by Doug Pritchard

The city of Halabja is in northeast Iraq, fifteen km from the Iranian border.  It became infamous for Saddam Hussein's gassing of its citizens as part of the Anfal Campaign that killed 100,000 Kurds during 1987-88.  Mr. Aris Agram from the Halabja Monument Association told CPT his personal story of loss and survival.

Early in 1988, in the final year of the Iran-Iraq war, Iran's troops invaded and occupied Halabja, supported by the Kurdish militia.  In response, Iraq began bombing the area.  From 13-15 March, there was heavy fighting in the city.  Casualties streamed to the hospital, which ran out of medications.  Then came 16 March 1988.  The Iraqi military dropped cluster bombs across the city, killing many children and the mothers accompanying them home from school.  They also dropped bombs with white phosphorus that eats through flesh down to the bone.  Then they dropped 500-pound bombs, which can blast craters twenty feet deep, and killed more people huddled in their home made bomb shelters.  Finally, they dropped the poison gas bombs that instantly killed 5,000 people-90% of those remaining in the city, mostly children, the elderly, or the injured who had not been able to flee.  Another 7,000 in the region were injured and many died later from the long-term effects of the gas, probably a cocktail of cyanide, mustard gas, VX, and Tabin-ingredients sold to Iraq by the U.S.A. and countries in Asia and Europe

Agram's mother, father, seven sisters, nieces, and nephews-twenty-four people in all-lived in a cement house in the centre of town.  On 16 March, his father sent twenty-year-old Agram to look for food.  A few minutes later, the cluster bombing began.  Agram was injured and started back home. He fell unconscious and awoke in a building with eighty others, some already dead.  His mother and sister arrived looking for him and then left for home.  En route, the 500-pound bombs killed them.  Then the gas bombs fell and all the rest of his family were killed instantly.  Iranian soldiers in gas masks entered the building where someone had taken Agram for shelter and covered everyone's faces with wet blankets to reduce the effects of the gas.  Agram regained consciousness but was disoriented and temporarily blind from the gas.  He leaned on a friend and, calling for help, walked out through the bodies of the living and the dead.  He said that by now he had forgotten about his family.  He met some Kurdish militia; they gave him a shot of atropine to counter the gas and then he walked to the Iranian border.

Two days later, on 18 March, the Iranians transferred him deeper into Iran for treatment as he drifted in and out of consciousness.  On 20 March, he left the Iranian camp to find his family.  The roads and streets were lined with bodies.  He found his home with all the windows blown out, but no people.  That night, he remembered that his mother had said they would go to his uncle's bomb shelter.  At dawn, he walked to his uncle's and saw bodies everywhere.  At his uncle's house, he saw the Kurdish militia loading bodies onto a wagon.  In the pile, he spotted his sister's sweater, and then his mother's arm hanging from the wagon.  He grabbed his mother's hand, kissed her cheek, and then passed out.  A few minutes later he awoke, and begged the militia to let him bury his family members individually instead of seeing them dumped into a mass grave.  The militia said there was no time because the Iraqis continued to bomb the area.  The bombing intensified and he had to flee, leaving behind the bodies of his family.

In concluding his story, Agram said that for years afterwards, the U.S. government claimed that Iran was also responsible for the gas attack on Halabja.  Only in the late 1990s, did the U.S. government drop this claim and build its case against Saddam's regime and the threat of weapons of mass destruction.  In 2003, on the eve of the war against Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell finally blamed Iraq solely for the gas attack on Halabja.  Saddam Hussein was executed in 2006, before completion of the genocide trial against him for his Anfal Campaign, thus frustrating the Kurds' search for justice.  Now Agram says that President Obama is seeking to rehabilitate senior members of Saddam's Baath party, including some responsible for the gas attack on Halabja-one more insult for Agram and his family.