ANFAL – THE KURDISH GENOCIDE
By Kameel Ahmady
Kurdish Media, UK
Aug. 23, 2006
Kak Ali Mustapha Hama wore his traditional Kurdish headgear (janedani),
in full Kurdish regalia as he looked angrily at Saddam Hussein,
just meters away in the witness stand. Whereas others could not, Kak
Ahemd bravely and defiantly faced Saddam, and looking straight into
his eyes, called him a murderer, who he claims killed many members
of his family during the Anfal operations.
Watching Kak Ali live on BBC brought a strong surge of emotion and a
flood of memory, as he spoke in Kurdish in the heavily guarded court
set up in the Green Zone of Iraq. He faced the Iraqi dictator, and
dared name him without stating his full title as president, Gahad
Al Rahis- Saddam Al-Hussien when he was the Iraqi tyrant ruler –
something unimaginable only three years ago.
Although I was ‘lucky’ enough not to have been one of the direct
victims of the massacre, I remember well the aftermath of the
inhumanity in Halabja, in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq,
Kurdistan. Only a teenager at time of the Anfal and chemical attack of
Halabja, living in the western Kurdish region of Iran, I recall that we
were mobilised through the local mosques and deployed to the border of
south Kurdistan (Iraq) to receive and assist with survivors and victims
of Halabja, along with thousands of Kurdish refugees, men, women and
children who were fleeing the deadly brutality of Saddam’s army.
Some years later, after the humiliating arrest of Saddam deep inside a
hole in the ground, allegedly facilitated by Kurdish guerrilla fighters
(pershmerga), now the world finally sees him facing trail for killing
over 180,000 Kurdish people on their own land. While question hangs
over the court proceedings as to how the case for genocide might be
won, there is no doubt amongst Kurds themselves that Saddam’s act of
indiscriminate killing in 1988 was genocide.
This is a view which is corroborated by the Kurds’ experiences of
systematic and violent oppression throughout the entire history of
Saddam’s rule in Iraq, and also widely held at the international level.
Now Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants are being tried over the
Anfal campaign in Kurdistan, ordered by Saddam himself and Ali Hassan
Al-Majid, (‘Chemical Ali’) in which Iraqi bombers were to attack the
Kurdish town of Halabja using chemical weapons and nerve gases such
as Tabun and Sarin. These gases left thousands of civilians dead,
many thousands wounded, and tens of thousands homeless. Including
Halabja, there were in total eight Anfal campaigns between February
and September 1988. All the defendants face charges of war crimes and
crimes against humanity, while Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid
are additionally charged with genocide.
What would constitute a ‘fair trial’ in such a recent and so
emotionally charged an event in human history, and the history of the
Kurds in particular? When we think we render two people as equivalent
to the loss of 180,000 people we have already become desensitised to
the true barbarity of the atrocities, and thus repeat the injustice but
such are the dictates of international law, and global politics and the
media machine is a numbers game as much as anything else. And genocide
is, after all, a crime characterised by the fact that it forms part of
a wider plan to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular group. As a
crime directed at a group, genocidal intent is necessarily associated
with mass crimes. Perhaps our first mistake is to imagine that systemic
‘logic’ can ever be applied to such inhuman acts of such scale. However
we still imagine that it is logical to give names, faces and family
histories to the allied soldiers killed in service in Iraq-Iran war,
while the faceless Iraqi victims of Saddam’s atrocities – their reason
for being there in the first place – are forever obscured.
Then again, there is hypocrisy in us all. After his overthrow by
British and American troops, while travelling in Palestinian Occupied
Territories in 2004( ),
I encountered heroic images of Saddam the Great Leader proudly
displayed in shops and windows. I even met those ready to defend him
as such. Statistically, Saddam has killed more Muslims than any other
leader in world history. Such are the complexities of power and deceit
in the beleaguered Middle East, where the disenfranchised often cannot
tell their enemies form their allies, when they have any at all.
International legal tools for apprehending and punishing the Iraqi
principal perpetrators are of course necessary for the long-term
successful prevention of future genocides. It is almost certain that
serious efforts will also have to be made to bring about greater
respect for the rule of law. The norms and legal conventions are
essential for the purpose of defining our collective ideals and
values, and, most importantly, for guiding our legal actions. Justice
has to apply to all otherwise you end up with anarchy, as we have
today. Saddam was a vicious tyrant and deserves justice as does every
other greedy aggressor. Victor’s justice guarantees no peace. Without
doubt, Saddam’s trail is watched by other dictators in the Middle
East who will sooner or later face the same fate.
The case of Halabja in Kurdistan is certainly ‘genocide’ in accordance
with UN Conventions, which includes not only killing but ‘causing
serious bodily or mental harm’ to members of a group. The very fact
that there should be a question as to whether the Anfal campaign
meets these criteria shows a serious lack of commitment on the part
of the international community; to ignore crimes of this magnitude
represents both a moral defeat and a political error.
‘Every tragedy whispers again of past tragedies’, so they say. This
affirmation is perhaps most germane to the matter of genocide. The
20th century had barely begun when, under cover of WW I, Armenians
in Turkey suffered massacres and deportations that eliminated
over 1.5 million men, women, and children, an event which Hitler
himself is said to have cited in defence of the Final Solution
against the Jews in WWII. Though the crime of genocide is ancient,
the concept itself is relatively new. The Kurdish genocide of the
1980s, in which thousands of civilians lost their lives, stands as
one of the worst human tragedies of the modern era. In Kurdistan,
as in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone,
extremist politics conspired with a diabolic disregard for human life
to produce repression, misery, and murder on a massive scale. Genocide
in Kurdistan has until now been ignored by the world’s super-powers
for reasons of political interest.
Although Genocide and mass killing is nothing new for the Kurds in
all parts of Kurdistan as it did carried out by the rulers of Turkey,
Syria and Iran through out years of oppressions. Such as Dersim (1978)
and Wan (1930) along with Sewas (1993) massacre in turkeys Kurdistan,
young Kurds burned to death in cinema (1960 Amude) in Syrian Kurdistan
along with all inhabitants of Garni, Sofian and Paswai villages (1978)
of Iranian Kurdistan. But Halabja was brought the attention of the
international communities to us as Kurds.
‘I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am
strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes’,
Churchill is reported to have said when the British quashed the Kurd
uprising in Sulaymaniyah using mustard gas, after Britain seized Iraq
post-WWI. Many decades later, Saddam himself was placed in power,
with the support of the west, to carry on with this legacy of subduing
‘uncivilised tribes’, so that western powers, with more important
issues to worry about, did not have to deal with it themselves. This
is not to forget Kurds themselves who had a direct role in guiding the
army of the Ba’athist regime into the villages and towns of Kurdistan.
Saddam must now face trial for the killing of all those innocent
people who were gassed simply because they represented to his deranged
worldview an unpleasant and uncontrollable obstacle to total power. We
as Kurds have waited for this day. When I was asked to write a piece
about Saddam’s trial from a Kurdish perspective, I leapt at the
chance to have the general public hear the personal voice of a Kurd,
whose people were and are so deeply affected and as the Director of
Kurdish Media.com Dr Rebwar Fatah wrote to as Kurdish intellectuals “I
urge you to write about this genocide, aiming to educate international
community via objective writings. It is time for words, leaving swords
behind”. I see it as my duty to speak and bear witness to this tragic
chapter in Kurdish history and in human history, for Kak Ali Mustapha
Hama and others, as a Kurd and as a citizen of the world.
Kameel Ahmady maintains a website at:
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
www.kameelahmady.com