[Peace-discuss] kurds

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

Lives on the line: Kurds fear Saddam as well as extremists By Jeffrey 
Fleishman
Los Angeles Times

        
AP / AP 
Kurdish victims of a poison-gas attack by Saddam Hussein's forces lie in the 
streets of the Iraqi city of Halabja after its capture by Iranian troops 
during the Iran-Iraq war. Some Kurds fear Saddam will target them again if 
the U.S. attacks him.   
    
    
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• In 1988, Saddam Hussein tested his biological weapons on the people of 
Kurdistan, exacting a horrible toll. Today they fear a repeat of such a 
reprisal if U.S. troops go after the Iraqi dictator. In addition, they face a 
lethal threat from within — Muslim extremists dedicated to seizing control of 
northern Iraq from their pro-Western fellow Kurds. HALABJA, Iraq — At the rim 
of the cotton fields below the foothills, the melting morning frost makes mud 
of the roads. Men with prayer beads in their hands and Kalashnikovs slung 
over their shoulders walk beside mass graves of past atrocities. Then they 
point to the mountains, where this town's newest threat lurks in crevices and 
bunkers beyond the snow line. Halabja is a place of sorrow and peril. In 
1988, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces dropped bombs of mustard gas, 
sarin and other poisons, killing 5,000 ethnic Kurds and leaving a legacy of 
birth defects and cancer. The town worries it will be struck again by a 
desperate Saddam seeking to turn the land of his Kurdish enemies into ashes 
during an American invasion. "Hussein poured his anger out on a people he 
hated before," said Hushiyar Kareem Afrasyab, who lost 36 relatives in the 
attacks 15 years ago. "We expect it to happen again. We have nothing to save 
us. No gas masks. No chemicals suits. No medicines. We have only the 
experience of what happened the first time." Now a new enemy faces Halabja — 
and to a broader extent the United States — from the heights above town. 
Between 500 to 700 guerrillas known as Ansar al-Islam are camped on the 
ridges with mortars and sniper rifles. The mostly Kurdish Islamic militants 
are battling pro-Western Kurdish fighters over the soul of northern Iraq, 
where religious fundamentalism seeps in from Iran and the United States 
attempts to shape democracy in mountain hamlets controlled by tribes and 
clans. 'The West will abandon you' "There is much at stake," said Baba Hama 
Hassan, a Halabja firefighter who lost most of his family in the 1988 
chemical attacks. "A deep religious Islamic thinking is trying to control the 
region. They are spending money on mosques to encourage their dominance. We 
are fighting this backward idea, but the Islamic militants are betting that 
the West won't help the Kurds in their dream of independence. They are 
saying, 'The West will abandon you, and then you'll come back to us.' That 
would be a big problem for the U.S." Iraqi Kurdistan is the rugged northern 
territory controlled by two rival political parties: the Kurdistan Democratic 
Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Home to about 3.5 
million Kurds, the region is an autonomous statelet protected from the Iraqi 
army by a "no-fly" zone patrolled by U.S. and British warplanes. It's also a 
potential route for U.S. forces invading Iraq. Troubled memories The Kurds 
enjoy 13 percent of Iraq's oil revenues under the U.N. "oil-for-food" program 
and have long sought independence. But under U.S. pressure, and fearing 
reprisals from Turkey and Iran if they form their own nation, Kurdish leaders 
have agreed to take part in an Iraqi federation government if Saddam falls.   
  
    
    
    
    
