On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Max Sawicky wrote:
> Speaking of Jude, Timothy Noah has a piece in Slate debunking Jude's
> debunking of the Saddam/poison gas/kurds story. Does anyone here know
> enough of the details to suggest who is right?
Hakki posted several good links on this a few days ago. I've been trying to work this out for a few weeks, and this is what I've come up with so far. Any amendments by others would be appreciated.
During the Iraq/Iran war, the general impression was that Iraq used poison gas and that Iran did not. Dilip Hiro's _The Longest War_ pretty much re-presents and analyzes the view of the newspapers and radio announcements of the time (in several languages, including Arabic and Farsi). And there the narrative is that Iraq attacks in 1980 and takes ground. Iran beats her back to the original starting point by 1982 and then starts to invade in turn. In 1983, Iraq starts to use chemical weapons in defense, Iran denounces them in the UN, and the whole world, including the US and all the gulf states, do their best to ignore her, because they're all rooting for Iraq and terrified that Iran might take her over. As the war goes on, Iraq uses chemical weapons more and more extensively while Iran refuses to follow suit because Khomeini is morally against them. Iran continues to protest vociferously at the UN, and the UN feels compelled to take some notice, in 1986 even mentioning Iraq by name for the first time. But the protests are still muffled because it looks from the outside as if gas is the only antidote Iraq has to Iran's human wave attacks and that she would lose without it. Eventually Iraq uses its extensively foreign loans to develop a better bomblet delivery system and learns to use it on 45C days when nobody can wear a gas mask. Iran throws in the towel and retreats from Iraq. Outside powers then successfully bring the war to a sudden end.
On this contemporary view, reprised in Hiro, Iraqi Kurds, who were actively supporting and actively being supported by Iran, were turned on by Iraq as the war wound down. And that that's when Halabja happened, in 1988. The Iranians flew in reporters to finally prove what they'd been saying all along. Because here were thousands of bodies who had undeniably died from chemical weapons exposure. But the world as run by us still regarded Iran as the main enemy and was still in muffle mode, so the story wasn't played up that much at the time.
Jump ahead two years to 1990. At this point, things have changed. Saddam has invaded Kuwait and is now public enemy number one. We are making our build-up and his crimes are being bruited. And now the gassing of the Kurds becomes a big story and especially Halabja.
The reason Halabja is such a central incident is because it's the only case AFAIK where there are pictures of stacks of dead bodies who clearly died of gas. All the rest of the arguments are based on oral testimony, examination of the bodies of survivors, and traces of chemicals in the ground, which most people find convincing, but which can be gainsaid.
In 1990, as far as I can tell, the narrative changed in two crucial ways. First, many people now thought that Iran did use chemical weapons at least once during the war, and perhaps several times. Most argued that this was only done in 1983-84, in initial reaction to Iraq (and perhaps even with captured Iraqi chemical weapons stock), before the order came on high that this was verboten. But if they used it once, they could conceivably have done it again. And many people began to believe (and still believe today) that Iran started searching out its Shah-era chemical weapons stores, and developing capacity to make chemical weapons in spite of the moral stricture, just in case it was lifted, or in case it became a matter of national survival (which it largely was for Iraq).
The second thing that changed was most people now appear convinced that Halabja was not a deserted Kurdish village that somone attacked out of the blue, but rather a battlefield that Iraq and Iran were fighting over, and which they alternately held in turn. So then it became plausible (and it still plausible) that the gas was used there as it was used elsewhere, as a weapon of war, mainly intended against soldiers. And that the horrible death of the villagers was collateral damage.
This then comes to Pelletiere's two main arguments, which are:
1) that in the case of Halajba, Iran did use gas, and it was her gas that killed the Kurds.
2) that all the other evidence about Iraq gassing Kurds is unreliable.
In 1990, it seems that argument 1 was pretty widely accepted as plausible even among people who denounced 2 in the strongest terms. A good example of this is a debate in the letters column of the NYRB between Pelletiere and Edward Mortimer, the guy who reviewed (and largely attacked) Pelletiere's book:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3441
There Mortimer, who later wrote an article denouncing Saddam's attacks on the Kurds, and the US failure to stop them after the war, says:
<quote>
I accept that in the specific case of Halabja the possibility that the
chemical attack came from Iran (which might not have realized that
Iraqi troops had already evacuated the town), or indeed from both
sides consecutively, cannot be ruled out.
