh/1175 dated 9th June 1987, which refers
to the letter of the Bureau of the Organisation of the North
(marked Strictly confidential and Personal) 28/2650 dated 3rd
June 1987 which include the following:

1.  Human presence, the delivery of food or machinery are totally
forbidden in the villages included in the second stage of village
collectivisation.  Those [villagers] who wish to return should be
allowed to do so; but their relatives are not allowed to contact
them without prior information of the security authorities.

2.  Human presence is totally banned in those areas in which the
forbidden villages of stage one are situated.  Presence is
equally forbidden, after 21st June 1987, in the case of those
villages included in stage two.

3.  No activity is permitted after the conclusion of the harvest
season, which must end by 15th July 1987.  No agricultural
activity is allowed thenceforth for the following summer and
winter seasons.

4.  Grazing is also taboo in these areas.

5.  The military force within any of the districts in question
are instructed to kill any human or animal found.  These areas
will be designated as absolutely no-go areas.

6.  Those [villagers] included in the deportation plan are to be
informed about resettlement.  They will therefore be held
responsible for any failure towards fulfilling these orders.

[This letter has been prepared for your information to do
accordingly: every individual according to his speciality.]

   [Signed]

   Comrade Ali Moashna Kadhum
   Secretary of the Committee


	*	*	*	*	*	*	*


Do you remember hearing, amidst all the noise of the Gulf War,
reports that Saddam Hussein had in the past used chemical weapons
'on his own people'?

Those people were Kurds.  Although officially Iraqi citizens,
it's doubtful if any of them considered themselves to be Saddam's
own people.

For generations the Kurds of Iraq have sought independence, or at
least autonomy, from Baghdadi rule.  The debate goes back to the
very founding of Iraq in 1918.  Of what is today the Kurdish
province of Iraq, the newly founded League of Nations said that:

	"If the ethnic argument alone had to be taken into
	account, the necessary conclusion would be that an
	independent Kurdish State should be created, since 
	the Kurds form five-eighths of the population".

	- League Commission Report quoted in A.J.Toynbee 'A
	Survey of International Affairs, 1925'  

The point is unresolved, the debate now drowned in the general
clamour of the Middle East.  Along the way, countless thousand
Kurdish civilians have lost their lives.

It is not clear exactly when the Iraqi government began to use
chemical weapons against the Kurds.  Some would place it as long
ago as the mid-sixties.

In the summer of 1965, Mr Jalal Talbani accused the Iraqi
government in a press conference at the [British] House of
Commons of using poison gas in Kurdistan and cited as evidence
the purchase by the army of 25,000 British-made gas masks from
Spain.

After the Ba'athist coup of 1968, further evidence of the use of
poison gas and napalm came to light.

Throughout the seventies there was evidence that Iraq was 
experimenting with poisons, chemicals and hormones on political
prisoners.

	"Many died in mysterious circumstances, some only
	days after being released and in the absence of
	autopsies, coroners and a free press... This
	continued until the death in a famous London hospital
	of Abdul Rahman Bazzaz, an ex-Ambassador to London
	and the only civilian prime minister since 1958.
	A detailed report appeared in the Sunday Times in
	1971, accusing the Iraqi government of administering
	certain poisons which caused his paralysis and
	untimtely death.

	"During the late seventies, Kurdish and Iraqi
	prisoners were again experimented upon with toxic
	materials, which could have been the prelude to
	a more ambitious and sinister mass weapon.  It took
	a long and agonising war, the resources of the
	Iranian government, the full glare of television
	cameras upon the blistered and dying faces to
	convince the world of Mr Saddam's unethical
	practices."

	- The Kurdish Observer, December 1987 issue

During the eighties, these Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were
at last deployed -- against Iranian infantry in the Iran-Iraq war
-- and against defenceless Kurdish villagers.

One of the first Kurdish villages to be bombed with chemicals was
Sheikh Wasanen.  It was a small place, some 60 mud houses and
about 300 people.  In April 1987, several Iraqi air warplanes
flew into the valley and made repeated bombing runs against the
village.

It was a slaughter.  A Kurdish peshmerga - freedom fighter - who
witnessed this attack says:

	"I was stationed further along the valley, not far
	from Sheikh Wasanen.  I saw the jets diving again
	and again to bomb the village.  After the bombs fell,
	the people ran outside as though they thought they
	had escaped injury.  But they ran into the chemical
	and died."
	
	- Testimony of Khalil Hamad Hassan to KCC, London

On April 15th and 16th 1987, thirty-four Soviet made Iraqi Sukhoi
jets bombed the Kurdish villages of Haledin and Balisan.

	"We entered Balisan not all that long after the
	bombs had fallen.  Bodies were lying in the street.
	The bodies had gone blue, but there was no other
	sign of injury.  My friend Abdullah Habib went to
	where a woman lay dead, with arms round her small
	children.  As he bent down over their bodies he
	collapsed and died.  Another friend rushed to help
	him also died.  Where I was standing, just ten
	feet away, the air was breathable."

	- Testimony of Khalil Hamad Hassan, ibid

The destruction of these villages was part of 'phase one' of the
Iraqi plan for 'deportation' and 'resettlement', referred to in
the captured Iraqi document which we have reproduced (above) at
the beginning of this topic.

But the worst horror had yet to come.

Deep inside Iraqi Kurdistan lies the small Kurdish town of
Halabja. On 16th March 1988, about 6,000 of its men, women and
children met hideous deaths.

Witnesses said that Iraqi warplanes flew overhead and, in more
than 20 separate raids, dropped clusters of bombs on the town. 
Explosions spread huge clouds of white gas over sections of the
city.  A deadly white smog enfolded Halabja.

The aftermath was described in the Washington Times, on March
23rd:
	"Bodies lie in the dirt streets or sprawled
	in rooms and courtyards of the deserted villas,
	preserved at the moment of death in a modern
	version of the disaster that struck Pompeii. 
	A father died in the dust trying to protect his
	child from the white clouds of cyanide vapour. 
	A mother lies cradling her baby alongside a
	minibus that lies sideways across the road, hit
	while trying to flee.  Yards away, a mother, father
	and daughter lie side by side.  In a cellar a
	family crouches together.  Shoes and clothes are
	scattered outside the houses."

Next week, we will publish an interview with a woman who survived
the Halabja massacre and who today lives in London.

Would you like to know more about the Kurds?  Please respond now,
for a Kurdish conference.


	This topic posted by:

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