[lbo-talk] Re: demonology, death tolls, dementia

Michael Pugliese michael.098762001 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 16 07:27:00 PDT 2005


On tape. I've heard it on the PBS Frontline documentary on Saddam Hussein.Joe Stork of HRW, former editor of radical left MERIP, author of, "Middle East Oil and the Energy Crisis, Monthly Review Press, 1975.

The Daily Star Online, Lebanon August 25, 2003

Answer 'Chemical Ali´ with a tribunal

Joe Stork (*) http://www.hrw.org/editorials/2003/iraq082503.htm
>...On an audiotape of a meeting of leading Iraqi officials held to
discuss the Anfal campaign, he is heard shouting, "I will kill them all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything?"

When our "friend" Saddam was gassing the Kurds In the recording of the meeting of 26 May 1987, Proconsul Al Majid declares: "I will kill them all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? ... mondediplo.com/1998/03/04iraqkn
>...We learn, for example, that Mr Al Majid convened the Ba'ath Party
leaders on 26 May 1987. "As soon as we complete the deportations," he informed them, "we will start attacking [the Pershmega resistance] everywhere... then we will surround them in a small pocket and attack them with chemical weapons. I will not attack them with chemicals just one day; I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days... I told the expert comrades that I need guerrilla groups in Europe to kill whoever they see of them [Kurdish oppositionists]. I will do it, with the help of God. I will defeat them and follow them to Iran. Then I will ask the Mujaheddin (2) to attack them there (3)."

On 3 June 1987 the Iraqi proconsul signed a personal directive, numbered 28/3650, declaring a zone that contained over a thousand Kurdish villages to be a prohibited area, from which all human and animal life was to be eradicated. "It is totally prohibited for any foodstuffs or persons or machinery to reach the villages that have been banned for security reasons," the directive stated. "Concerning the harvest, it must be finished before 15 July and, after this year, farming will not be authorised in this region... The armed forces must kill any human being or animal present within these areas."

The Iraqi forces were given a free hand. They launched an all-out attack that reached its peak with the Anfal campaign. (The name refers to a verse of the Koran authorising the plunder of infidels.) Anfal lasted from February to September 1988. The last operation was launched on 25 August, a few days after the ceasefire between Iraq and Iran that ended eight years of war. Sixteen divisions and a chemical weapons battalion, totalling 200,000 ground troops plus air support, conducted a "final cleansing operation" in the Kurdish province of Bahdinan along the Turkish border. This operation resulted in the flight of almost 100,000 civilians to Turkey.

In July 1988 the Iraqi army razed Halabja to the ground. Kurds have always considered the city a major cultural centre. It even acquired some fame in the English-speaking world, when Britain became the mandatory power in Iraq in the aftermath of the first world war. Adela Khanum, princess of Halabja and patron of the arts, fascinated her British overlords. They conferred on this Islamic Medicis the title Khan Bahadur, Princess of the Brave. These brave subjects of hers, famous since the time of Xenophon for their skill in the use of traditional weapons and the art of war, were finally to be vanquished by an invisible enemy, poison gas.

The destruction of Kurdish towns and villages continued into 1989. In June of that year Qala Diza, a city of 120,000 inhabitants on the Iranian frontier, was evacuated and razed to the ground. It was the last major action of the campaign. By Decree No. 271, issued on 23 April 1989, the Revolutionary Command Council revoked Hassan Al Majid's special powers. In December Saddam Hussein considered the Kurdish question settled. He abolished the Northern Bureau which he had set up ten years earlier.

By the time the genocidal frenzy ended, 90 % of Kurdish villages, and over twenty small towns and cities, had been wiped off the map (4). The countryside was riddled with 15 million landmines, intended to make agriculture and husbandry impossible. A million and a half Kurdish peasants had been interned in camps. Since 1974 over 400,000 had died in Baghdad's war against the Kurds. Almost half had disappeared without trace. About 10 % of the total Kurdish population of Iraq had perished.

The fate of those who had disappeared was raised with Baghdad in May 1991 by the Kurdish delegation to the abortive peace talks. When questioned about the 182,000 people who had vanished without trace, Mr Al Majid lost his temper. "You always exaggerate," he shouted. "The total number killed in the Anfal campaign cannot be more than 100,000." In the minutes of a meeting held in January 1989 (5), he makes no secret of the means employed. "Am I supposed to keep them in good shape... take good care of them? No, I will bury them with bulldozers. Then they ask me for the names of all the prisoners in order to publish them... Where am I supposed to put this enormous number of people? I started to distribute them among the governorates. I had to send bulldozers hither and thither."

Protected by the West

At that time the regime was not worried about international reaction. In the recording of the meeting of 26 May 1987, Proconsul Al Majid declares: "I will kill them all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them! (6)" His language may be coarse, but the cynicism of the butcher of Kurdistan, later promoted governor of Kuwait and subsequently minister of defence, was fully justified.

Iraq was then seen as a secular bulwark against the Islamic regime in Teheran. It had the support of East and West and of the whole Arab world except Syria. All the Western countries were supplying it with arms and funds. France was particularly zealous in this respect. Not content with selling Mirages and helicopters to Iraq, it even lent the regime Super Etendard aircraft in the middle of its war with Iran. Germany supplied Baghdad with a large part of the technology required for the production of chemical weapons. And in an unusual display of East-West military cooperation, German engineers enhanced the performance of the Scud aircraft which Iraq had obtained from the Soviet Union, increasing their range so that they could strike at Teheran and other distant Iranian cities.



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