Did Saddam Hussein Gas His Own People? Reality checks needed during war

Halabja (pop. 80,000) is a small Kurdish city in northern Iraq. On Wednesday, the Star reminded readers that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army killed 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 chemical weapons attack on Halabja near the end of a bloody, eight-year war with Iran.

The statement that Saddam was responsible for gassing the Kurds — his own people — was straightforward.

Indeed, U.S. President George W. Bush has used similar language about the disaster at Halabja in making a case for a military strike to oust Saddam.

Yet the Star also reported, in a Jan. 31 Opinion page column, that there's reason to believe the story about Saddam "gassing his own people" at Halabja may not even be true.

Curious about those contradictory reports, and prodded by Star reader Bill Hynes, the ombud decided to examine how this paper covered the Halabja story 15 years ago, when Washington was tilting toward Saddam's side in the Iran-Iraq war.

The Star's early coverage was skimpy. I found no breaking news story about the March 16, 1988 gas attack on the city.

But four days later, a Reuters News Agency dispatch (filed from Cyprus) said Kurds, fighting on the Iranian side, had managed to seize Halabja and nearby villages "where Iran has accused Iraq of using chemical weapons against Kurds."

Two days later, Reuters reported, Iran was alleging that 5,000 Kurds were killed by chemical bombs dropped on Halabja by the Iraqi Air Force.

Iranian officials put injured Iraqi civilians on display to back up their charges. An Iranian doctor said mustard gas and "some agent causing long-term damage" had been deployed.

Burn victim Ahmad Karim, 58, a street vendor from Halabja, told a reporter: "We saw the (Iraqi) planes come and use chemical bombs. I smelled something like insecticide."

Two weeks later, the fog of war over Halabja thickened a little when the Star ran a Reuters story saying a United Nations team had examined Iraqi and Iranian civilians who had been victims of mustard gas and nerve gas.

"But the two-man team did not say how or by whom the weapons had been used," the Reuters story said.

It explained that Iraq and Iran were accusing each other of using poison gas in violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol against chemical weapons.

In September, 1988, the Star quoted an unnamed U.N. official as saying the Security Council chose to condemn the use of gas in the Iran-Iraq war rather than finger Iraq, generally believed to have lost the war with Iran.

The same story said Iraq's claims that Iran also had used chemical weapons "have not been verified."

Buried in that story by freelancer Trevor Rowe was an intriguing piece of information. Rowe reported the Iraqi forces had attacked Halabja when it "was occupied by Iranian troops. Five thousand Kurdish civilians were reportedly killed."

Let's fast-forward to Jan. 31 of this year, when The New York Times published an opinion piece by Stephen C. Pelletiere, the CIA's senior political analyst on Iraq during the 1980s.

In the article, Pelletiere said the only thing known for certain was that "Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds."

Pelletiere said the gassing occurred during a battle between Iraqis and Iranians.

"Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town ... The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target," he wrote.

The former CIA official revealed that immediately after the battle the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report that said it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds.

"The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time."

"A War Crime Or an Act of War?" was the way The Times' headline writer neatly summed up Pelletiere's argument.

No doubt, Saddam has mistreated Kurds during his rule. But it's misleading to say, so simply and without context, that he killed his own people by gassing 5,000 Kurds at Halabja.

The fog of war that enveloped the battle at Halabja in 1988 never really lifted. With a new war threatening in Iraq, it's coming back stronger than ever.

Journalists risking their lives to cover an American-led attack on Iraq would face many obvious obstacles in trying to get at the truth.

In light of that, editors need to consider assigning staff back home to do reality checks on claims and counter-claims made in the fog of war.

As our retrospective on the Halabja story suggests, the bang-bang coverage — gripping though it may be — may not be enough to get the job done.

Bull. The attack is well documented in the left wing literature, and the documentation was long before the present problem.

