http://home.cogeco.ca/~kurdistan6/16-3-05-opinion-ahmad-mirawdely-why-im-not-irqi.html
Why I can't be Iraqi again!!
By: Dr. Ahmad Mirawdaly
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mar 15, 2005
Aziza: was a teen Kurdish girl who survived the attack on her village,
Aikmala. With a few other survivors, she painfully went over the
mountains, making it to the Turkish border. In doing so, her small
fragile body was raked by severe coughing, vomiting, diarrhea and
internal bleeding.
It has hardly been given attention internationally, that five million
Kurds living in south Kurdistan (Iraqi Kurdistan) have over the years
suffered greatly at the hands of various regimes in Baghdad.
We the Kurds are from the Iranian branch of Indo-Europeans, and
practice many religions but mainly Islam. The estimated 40 million
Muslims worldwide are spread throughout the mountainous area between
Turkey, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan and northern Iraq. Our languages and
traditions are distinct from Persians, Turks, and Arabs who control
our country. Within borders of our occupiers in Iraq, Iran, turkey and
Syria, we Kurds are the largest minority group.
After the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I,
the Kurds were promised self government in (1920) Sevres Treaty. But
the treaty was never ratified and it was completely eliminated by the
Lausanne Treaty. This treaty set the boundaries of Turkey, Syria and
Iraq, dividing Kurdistan among them in 1923. This made Iraqi Kurds
rebel in southern Kurdistan now (North of Iraq) against the British
mandate government of King Faisal 1 in Baghdad.
Their eyes on the region's riches of oil and agriculture, Arab regimes
in Baghdad are not letting northern Iraq become an independent Kurdistan.
In December 1925, under pressure of the British government, the League
of Nations ruled against Kurdish statehood. Baghdad had already said
much more; in 1924 the Iraqi governments (with Britain's help)
brutally put down the Kurdish rebellion.
>From there on a bloody pattern established, a pattern that intensified
after Iraq achieved independence from Britain in 1932. When the Baath
Party took power in 1968 they started "resettlements," or,
"Arabization," and razed towns and villages to the ground while the
deportation and mass killing of Kurdish men and women ensued.
To Arabs in general, and to the Iraqi Arabs especially, promoting
Kurdish identity was seen as promoting separatism, chauvinism, and
racism. This is seen as a traitorous act. That's whey the Iraqi army
and the secret police were ordered and trained to deal with Kurds as
such. To paralyze the Kurdish gorilla activities after 1975, the
Baathist government started an evacuation program along the borders of
Iran and Iraq, and later along Iraq and Turkey also. By the mid 80's,
when Iraq was at war with neighboring Iran, not only were villages in
the border areas erased, but also those in the oil-producing regions
in the heart of southern Kurdistan.
The infamous Anfal!!
With the start of the Anfal campaign things got even worse. Simply
being a Kurd who lived in an area newly designated as a prohibited for
security reasons (which virtually covered all rural areas in
Kurdistan), became a death sentence.
Kanan Makiya: The author of The Anfal, (Uncovering an Iraqi campaign
to exterminate the Kurds) wrote "Everywhere I traveled during the
three weeks I spent in northern Iraq, in large cities and in the
smallest villages I heard the word al Anfal."
In the secret police documents and transcripts of Iraqi military
communiqués, the reference is always to the heroic operation of Anfal.
I have read of the first, second, and third Anfal operations. There
are also documents like this dated later, (1988) of "khatimat al-
Anfal". The phrase means the end of Anfal).
Before the Iraqi campaign, most Kurds like me didn't know what "al
Anfal" meant. To know the meaning, one would have to know a perfect
Arabic language, the Koran, and Arab history. The Anfal is the name of
the eighth sura, the 75 verse revelation that comes to the profit
Muhammad after the great battle of Muslim faith at Bader (A.D. 624).
It was in the village of Bader that a group of 319 Muslims routed
about 1,000 Meccan unbelievers. This victory was seen by Muslims as a
result of intervention by God. In this sura "al Anfal" means spoils of
battle.
The revelation sura al- Anfal, is believed by Muslims to have been
sent down from God in order to govern booty. In the eyes of Arab
chauvinists or at least in the eye of the Anfal architect, the Kurds
are unbelievers, embodied now in Pan-Arabism. It is written in the
eighth sura. "They shall be punished for their unbelief."
The Anfal campaign was not born suddenly. The history of oppression
and the brutal treatment of non-Arabs in Iraq go back to the very
first day of the formation of that state. It is not possible to unveil
the brutality of over eighty year's in the history of that Arab state
in an article like this, but it's worth mentioning. In the spring of
1963 as I remember very well, the Iraqi Army surrounded the city of
Sulaimani. Soldiers went door to door and arrested every adult male
for no reason, keeping them in under barbed wires and under the sun
for weeks. They later executed over eighty prisoners (including my
physics teacher) by a firing squad before let the others go!
