"There is another way"

[antennae at gn.apc.org]

There's more to this sordid tale.

Doubtless encouraged (cf James Adams of the Sunday Times in his book
about the arms trade, 'Trading in Death') by the supine western
response to his Halabja massacre, Saddam set about the Kurds with
a new fury in August 1988.

One after another, Kurdish villages were wiped out in chemical
attacks.  Gases used included cyanide, which simply chokes people to
death, and mustard gas, which strips away the lining of the lungs, 
so that those who breathe it in drown in their own blood.

There were also nerve gases, some of which were so deadly that a
drop the size of a pinhead could kill you.

>From the TV pictures of today's Kurdish refugees you can see 
exactly what sort of people they were that Saddam bombed with
chemicals in August 1988.

Then as now, hundreds of thousands fled across the mountains (in
August at least it was not so cold at night) to Iran and Turkey.
There the families still languish, in camps that for sheer squalor
defy description.  They are not even accorded refugee status, but
are referred to as 'guests'.

The point is that in September 1988, the Kurdish leader Jalal
Talabani sent an urgent and desperate appeal to the British Government.

It spoke of how the United Nations Security Council had not even
bothered to acknowledge, much less reply to, the letters and memoranda
the Kurds had sent them asking for their help in stopping the massacre.

Talabani told the British that he was turning to them because they were
champions of freedom, justice and democracy.  Would they please raise
the matter of the Kurdish massacres in the Security Council?

What was the British response?  You may draw your own conclusions from
the fact that not long after Talabani wrote his desperate appeal, a
British trade delegation led by a minister arrived in Baghdad and
DOUBLED Saddam's lines of credit.

I have used these facts already in an advertisement I wrote for
Amnesty International entitled 'With allies like these, who needs
enemies?'

Amnesty, under the terms of its charter, is not allowed to enter into
political debate, so was unable to pursue the argument.  I am under
no such restriction.

So I will simply ask this.  Why do we allow politicians to behave
abroad in ways they would never dream of behaving at home?  Why don't
we insist that our governments behave morally?

With the tide of hopeless refugees flowing across the mountain passes there
is another tide - a rolling wave of realisation that our system of
international relations is immoral and sick.  'Realpolitik' demands that
governments close their eyes to the suffering and misery their selfish
actions cause.  'Realpolitik' goes fishing while Kurds starve and freeze
to death and are slaughtered by psychopaths like Saddam.

But there is another way.  If the people of the west take matters into
their own hands and force their immoral leaders to step aside.

Ring any bells?  Luckily for us, we can throw out our leaders by the
power of the ballot rather than the bullet.  And we probably won't get
attacked by chemical weapons and helicopter gunships.  But you never 
know.  Do you?