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The Horror of Halabja
The secret code at the time was . . . Rain! Rain! Rain!
That would be the warning radioed from the Iraqi Air Force pilot of
the lead jet when the bombardment was to begin. As he tells his tale
years later, the former Iraqi intelligence officer takes a nervous drag on
the cigarette that he holds between two fingers of his right hand. He is
right to be nervous. He is now the involuntary guest of his jailers in
Kurdistan, in northern Iraq, and he is talking about the events of March
16, 1988, when he looked down into the valley at the town of Halabja
from his assigned station on the peak of Mount Zimnako, as his military
turned the quiet Kurdish town into a living hell. That was the day
Saddam Hussein ordered the bombardment of Halabja, population
80,000, with a deadly nerve gas. It would be the world's worst gassing of
civilians.
"I expected them at first to attack [the nearby] Mount Shameran with
chemicals because the Iranians had occupied it," says the imprisoned
Iraqi intelligence officer. He agreed to talk with a television documentary
producer from the United States, Ginny Durrin, on the stipulation that
his name would not be used, in order to protect his family in Iraq from
reprisals. "I never imagined they would strike Halabja. . . . But when they
uttered the word 'Halabja,' I knew they would hit Halabja with chemical
weapons."
He says he trained his binoculars down upon the town; he was jarred
by what he saw. "I saw people inside Halabja through the binoculars. I
saw them. There were civilians, families . . . I told my supervisors that
there were families and children. But there was no response. I told them
there were children, families, women and animals inside the city. But they
told me those were perhaps people, who had been left behind, or military
people or peshmergas [guerrillas]. They would answer back that all the
families had either fled to Iran or had withdrawn to Sulaymaniyah."
A crackling voice over the wireless told him the time had come. "Rain!
Rain! Rain!" The Iraqi intelligence officer pulled on his gas mask,
watched, waited. "After minutes, we saw the planes come and attack
Halabja. We saw the chemicals . . . I knew that the city was being bombarded
with chemical bombs and there were civilians in it. The Iraqi military
leaders said that there were no civilians in the town, only the
Iranian army and Kurdish peshmergas. However later the picture
became clear to me. We knew there were civilians, children and women
who were all killed."
It is estimated that 5,000 men, women and children died in Halabja
on that day in March, 1988. Many more suffered injuries that will lead to
lifetimes of grief and suffering.
Saddam Hussein conducted the world's only massive gassing of a civilian
population in the late 1980s, as he targeted Iraq's minority population
of Kurds living in the northernmost provinces of his country. Hundreds
of Kurdish villages were bombarded with his chemical weapons. He
attacked them because they were supporting Iran in its war with Iraq. …
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