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Lingering scars
Kurdish survivors recall infamous day 15 years ago
By Marcus Stern
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
March 2, 2003
NELVIN CEPEDA / Union-Tribune
Aras Abid Ekrem sat in a cemetery in Halabjah, Iraq, reflecting on the deaths of 23 members of his family killed 15 years ago after Saddam Hussein attacked this Kurdish town in northern Iraq with mustard gas and nerve agents.
HALABJAH, Iraq â?? Aras Abid Ekrem sat by a mound of cemetery grass and a black sign he'd planted. The sign lists the names of 23 members of his family killed 15 years ago after Saddam Hussein attacked this Kurdish town in northern Iraq with mustard gas and nerve agents.
The attack March 16, 1988, has been called the deadliest chemical attack on a civilian population. No one knows the exact totals, but 5,000 were reported dead and another 10,000 injured. Fifteen years later, its legacy includes increased rates of birth defects, cancer, blindness, respiratory illness, infertility and other problems related to DNA damage.
British medical researcher Christine Gosden has compared the long-term medical impact of the attack on Halabjah to the effects seen roughly a mile from where the atomic bombs fell in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A look at this badly scarred Kurdish town's macabre past offers a possible glimpse into the future if war breaks out and Hussein resorts to chemical weapons again. Hussein denies he has such weapons, but Western officials believe he does. This is a main issue that could help trigger a U.S.-led war against Iraq.
Northern Iraq is as unguarded today against an attack as Halabjah was 15 years ago. Kurdish leaders have requested gas masks, protective suits and antidotes from the United Nations, the European Union and the United States. Their pleas and those of Halabjah's residents have gone unanswered.
"We need gas masks; we need help," Ekrem said.
As he spoke Friday, the expansive fields around him were green with spring grass, and miniature daffodils marked the approach of spring. But, as he recounted the events of March 16, 1988, there was a chill in the air. The jagged Suryen Mountains rising behind him were draped in heavy snow.
"There are two pictures in my mind," he said. "One is my dead family and the other is Saddam, alive."
Ekrem was an unmarried 21-year-old when the 1988 attacks occurred. He survived because he was sheltered in a cellar when the bombs fell. Today, he is a 36-year-old husband and father of two. Although he lost almost his entire family in the 1988 attack, he has no idea how he might shield himself or his family from another chemical attack.
If an attack comes, he said, "There is no safety here."
Like others, he expressed hope that initial attacks on Iraqi forces would cripple Hussein's offensive capabilities. Although Halabjah lies south of the 36th parallel, which marks the northern protective "no-fly" zone, no Iraqi warplanes have been seen in the skies here for years.
The attack on Halabjah came during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Three days before the attack, soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had launched an attack that took Halabjah from Iraqi forces. On March 15, some of the residents here welcomed the Iranian soldiers as liberating heroes.
On March 16, Iraqi planes began a sustained conventional attack on the town, including napalm, residents said. With the town partly in flames, more warplanes arrived in the late afternoon. The sound of their bombs was different, quieter, witnesses said.
They noticed birds dying. The smell of apples hung in the air. Then their skin began to blister, their eyes began to run and their lungs began to burn. Their faces turned dark. Many died almost instantly. Others ran for nearby mountains that mark the border with Iran.
Corpses littered the sidewalks and streets. They lined the mountain trails.
In the days that followed, some who hadn't been injured in the attack drank from the Milakawi spring. They too died; nerve agents had tainted the spring water.
Some experts, most notably Stephen C. Pelletiere, the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, are not sure Iraq's chemicals killed Halabjah's Kurds. Pelletiere says Iraq did use chemical weapons against the Iranians who had seized Halabjah, and therefore had bombed the Kurds living there. But he says Iran also used chemical weapons against the Iraqis in the battle over Halabjah and says a classified U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report concluded Iranian gas had killed the Kurds.
Hadi Fettah is part of the Kurdish military force known as the peshmergas, or those who are ready to die. They have attained legendary status in the Kurdish struggle against Hussein.
Like Ekrem, Fettah has family in the cemetery overlooking Halabjah.
He lost his brother in the 1988 attack. He also has a scar as jagged as the nearby mountains just below his neck from contact with the mustard gas. It oozed and bled all night and into the next day as he fled on foot to Iran.
For months, he couldn't move his head because of the pain from the burn. Several surgeries eventually got him on his feet again. But 15 years later, his pockets are stuffed with painkillers because of the ache that runs from his hand to the scar on his neck.
For years he had crying spells. He is so haunted by the images of death that he sometimes still can't sleep for days.
"All of us survivors became a little crazy from what we saw," he said.
On Friday, a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder, he scanned the unmarked graves in the cemetery above Halabjah, wondering where his brother might lie.
In the wake of the attack, trucks had hauled bodies from streets and cellars to holes dug by backhoes. The bodies were hurled into mass graves and quickly covered. Unmarked tombstones and grassy mounds are all that mark the location of the remains. Nobody knows for sure even how many are buried here.
Ali Mahmud Muhammed, 59, who runs a produce stand in Halabjah, returned to his home for a quick lunch after Friday's hourlong midday prayers at the mosque.
He recounted that ghastly day 15 years ago when the planes came again in the late afternoon.
"I could smell apples in the air," he said.
When he realized it was a chemical attack, he began running.
"I felt sick and became blinded," Muhammed said.
Eventually, his hands blistering and his eyes watering so heavily he could barely see, he made his way toward the border. He, too, is still haunted by what he did see through eyes that to this day provide only limited vision.
"I walked along the road and saw death on both sides," he said.
The question now is whether others might see it in their future.
BTW I want to make it clear I am not saying what the Americans did isn't wrong...I am simply trying to demonstrate that the ENTIRE world is completely screwed up...