Saddam Hussein – The Ultimate WMD

The issue - with all respect to Mr. Kehoe - is not if genocide ever took place against the Kurds or if the site of Hatra is a “killing field”. It is a wider issue of uncovering a bloodied landscape across the Kurdish plains and providing long overdue justice using evidence that all but the Kurds have ignored for decades.

Talk of unearthing evidence against Saddam to bolster charges of genocide is an insult to the thousands of Kurdish people that perished. No amount of charges against Saddam will ever matter to these people. They have lost loved ones and yet sadly this is at a time when the reasoning for ousting Saddam is causing heated dialogue in some Western countries. If only those who doubt the war and demonstrate against their respective governments could see these bodies with their own eyes, or speak to the people who have lost loved ones. The full extent of Saddam’s brutality is evident and people should wonder how he lived through decades of terror without any international intervention.

Halabja and Ba’athist Campaign of Obliteration

The Kurds have proved a thorn in the Arab dominated Iraqi political and nationalistic landscape since the first days of Iraq’s creation. As a nation too distinct to assimilate into Arabic society and too proud to lose their millennia old heritage, the Kurds have faced persecution and “Arabisation” even before Saddam assumed the presidency. For the Kurds it is simple, they never asked to be a part of the British formed Iraq.

The Kurds are a distinct nation with their own language, culture and history. As a result, this has created wide suspicion among successive regimes that exists even today. If the new Iraq does not comprehend the distinctive identity and aspiration of the Kurdish people, the trend of terror and discrimination will continue. Comments by Iraqi interim President, Ghazi al-Yawar, that a referendum in Kurdistan will be viewed as an act of treason by the Kurds, is simply a prelude to greater troubles in the future and a sign that perhaps a multi-ethnic Iraq will always remain a dream.

The use of terror against the Kurds has included many methods to dishearten them and to eliminate the Kurdish “threat”, often with the West turning a blind eye ostensibly for their own strategic and economical gains. During the years of the Iran-Iraq war, Kurds siding with Iran were systematically repressed with the use of anything from hangings and beatings to chemical agents.

On March 16, 1988, Halabja, a town close to the Iranian border was gassed in retaliation for the Kurdish support of Iran during the war. An estimated 5,000 people were killed and thousands more injured on that day, with long-lasting emotional and physical side-affects for many years later.

The residue from the gassing has caused birth defects, genetic mutation and mental scarring for generations. Proof of Saddam's brutality is shown in pictures of innocent women and children lying dead in the same place they were gassed while going about their normal lives. It is shown in the pictures of fathers holding their sons in the desperate last few minutes before they succumbed to the chemical effects on their bodies. Cries for help were not heard beyond the lonely plains of Kurdistan.

Long has the suffering and misfortune of the Kurds been ignored and this can no longer continue. The wrongs of the past can be corrected, if the international community understands the atrocities and misgivings of the past and works to seek a solution to many problems sown by the former Iraqi regime.

Kirkuk is the prime example of this. A census in the 1950s showed that the majority of the population of Kirkuk were Kurdish. However, a brutal “Arabisation” campaign by Saddam left thousands of Kurds homeless and forced to settle elsewhere. The Kurdish people, long fearful of Saddam, now want to return to their homes - the same homes where they and their forefathers grew up. However, a return home has caused problems for Iraq’s neighbours and has served to only increase hostilities in the multi-ethnic districts of Kirkuk. The Kurdish people are becoming restless, bewildered as to why returning to home is becoming a regional dispute.

Hypocrisy is rife in the Middle East but none more so than with Kurdistan. Kurds are displaced and affronted by the thousands and yet a blind eye is turned when they aspire to return to their rightful homes.

Conclusion

The Kurd’s are the fourth largest nationality in the Middle East but find themselves without a state and a history tainted with a legacy of denial and persecution. If evidence of the destructive nature of Saddam was ever needed, then look no further than the destruction of thousands of villages. To question the overthrow of Saddam is like questioning the murder of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Those who choose to ignore the murders only choose to ignore the truth.

For many Iraqis and particularly Kurds, it is never too late to correct the wrongs of the past. The international community must begin to appreciate and comprehend the full extent of suffering under Saddam’s rule and start to rectify the mistakes of the past. It is unlikely that Hatra is the last mass grave to be discovered in Iraq, but the lessons learnt from Saddam’s rule can ensure that such mass suffering never happens again.