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Halabja poison gas attack
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Halabja poison gas attack

The Halabja poison gas attack was an incident on 15 March-19 March 1988 when chemical weapons were used, allegedly by Iraqi government forces, to kill a number of people in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja (population 80,000). Estimates of casualties range from several hundred to 7,000 people. Halabja is located about 150 miles northeast of Baghdad and 8-10 miles from the Iranian border.

image:Halabja1.jpg
Photo said to have been taken in the aftermath of the attack.

Most accounts of the incident regard Iraq as the party responsible for the gas attack, which occurred during the Iran-Iraq War. For example, the TerrorismCentral web site states, "The poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja was the largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian population in modern times. ...The CW attack began early in the evening of March 16th, when a group of eight aircraft began dropping chemical bombs, and the chemical bombardment continued all night. ... The Halabja attack involved multiple chemical agents, including mustard gas, and the nerve agents SARIN, TABUN and VX."

Some debate continues, however, over the question of whether Iraq was really the responsible party. In part, this controversy stems from the fact that the Halabja incident and other uses of chemical weapons by Iraq occurred while Iraq was receiving military and economic support from the United States. "By any measure, the American record on Halabja is shameful," says Joost R. Hiltermann of Human Rights Watch, which has extensively investigated the Halabja incident. In fact, the U.S. State Department even "instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame. The result of this stunning act of sophistry was that the international community failed to muster the will to condemn Iraq strongly for an act as heinous as the terrorist strike on the World Trade Center."

Some people affiliated with the United States government at the time of the Halabja attack continue to insist that Iran, rather than Iraq, committed the atrocity. "All we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds," wrote Stephen C. Pelletiere in a January 2003 opinion piece for the New York Times. "I am in a position to know," he stated, "because, as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair."

Pelletiere's position is disputed, however, by human rights groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has conducted its own extensive investigations into the incident. According to HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth, "Iraqi forces used mustard and nerve gases, as well as mass executions, to kill some 100,000 Kurds in the genocidal 1988 Anfal campaign. The commander, Gen. Ali Hassan al-Majid, said of the Kurds, in a taped speech obtained by Human Rights Watch: 'I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community?' The evidence is incontrovertible: Iraq is responsible for the crime of genocide, committed against its own Kurdish population. The gassing at Halabja was part of that crime."

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Rights Watch: Who Was Ali Hassan Al-Majid AKA "Chemical Ali"?

BBSNews - 2003-04-08 -- New York, April 7, 2003 - Iraqi General Ali Hassan al-Majid, a cousin of President Saddam Hussein, was the architect of the 1988 genocidal Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds, which resulted in the murder and "disappearance" of some 100,000 Kurds.

Al-Majid was widely known in Iraq as "Chemical Ali" for his repeated use of outlawed chemical warfare, as documented in the Human Rights Watch book on that campaign, Genocide In Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/). He was later in charge of Iraq's brutal military occupation of Kuwait, and commanded Iraq's military forces in the south, where he was reportedly killed by U.S. and coalition forces.

"Al-Majid was Saddam Hussein's hatchet man," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "He was involved in some of the worst crimes of the Iraqi government, including genocide and crimes against humanity."

As secretary general of the Northern Bureau of Iraq's Ba'th Party, al-Majid held authority over all agencies of the state in the Kurdish region from March 1987 to April 1989, including the 1st and 5th Corps of the army, the General Security Directorate, and Military Intelligence. This included the period of the Anfal genocide against the region's Kurdish residents. One of his orders, dated June 20, 1987, directed army commanders "to carry out special bombardments [a reference to chemical weapon use]...to kill the largest number of persons present in ...prohibited zones."

Named after a Koranic verse justifying pillage of properties of infidels, the Anfal campaign unfolded as the 1980-1988 Iran/Iraq war was winding down. The Anfal campaign, under al-Majid's command, resulted in the murder and "disappearance" of some 100,000 noncombatants, the use of chemical weapons against noncombatants in dozens of locations, and the near-total destruction of family and community assets, including agricultural and other infrastructure, throughout the rural Kurdish areas. Documents captured from Iraqi intelligence services demonstrate that the mass killings, "disappearances," forced displacement, and other crimes were carried out in a coherent and highly centralized manner under al-Majid's direct supervision. Ali Hassan al-Majid was subsequently in charge of Iraq's military occupation of Kuwait and led forces that suppressed the popular uprising in the south of the country in March 1991. All of these campaigns were marked by executions, arbitrary arrests, "disappearances," torture, and other atrocities.

