Wanted: Dead or Alive
by Nyier Abdou
The arrest of two of Saddam Hussein's closest and most ruthless aides closes a chapter in the book of repression for Iraq's Kurdish population, writes Nyier Abdou.
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To Abdul-Wahab Sadiq Mohamed, it smelled like garlic.
It was late afternoon, and the sky was full of colours. Ahmed Ali Mohamed remembers a rain of yellow and blue; Anwar Rashid recalls a white fog that enveloped the town. When the colours mixed, it left a putrid green mist. The sound of low-flying jets pierced the air, slicing into the stunned silence with surgical precision. In less than two hours, some 5,000 people were dead. The bodies of residents lay piled helplessly in the streets.
The gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabje in northern Iraq on 16 March 1988 was the most prominent atrocity in the prolonged operation of extermination known as the Anfal campaign, masterminded by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's cousin Ali Hassan Al-Majid - then governor of northern Iraq. Last Thursday, Al-Majid - known as "Chemical Ali" for his fateful orders to use chemical weapons against the Kurds - was reported captured by US forces.
The announcement was a welcome resurrection for the once-feared Al-Majid, who, in addition to directing the Anfal campaign, was also responsible for the brutal suppression of the Shi'a uprising in southern Iraq that followed the first Gulf War in 1991. During his tenure in a string of high-level posts, from his "governorship" of Kuwait after the annexation that led to the Gulf War, to his rule as interior minister, then defence minister in the early 1990s, Al-Majid was widely known for his exceptional cruelty and his fealty to Saddam Hussein.
Reported killed in an attack by British troops in the southern city of Basra on 7 April, the US expressed their doubts about his death a month later, when the status of Al-Majid - number five on Central Command's list of most wanted - was shifted from dead to living. The capture of Al-Majid is a coup for beleaguered US forces and follows the arrest of former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan last Monday. Ramadan, equally known for his ruthlessness as Hussein's "enforcer" was once considered the second-most powerful man in Hussein's Iraq and was number 20 on Central Command's list of 55.
Captured in Mosul by Kurdish pesh merga fighters with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Ramadan was promptly handed over to coalition forces. Perhaps taking his cue from the furious gun battle that took place in Mosul and resulted in the killing of Hussein's two sons Uday and Qusay on 22 July, Ramadan surrendered in what turned out to be a bloodless operation. Only 15 former Ba'ath figures on the Central Command list remain at large, and only two, with the exception of Saddam Hussein, from the top 10: former Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council Izzat Ibrahim Al- Douri and former Special Security Organisation Head Hani Abdul-Latif Tilfah Al- Tikriti.
Like Al-Majid, Ramadan was a close confidant of Hussein and is implicated in three of the deadliest campaigns conducted by the Hussein regime: the occupation of Kuwait, the putting down of the Shi'a uprising in the south, and the poison gas attack on Halabje. Both were members of the powerful Revolutionary Command Council.
Last week's arrests are cause for jubilation in Iraqi Kurdistan, where human rights organisations maintain the mass pogrom of the Kurds definitively constitutes a crime against humanity. In the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Interior Minister Faraydoun Abdul-Kader told Al-Ahram Weekly that an estimated 180,000 Kurds were exterminated by the Iraqi government, though more conservative estimates put the number between 60,000 and 100,000. "Genocide is the exact term - not just the 'Anfal'," said Abdul-Kader. "Hundreds of thousands were killed or expelled since the rise of the Ba'ath in 1963, purely to decrease the number of Kurdish people."
In 1991 Kurdish leaders apparently posed this number of Anfal dead while meeting with Iraqi government officials in the aftermath of the Kurdish uprising. Al-Majid was purportedly scandalised, snapping that a figure of 182,000 was grossly exaggerated. "It couldn't have been more than 100,000," he reportedly remarked, unrepentant.
The US is hoping that interrogating Al-Majid will put US forces on the trail of Saddam Hussein, making him far more valuable alive than he was when he was thought dead in the early weeks of the war. On Friday, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher reiterated the US's commitment to bringing Iraqi war criminals to justice and stressed the importance of Iraqi tribunals to address atrocities committed against the Iraqi people. Citing Al-Majid specifically, the statement also alluded to trying crimes against other nationals - presumably Kuwait - noting that "the governments of those victims may also have an interest in seeking justice."