Scientific First: Soil Samples Taken from Bomb Craters in Northern Iraq Reveal Nerve Gas - Even Four Years Later
[April 29, 1993] For the first time ever, scientists have been able to prove the use of chemical weapons through the analysis of environmental residues taken years after such an attack occurred. In a development that could have far-reaching consequences for the enforcement of the chemical weapons treaty, soil samples taken from bomb craters near a Kurdish village in northern Iraq by a team of forensic scientists have been found to contain trace evidence of nerve gas, GB, also known as Sarin, as well as mustard gas.

The samples were collected on June 10, 1992 by a forensic team assembled by the Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW). The samples were forwarded to the Chemical & Biological Defence Establishment (CBDE) of Great Britain’s Ministry of Defence at Porton Down which analyzed them.

Eyewitnesses have said that Iraqi warplanes dropped three clusters each of four bombs on the village of Birjinni on August 25, 1988. Observers recall seeing a plume of black, then yellowish smoke, followed by a not-unpleasant odor similar to fertilizer, and also a smell like rotten garlic. Shortly afterwards, villagers began to have trouble breathing, their eyes watered, their skin blistered, and many vomited - some of whom died. All of these symptoms are consistent with a poison gas attack.

“These scientific results prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the Iraqi government has consistently lied to the world in denying that these attacks occurred,” said PHR and HRW. “They also send a clear signal that chemical weapons attacks cannot be launched in the belief that the natural elements will quickly cover up the evidence.”

According to scientists at Porton Down, the discovery marks “the first time that we have found evidence in soil samples of traces of the degradation products of nerve agent.” In addition to degradation products of nerve agents, the sample also yielded significant amounts of the degradation products of mustard gas.

Alastair Hay, a consultant to PHR and Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology at the University of Leeds, said, “This discovery not only confirms eyewitness accounts and medical examinations of Kurdish people that nerve gas as well as mustard gas were used against them, but it also has enormous implications for the effectiveness of the chemical weapons treaty.” While inspection teams from the United Nations Special Commission have found both mustard and nerve agents stored in Iraq, as well as munitions containing them, the samples from Birjinni show they were actually used, Hay said.

In addition to confirming reports of a gas attack on Birjinni, the findings “indicate that samples collected from appropriate locations can provide evidence of the presence of chemical warfare agents over four years after the attack,” according to Dr. Graham Pearson, Director General and Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defense Establishment. “This should contribute to the deterrent effect against nations contemplating the use of chemical weapons.” So far, the Chemical Weapons Convention has been signed by 145 countries and is now awaiting ratification before entering into force.

In August 1988, shortly after the ceasefire that ended the Iran-Iraq war, the government of Saddam Hussein launched a major military offensive against the Kurds in northern Iraq, sending tens of thousands of refugees fleeing into southeastern Turkey. Six weeks later, in October 1988, a PHR medical team interviewed and medically examined dozens of Kurdish refugees who either witnessed or showed physical symptoms of chemical weapons attacks. The PHR team concluded that bombs containing mustard gas and at least one unidentified nerve agent had been dropped on Kurdish villages in northern Iraq.

According to HRW, the Birjinni attack was one of dozens of chemical weapons attacks launched against the Kurds in 1988. “These chemical weapons attacks were part of a genocidal campaign carried out against Kurdish civilians,” said Kenneth Anderson, director of the Arms Project of Human Rights Watch and a member of the PHR/HRW forensic team that visited Iraqi Kurdistan in June 1992.

At least four people were killed during the attack on Birjinni, two in an orchard and and two brothers in a cave where they sought refuge. The remaining villagers fled. Refugees reported that Iraqi soldiers visited the village days later and buried the two victims found in the orchard, and elderly man and a young boy.

On June 10, 1992 a forensic team from PHR/HRW visited Birjinni, a small village of about 30 houses, a mosque, and a school. The team consisted of Dr. Clyde Snow, a well known consultant in forensic anthropology to medical examiners’ offices in the United States and professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma; James Briscoe, an archaeologist with Roberts/Schornik & Associates, Inc., Norman, Oklahoma; Mercedes Doretti and Luis Fondebrider, both members of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team; Kenneth Anderson, a consultant to PHR and HRW; Isabel M. Reveco of the Chilean Forensic Anthropology Team; and Stefan Schmitt of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team.