According to Iraqi opposition activists and refugee testimony, al-Majid also played a leading role in the campaign against Iraq's Marsh Arab population in the 1990s. Numbering some 250,000 people as recently as 1991, the Marsh Arabs today are believed to number fewer than 40,000 in their ancestral homeland. Many were arrested, "disappeared," or executed; most have become refugees abroad or are internally displaced in Iraq as a result of al-Majid's campaign.

"Al-Majid represented the worst of the Iraqi government, and that's saying quite a lot," said Roth. "He was a key figure in the 1988 genocide, and was responsible for other crimes against humanity, too."

"Chemical Ali" in his own words

According to a 1988 audiotape of a meeting of leading Iraqi officials published by Human Rights Watch, al-Majid vowed to use chemical weapons against the Kurds, saying:

"I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! the international community, and those who listen to them!

"I will not attack them with chemicals just one day, but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days."

To read more from "Chemical Ali" audiotapes:

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/APPENDIXA.htm

To read more background on the War in Iraq, please see:

http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/iraq/

 
 
 
 
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President George W. Bush says good bye to Dr. Katrin Michael, foreground, Della Jaff and Idres Hawarry in the Oval Office Friday, March 14, 2003, after speaking with them. The three are from the Kurdish area of Iraq where a chemical weapons attack killed 5,000 citizens 15 years ago this weekend. Thousands died in the days following the attack on Halabja and an estimated 10,000 people still suffer from the attack. Idres Hawarry survived the attack on Halabja, Dr. Michael survived a similar attack in another Kurdish village and friends and family of Della Jaff were killed in Halabja. White House photo by Eric Draper.
 
 
President George W. Bush says good bye to Dr. Katrin Michael, foreground, Della Jaff and Idres Hawarry in the Oval Office Friday, March 14, 2003, after speaking with them. The three are from the Kurdish area of Iraq where a chemical weapons attack killed 5,000 citizens 15 years ago this weekend. Thousands died in the days following the attack on Halabja and an estimated 10,000 people still suffer from the attack. Idres Hawarry survived the attack on Halabja, Dr. Michael survived a similar attack in another Kurdish village and friends and family of Della Jaff were killed in Halabja. White House photo by Eric Draper.

 

 

 
President George W. Bush listens to Dr. Katrin Michael, at right, Della Jaff and Idres Hawarry, foreground, in the Oval Office Friday, March 14, 2003. The three are from the Kurdish area of Iraq where a chemical weapons attack killed 5,000 citizens 15 years ago this weekend. Thousands died in the days following the attack on Halabja and an estimated 10,000 people still suffer from the attack. Idres Hawarry survived the attack on Halabja, Dr. Michael survived a similar attack in another Kurdish village and friends and family of Della Jaff were killed in Halabja. White House photo by Eric Draper.
As Secretary of State Colin Powell stands by his side, President George W. Bush addresses the media in the Rose Garden Friday, March 14, 2003. White House photo by Paul Morse
President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell walk back to the Oval Office after addressing the media in the Rose Garden Friday, March 14, 2003. The President discussed an outline for peace in the Middle East. White House photo by Paul Morse.
President George W. Bush says good bye to Dr. Katrin Michael, foreground, Della Jaff and Idres Hawarry in the Oval Office Friday, March 14, 2003, after speaking with them. The three are from the Kurdish area of Iraq where a chemical weapons attack killed 5,000 citizens 15 years ago this weekend. Thousands died in the days following the attack on Halabja and an estimated 10,000 people still suffer from the attack. Idres Hawarry survived the attack on Halabja, Dr. Michael survived a similar attack in another Kurdish village and friends and family of Della Jaff were killed in Halabja. White House photo by Eric Draper.