The US has been infamously duplicitous in its handling of the quest for international justice. Though it played a large role in the extradition of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague to be tried for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity under the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), it relentlessly sought to scupper the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), adamantly refusing to allow any international court to have jurisdiction over Americans. Pressing for an internal process of redressing the crimes perpetrated by the Iraqi leadership would be in keeping with the Bush administration's aversion to relying on the path of international law, but it is worth watching how the US will seek to handle the most prominent offenders like Al-Majid or, if caught, Saddam Hussein himself.
Al-Majid's merciless adherence to the Ba'ath's determination to eliminate the Kurdish majority in the north was characterised by his profound sense of invulnerability. He instituted the use of chemical weapons less than a month after being appointed governor of northern Iraq. Scores were killed in a chemical attack on the Basilan valley on 16 April 1987. In masterminding the Anfal campaign, Al-Majid famously indicated that he could exterminate with impunity, saying that he would strike with chemical weapons and kill all the Kurds. A tape later obtained by the US leaves an imprint of Al-Majid's hubris when he declares: "What will the international community say? To hell with them and to hell with any country in the world that objects."
Abdul-Wahab Sadiq Mohamed, now 58, was in the district of Anab when the gas attack came in Halabje. The Iranians had conquered the area a few days before and Kurdish pesh merga fighters had entered the town and taken over the government offices. When the Iraqi jets came, he says, a man turned to him and remarked that they would be "free at last". But Mohamed had a sinking feeling otherwise, suspecting the government was ready to write off the whole town to end the problem once and for all. He had seen the jets dropping paper to know the direction of the wind, and he told the man with grim resignation, "No, they'll use chemical weapons."
Around 4.00 PM, the jets started bombing on the outskirts of town, herding unknowing residents back into town before unleashing the gas. Most felt dizzy, says Mohamed, but others, he insists, "laughed until they died".
Today the once prosperous town of Halabje, situated close to the Iranian border, is a quiet, run-down farming community more concerned with issues of lost agricultural subsidies and pensions than with the memory of 1988. When I visited the town in June, most of the male residents of working age were crowded into the cafés and almost all seemed to have trust in no one but the American military. Tawfik Mohamed Karim, 73, claimed unabashedly that "If [US President] George Bush was here, we'd raise him on our shoulders". But once the virtues of the American presence in Iraq have been sufficiently extolled, conversation inevitably turns to daily life issues and unemployment.
"What Saddam did to this city made the plight of the Kurds known around the world," says Ahmed Ali, 80, who lost his son in the gas attack. "Everyone knows of Halabje. Why don't people provide us with any services?"
Though under the authority of the PUK within the autonomous Kurdish region established following the first Gulf War, many Halabje residents remain unsatisfied with the reign of the main Kurdish parties, the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Residents demanded that the Americans - predominantly hailed as liberators - provide the much-needed services and conduits for trade and business. Ahmed Ali Mohamed, 53, explained that there is no market for farmers' produce, adding that for the last two years, they haven't even farmed the land. "If people were out there farming," he told me, "you wouldn't see all these men sitting here. ... We leave our houses, we come here, drink tea and go home. It's not living."
Asked why the needs of the community were not taken up with the KRG, 55-year-old Mahmoud Mohamed Aziz retorted that the KRG "will do things for themselves, not for their people". He added: "If someone doesn't belong to the KDP or the PUK, they won't have a job. I have six sons, and none of them have jobs. It's exactly the same as Saddam and the Ba'ath."
Not long after this interview, my translator and myself found ourselves being removed from the café by earnest security officers. An obsequious security official received us in the PUK security headquarters, rebuffing our outraged protestations with a nervous smile. Though the exchange was brief and we continued to speak to residents that day, it was clear to me that the crimes of the Ba'ath are fair game for the international press, but the destitution that remains in this region is a dirty secret.
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– Nyier H Abdou
Nyier H Abdou
Al-Ahram Weekly
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E-mail: Nyier H Abdou
This article was first run on Al-Ahram Weekly
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