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Anfal - The Kurdish Genocide

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  • Anfal - The Kurdish Genocide

    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(http://www.kameelahmady.com/articles.php ),
    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: www.kameelahmady.com

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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