The forensic team exhumed the bodies of the man and boy reportedly killed during the attack and buried by the Iraqi soldiers. Anthropological evidence showed the man to be about 60 years of age and the boy to be about five years of age. Neither skeleton showed signs of physical trauma. The forensic team took samples of clothing and soil and insect larva from the graves. They also took soil samples and pieces of metal from inside four bomb craters located just about 700 meters from the village. The craters were found in a line, each crater about 30 meters apart. Three samples were taken from each crater: one each from the center and southern and northern edges. The samples were secured in plastic bags, described, and labelled. The team also observed bomb fragments in and around the craters.

At Porton Down, analysis by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry found that six soil samples taken from the first two craters contained mustard agent and/or thiodiglycol, a compound produced by the hydrolysis (breakdown by water) of mustard agent. Trace amounts of the degradation products of sulfur mustard, 1,4-thioxane and 1,4-dithiane, were also detected in these samples. The chemists at Porton Down also found the presence of the compound tetryl, an explosive that, according to Dr. Hay, is widely used in chemical munitions.

The second six samples, including pieces of metal, countained “unequivocal” residues of methylphosphonic acid (MPA) and isopropyl methylphosphonic acid (iPMPA), according to analytical chemists at Porton Down. MPA is a product of the hydrolysis of any of several chemical weapons nerve agents. iPMPA is a product of the hydrolysis of the nerve agent GB, which is made using isopropyl alcohol. The compounds could only have come from a nerve gas, and iPMPA is a unique fingerprint of GB.

No traces of mustard or nerve agents or their breakdown products were found in the samples taken from the gravesites, although only about three grams of clothing were examined. Further analyses of these are planned.

According to the analysis team at Porton Down, “this is the first example, to our knowledge, that a suspected use of nerve agent had been corroborated by the analysis of environmental residues. The analyses also demonstrated that traces of chemical weapons agents or their degradation products can still be detected in the environment over four years later, provided that the samples are taken from a point of high initial contamination.”

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqgas/

I got this from a discussion archive. I thought it was about the best and most in-depth analysis I've seen so far. It's important enough that I thought I should reproduce it rather than just cite:

http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00034.html

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Re: Halabja

From: Glen Rangwala Subject: Re: Halabja Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 00:36:03 +0000 (GMT)

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Dear Mark

I've refrained from posting to the list before on this issue, out of concern that it will provoke a more substantial (and to my mind, fruitless) discussion. No doubt someone will come back at this with further, tortuous explications in an attempt to demonstrate that it really was the Iranians that did it. But nevertheless, since you ask, and in an attempt to correct some of the misinterpretations put around previously, here goes.

The source for most of these "exposes" of Halabja was a report entitled 'Iraqi power and US security in the Middle East' by Stephen Pelletiere (trained in politics, also claims Iran was behind the 1991 intifada in Southern Iraq), ret. Colonel Douglas V. Johnson (trained in strategic studies) and Leif Rosenberger (trained in economics). It was published by the US Army War College - not usually a source that campaigners take as providing the gospel truth. I mention the authors' academic background only in order to point out that none of them (to my knowledge) are trained in chemistry or medical diagnostics. As far as I'm aware, the IHT piece of 1990 was just referring to this study (though I haven't seen that article directly).

Contrary to the claim made in one of the authors cited by Ghazwan it cannot be said that this book "examined very closely the behaviour of the Iraqi army during the hostilities with Iran". Indeed, it only makes brief mention of Halabja, and then only assertively (no evidence is offered). On page 52 of the book it is simply written:

"In March 1988, the Kurds at Halabjah were bombarded with chemical weapons, producing a great many deaths. Photographs of the Kurdish victims were widely disseminated in the international media. Iraq was blamed for the Halabjah attack, even though it was subsequently brought out that Iran too had used chemicals in this operation, and it seemed likely that it was the Iranian bombardment that had actually killed the Kurds."