    
The troubled history and tenuous future of Halabja are in many ways a 
metaphor for Kurdistan. The town bustles with fruit sellers, butchers and 
tailors. Women in chadors billow through alleys flecked with the sparks of 
metal grinders and the wood smell of carpenters. Kids play marbles in the 
dirt. But it is also sullen, a place of monuments to remember biological and 
chemical attacks. "I have seen the village change," said Dr. Fouad Baban, who 
treats hundreds of cases of blindness, cleft palates and cancers lingering 
from the 1988 attack. "I was born and schooled there. When I go back there 
now I see a different people. Their trust has changed. Their way of life has 
changed." Aras Abid Akram lost his parents, seven sisters and three brothers 
in the attacks. He found them in the scoop of a front-end loader hauling away 
bodies after Halabja was coated with chemicals and nerve agents, including VX 
and Tabun. Their bodies were blistered and swollen and "a smell I can't 
describe, like fumes, came out of their mouths," said Akram, director of 
Halabja's Save the Children chapter. His office is cold, its walls covered 
with murals of death — a child suffocated and lying in a road, a clump of 
bodies near a doorstep. Akram spoke of March 16, 1988. Saddam's forces, which 
were shelling the Iranian army near the border that day toward the end of an 
eight-year war, decided to test chemical weapons on Kurdish villages, 
including Halabja's population of about 50,000. Conventional bombs were 
dropped first to frighten people into their basements, where their breathing 
space would be limited. Then came the "damp sounds," said Akram. "First the 
air smelled of kerosene and apples and then it changed to a garlic scent," he 
said. "We were all in basements. We didn't know what to do. We feared going 
outside because of the bombs" He crawled out of the basement at 8 p.m. His 
eyes were burning, there was shrapnel in his head. He felt his way along 
cinder-block walls. "I walked over bodies," he said. "There were so many. ... 
Some people were bleeding and laughing uncontrollably. I didn't know why, but 
I heard later that sometimes the gas affects you like that." He and about 500 
others ran toward a stream. Most were vomiting and could barely see. A man 
stuck him with a needle. "He said, 'It's OK. It's for the chemicals,' " said 
Akram, who was treated by rescue workers and sent by helicopter to a hospital 
in Iran. Two days later, he returned. "There were dead bodies in the roads 
and in the streams," he said. "I went to my house. Lunch was on the table 
from two days earlier. My family wasn't there. I went to a neighbor's house 
and saw a front-end loader lifting bodies out of a basement. I jumped into 
the scoop. I saw a dress I noticed. It was my grandmother. I went further 
down into the bodies and saw my sisters. I fainted." "Every single moment of 
that day we cannot forget," said Afrasyab, who lost 36 relatives. "Hopefully 
if Saddam only has a little time to retaliate after an American attack, he'll 
launch his missiles at Kuwait or Israel and not at us." If chemical weapons 
do whistle this way, Halabja and the rest of Kurdistan are not prepared. "We 
know we are the nearest for such attacks, but we have nothing we can do now," 
said Abdul Razaq, the foreign affairs minister for the PUK, which controls 
the area of northern Iraq that includes Halabja. "We're planning to start an 
awareness campaign to teach people what to do. Washington and the West have 
listened to us. They are sympathetic, but we are still waiting to hear the 
results." Militants' challenge Halabja's other threat is more insidious. 
Ansar al-Islam emerged in the region in late 2001 as a militant challenge to 
the more secular pro-Western Kurdish parties. Its fighters, for the most part 
Iraqi Kurds, have been joined by about 100 fighters from Afghanistan and 
other countries. Some were trained in Osama bin Laden's camps. They line the 
ridges outside town and sporadically battle bands of the PUK's fighters, 
known as the "peshmerga," who are dug in along mountains and valleys less 
than 10 miles from the Iranian border. Mortar and machine-gun fire often echo 
across the area. A U.S. intelligence team recently traveled through Halabja 
and accompanied a peshmerga unit into the highlands to view Ansar positions. 
If there is a war in Iraq, a Western intelligence official said, Ansar would 
be targeted by U.S. and allied planes and missiles. The firefights between 
Ansar and the peshmerga have unnerved the town, where a memorial to the 1988 
victims cannot always be visited because it is within mortar range. Some say 
Halabja has been numbed by the violence that for decades has stained its 
streets and littered its hillsides. "The Islamists are trying to capitalize 
on this," said Baban, the doctor, whose sister died of breast cancer in the 
years following the 1988 attacks. "They are saying the poverty, the chemical 
attacks, the failure of the Kurdish movement to attain real success are all 
part of God's punishment for turning away from the faith. I really think the 
Islamist movement is another form of chemical war." 

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