<unquote>
He then goes on pile up the other evidence of gas attacks on Kurds and says it's overwhelming. But you get the definate impression that if someone like Mortimer, who was from the Saddam's worst enemy camp, thought that Iran might be responsible for Halabja, it must have beeen was a pretty widespread view.
It does not, however, seem to be that widespread five years later, nor today. Pelletiere seems to be the only one who still believes it. And AFAICT, the whole debate turns on cyanide.
Pelletiere's argument is that:
1) the lips and extremities of the victims at Halabja were blue;
2) that this is evidence of cyanide (which Pelletiere often refers to as a "blood agent" because it is something that blocks the flow of oxygen to the blood, whence the blueness)
3) that Iran used cyanide gas and Iraq didn't; and that therefore,
4) Iran's gas must be responsible.
1 & 2 seem universally accepted. 3 seems to be the weak link.
My impression of the intervening intelletual history is as follows. After the war, and especially in the build-up to the Gulf War (or 2nd Gulf War, as Hiro called it in his next book), Americans and the UN suddenly rediscovered that poison gas was beyond the pale when there was now a chance that Saddam might use it against their soldiers, rather than just against Iranians. So people who had been compiling reports on chemical and biological weapons capacities all along suddenly got more publicity. And it turned out that most of them thought that main gas that Iran was supposed to have stockpiled (and is still supposed to have stockpiled) was hydrogen cyanide.
Hence the conclusion that the gas was Iran's.
The problem with this theory seems to be that while cyanide is pretty deadly, hydrogen cyanide gas doesn't seem to be, unless it is used in an enclosed space.
Here are two sources on that
http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/meria/journal/1998/issue1/jv2n1a3.html
http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/cw/intro.htm
The first is an Israeli defense establishment guy talking about Iranian WMD in general today, not in the context of Halabja. This is the kind of guy you'd normally expect to play up all possible dangers and to be especially sensitive about gas. But instead he says cyanide gas is really pretty useless because it dissipates so fast in open spaces. He says the French used it extensively in WWI but that it's not at all clear they ever managed to kill anybody with it.
The second cite is from the more neutral FAS, which touches on the same subject in a general discussion of chemical weapons and seems to confirm it.
The inference I draw from this is that stocking up lots of cyanide gas seems to be the sign of a duffer country who doesn't know much about chemical weapons because they haven't used them yet.
The last step is to come up with an alternative explanation of the blueness. This is provided by Christine Gosden, who is one of the foremost voices on the subject today. She is an anti-Saddam pro-Kurd activist, but she also has an advanced background in science and has done direct research. Hakki gave a good link to (as well as an excerpt from) her testimony last week:
http://www.usembassy.ro/USIS/Washington-File/100/98-04-27/eur105.htm
She adamantly affirms that it was Saddam who caused Halabja. However she does not think this was an unprovoked attack on unarmed Kurds. Rather she thinks it was another instance of gas being used against Iranian troops during the war, like many others the world ignored. What made this one different was that the Kurds got caught in the middle and in the end absorbed almost all of the attack after the Iranians, unbeknowst to the Iraqis, retreated.
She accepts that blueness is usually the sign of cyanide. But she also agrees with the other researchers that cyanide gas is not very effective, and certainly not effective enough to have caused Halajba. So for her it remains an open question for which she provides two possible explanations. Her main argument is that tabun, one of the nerve agents that Saddam used, breaks down when used to produce a cyanide compound. Her second argument is that cyanide might have been mixed in with other chemicals in a "chemical cocktail" that was more deadly and harder to treat than any of the agents would have been individually. She definately believes that a chemical cocktail of many agents was used, and used on purpose to increase its deadliness; she goes on at some length about about this. The only question is whether the cynanide traces at Halajba were all produced from its presence in by-products or whether it was also present directly. She seems to incline towards the theory that the by-products would have been sufficient.
That's everything I know, which didn't take long. Any amendments appreciated.
Michael