That's it, the basis of much of the claims that have been circulating on casi-discuss for the last few years.

So why did these authors take this line? Well, the focus of their study is not on Halabja, human rights in Iraq or international welfare, but is indicated by the title of the study, "US security in the Middle East". Straight after making their claim on Halabja, the authors detail what they mean by "US security in the Middle East":

"As a result of the outcome of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq is now the most powerful state in the Persian Gulf, an area in which we have vital interests. To maintain an uninterrupted flow of oil from the Gulf to the West, we need to develop good working relations with all of the Gulf states, and particularly with Iraq, the strongest." (p.53)

This is two sentences after their take on Halabja. Human rights organisations' attempts to penalise Iraq are "without sufficient thought for the adverse diplomatic effects" (p.53). Again, p.57: "under pressure from the Iraqis, all the Arab states of the Gulf - with the possible exception of Oman - would tacitly support a move to withdraw US privilieges in the Gulf" - and so Iraq needs to be kept on side, lest "US privileges" be withdrawn.

OK, that's the ad hominem attack as such. Turning to the actual arguments themselves, Douglas Johnson has explained them in a little more detail in personal correspondence with a colleague of mine. The sole evidential material provided is that the photos of Kurdish victims showed blue discoloration of extremities, and this was an indication of use of a cyanide compound, most probably hydrogen cyanide or its derivatives ("blood gas"); since it was claimed that Iraq did not make use of hydrogen cyanide, someone else must have done it. Therefore (the argument goes), it must have been Iran. This is coupled with a claim that since Halabja was only recently captured by the Iranian-backed Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, there was probably an Iranian mix-up and the Iranians ended up bombing their own side.

The problems with this argument are numerous. Most obviously, why on earth would Iran bomb a town so extensively whose inhabitants were among the core supporters of their ally, the PUK? The argument of "fog of war" fails to hold, even if the Iranian air force had thought that Iraqi troops were still present in Halabja.

Even that seems unlikely: the PUK captured Halabja on 15 March 1988. They were accompanied by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who coordinated PUK actions. The town was fully under PUK/Iranian control 4 hours after they entered the town. The eyewitness testimony collected by Physicians for Human Rights and by British filmmaker Gwynne Roberts, who was in Halabja & captured the attack and aftermath on film, confirms this: the PUK controlled all exits to the town, and were preventing civilians from leaving as they thought that the Iraqis would not spread their artillery bombardment of surrounding areas to the centre of the town if it was fully inhabited (human shields). I find it hard to believe that with Iranian troops in the town for 36 hours before the chemical weapons attacks, the field commanders still thought that Iraqi forces were still in possession of the town.

The actual attack began at nightfall on the 16th, when 8 aircraft dropped chemical bombs; they were followed throughout the night by 14 aircraft sorties, with 7 to 8 planes in each group. Intermittent bombardment continued until the 18th (some reports say the morning of the 19th). If the Johnson et al argument is to be believed, Iranians were bombing their own elite units and key supporters for 48 hours, even though news reports were already circulating about the defeat of Iraqi troops on the 15th.

Regarding the nature of the CWs used - the crucial element in Johnson's analysis - the most detail survey of the medical effects was done by Professor Christine Gosden, a medical geneticist from Liverpool Uni, who has (I think) done the only survey into the long-term effects of the CW attack (obvious access problems until recently). From looking at the health problems of those who were victims of the attacks on Halabja, her results show that mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX were used in the attack.

Prior UN investigations had catalogued Iraqi use of Tabun and mustard gas from 1983, but ongoing into the later stages of the war (see in particular the specialist report of the UN Sec-Gen of 26/3/84, and the UN expert commission report on use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war doc no. S/18852 of 1988). Iraqi use of sarin and VX has been widely asserted (the former, by the Physicians for Human Rights in soil sampling from Birjinni: http://www.phrusa.org/research/chemical.html). So it seems quite clear that all the chemical agents that Gosden traces the use of at Halabja had been used previously by Iraq.