What make Anfal different from other heroic Arab operations carried
out, was the bureaucratically organized and administered mass killing.
It isn't clear when the campaign began, but a decree signed by Saddam
Hussein establishing the legalistic framework for the operation is
dated March 29, 1987; and was issued in the name of the Revolutionary
Command Council (the twenty two-member Baath junta) which ruled Iraq
at the time.
During the last weeks of August 1988, another 520 Kurdish villages
from Balisan and the Bassay Valley were attacked by air with chemical
weapons. In Bassay Valley, 200 families were reported as having been
wiped out. In a genocide attempt over four thousand Kurdish Villages
were razed to the ground by Iraqis.
In his comments about Anfal, Makiya asks "Is every Arab responsible?
Millions of Arabic words have been written about more than 300
Palestinian villages destroyed in the creation of Israel. And justly
so; would that I could add a million more words. But why is it that
not one Arab intellectual has written about the elimination of more
than 3,000 Kurdish villages by an Arab state?"
The almighty has brought many plagues and catastrophes on his people
like floods, hail, locust, slaying of the first born, earthquakes,
AIDS, malaria and….ext. Yet none of them were chemical. Did God know
about chemicals? That is very unlikely, (perhaps poison weapons seemed
so vile, God wished people might never find them, if so the hope has
been disappointed).
On April 22nd 1915 Germans used chlorine gas on French solders, later;
all the major powers used it in conflict. As the war continued,
additional agents were developed.
By the end of World War 1, chemical agents had caused 1.3 million
casualties. This horrible experience prompted efforts to ban the use
of chemical and biological weapons.
The Geneva protocol in 1925 prohibited the use of chemical and
biological weapons. Although the U.S. had been a signatory, it didn't
ratify it until 1975 (50years later). A decade after ratification, the
U.S. recommended an expended research and development efforts on both
chemical and biological agents.
In the late 80's, when the U.S was politically competing on ethical
principals, it offered no protest against Iraq's use of chemical
weapons against Kurdish civilians in the city of Halabja, on March 16,
1988. The instant death toll exceeded 5,000 and over10,000 mostly
women and children were injured. Many died later and some are maimed
for life. This was the most horrifying criminal act against humanity,
since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What makes one want to
condemn the U.S more is:
First, the U.S. Administration at the time granted $2.8 billion to
Iraq for building its' arsenals.
Second, the history and current realities suggest the key to
preventing chemical and biological weapons (C B W) wares lies in
American policy. It is true that, the former Soviet Union contributed
significantly, but it is the U.S. that played the dominant role in
both the development and regulation of all weaponry since WW2.
Lastly, it was the U.S. who stood in the way of the UN for condemning
Iraq, although they had evidence that Iraq was violating every
international agreement.
One wonders why humanity is still mute after obtaining 18 tons of
written documents, (now in the hands of authorities in the US proving
that the Iraqi leadership had conducted genocide against the Kurdish
population) and yet they are not considered criminals against
humanity. How many more mass graves need to be discovered?
Most of the books I have read on the chemical warfare describe the
chemistry, the hardware, and the protective devices and so on, but
ignore another significant element. The sensitive and vulnerable, yet
adaptable animal that constitutes the primary target of (CBW), yes it
was the colonial people like Kurds in third world countries who were
the primary target of those weapons. But that was before the tragedy
of (9/11), today the target is all of mankind.
One can't judge precisely the threat that chemical weapons pose, and
what the people of Halabja went through, but it is worthy to know very
few other methods of waging war are as specific to the target as
chemical warfare. It is quite possible to kill all human beings in an
area with a volatile nerve agent without damaging plants or any
material structure at all. The only weapons that approach the
chemicals in selectivity are the Neutron bomb and the Biological weapons.
The question that arises here then is, Is the effect of chemical
weapons hereditary and do they have lasting effects like Nuclear weapons?
The only essay I could find about the subject is written by Dr
Christine Gosden, a British medical specialist who visited Halabja 10
years after the bombing.
She wrote; "What I found was far worse than any thing I had suspected,
devastating problems occurring 10 years after the attack." She
mentioned an increasing number of children are dying each year of
Leukemia; the Cancers tend to occur in much younger people in Halabja
than elsewhere. There were no women in "normal" labor and no one had
recently delivered a normal baby.
Genetic cases occurring in children born years after the chemical
attack, suggest that the effect from these chemical agents are
transmitted to succeeding generations.
Personally, I was only 14 when they took me out of my class room,
tortured and imprisoned me for a year with no charges laid.
Can anyone give me one good reason to become Iraqi again?
KurdistanObserver.com
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