By contrast, I have seen no reliable analysis of Iranian use of either Tabun or Hydrogen Cyanide - Dr Johnson doesn't tell us that he has any such evidence either: all he says is that there was no previous use of cyanide from the Iraqi side, and infers from this that it must have been the Iranians. By contrast, the presence of cyanide which Dr Johnson claims (but is still disputed; the claim stems primarily from Iranian autopsies on victims I believe, but are not independently confirmed) is perfectly explicable in terms of Iraqi use of Tabun. Gosden says:

"The Halabja attack involved multiple chemical agents -- including mustard gas, and the nerve agents SARIN, TABUN and VX. Some sources report that cyanide was also used. It may be that an impure form of TABUN, which has a cyanide residue, released the cyanide compound." (http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_hr/s980422-cg.htm; reposted in a better format at: http://www.chem-bio.com/resource/gosden.html)

The only credible report that Johnson himself cites in his defence, a PhD from Syracuse University in 1993 - rather than supporting Johnson's case - shows that the decomposition of the chemical agent, Tabun (which Iraq did use) produces a cyanide compound. Iraq didn't need to use hydrogen cyanide directly in order to produce blue discoloration around mouths. Its established repertoire of chemicals did that as well.

This interpretation has also been supported by the Jean Pascal Zanders, Project Leader of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's Chemical and Biological Warfare Project, who conducted interviews with victims of Halabja brought to Brussels for treatment. Zanders argues that direct use of hydrogen cyanide at Halabja was unlikely. Hydrogen cyanide is itself highly volatile. It must be delivered on the target in huge quantities to be effective and its effects are gone in a matter of seconds. The heat in Halabja would have rendered this even more problematic. Furthermore, the flashpoint of hydrogen cyanide is very low which means that it easily explodes. So at least some bombs or containers with the agent, if that was the method of delivery, would have exploded upon impact. There are no reports of any such explosions (unlike the many accounts of French drums filled with hydrogen cyanide exploding in mid-air or upon impact when lobbed towards the German trenches in WWI).

Finally, there is no evidence of Iranian use of hydrogen cyanide either. Iran has submitted its declarations on past CW programmes to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international body overseeing the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. International inspectors have verified these declarations, including those regarding former CW production facilities. Zanders mentions that Iran only had pilot plant-scale CW production facilities towards the end of and just after the war. He argues that Iran does not in retrospect appear to have had the capability to mount a major CW attack. This is consistent with UN reports of the time (including the 1988 report referred to above) which found no evidence of large scale Iranian use (it is probable, though, that there were small trial uses by Iran in 1987).

So, in summary, either the atrocity at Halabja was carried out by the Iraqi military against their enemies - with a set of chemical warfare agents that they had a record of use prior to Halabja, and with a proven reputation for using chemical weapons in large amounts against civilians (the mustard gas attacks on Majnun island in September 1984 are estimated to have killed 40,000 people) - or by the Iranians, against their own allies and soldiers in an attack using chemicals that there's no evidence that they ever have had. If you still choose to believe the latter, you should be aware that the only original report I know of that supports your position is primarily concerned with maintaining friendly relations with Iraq for oil and geostrategic reasons, and shows little understanding of the nature of the chemical agents used in the war.

I hope this is useful.

Best regards
Glen.

On Mon, 7 Jan 2002 mark44@myrealbox.com wrote:

At the time, the Kurds and human rights groups said that it was Iraq. The UK & US governments were directly and indirectly blaming Iran and shifting the blame away from Iraq. Again at the time, I took this to be 'proof' of Iraq's guilt as the US/UK were strongly supporting SH.

It would be interesting to know the truth rather than the US/UK spin and misinformation from the time.

Mark Parkinson
Bodmin
Cornwall

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