The Halabja- Falluja Paradox

KurdistanObserver.com ^ | 1 December 2004 | Dr. Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany

[chava]

KurdistanObserver.com

The Halabja- Falluja Paradox

By: Dr. Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany

Dec 1, 2004

For an uninformed outsider the names of cities like Halabja and Falluja might be just exotic names for foreign cities like many similar other names all over this planet. For us Kurdistanis and Iraqis, these names have very deep and different meanings, because we are acquainted with the events and stories attached to those cities. It simply tells the story of Kurds and Arabs in Iraq, the story of decades of suffering and genocide on one side and of human cruelty and disregard of human lives on the other side.

Halabja used to be a beautiful town surrounded by snow covered mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan with peaceful people very much lively and colorful like the splendid nature of Kurdistan. This city was suddenly and without previous warning subjected to the brutal wrath of a vile dictator called Saddam Hussein on one of the beautiful days of the spring of 1988, when this brutal dictator ordered his Army and Air force to attack this city with mustard gas and nerve gas continuously a day long, killing instantaneously five thousand men, women and children and causing over twenty thousand people to be permanently crippled with lung diseases or blindness. The reaction of the world to this act of genocide was as terrible as the crime itself, the reaction was muted by countries like United States and European states, and even denied by countries like Turkey, and of course all Arabic states, and if it wasn't for the cameras of Iranian television, those terrible scenes of whole families dead corpses scattered all around the streets, homes and cellers would have been lost and with the proof of this hideous crime against humanity. To date 16 years after this crime against peaceful Kurds in Iraq, neither the international community, nor the United Nations, nor the United States nor the new interim Iraqi government after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 2003, bothered itself to provide any material help to rebuild this wounded city nor to compensate the remaining relatives of the victims morally and financially. So far we have heard nothing of any sums of money allocated to help Halabja, although it was visited by many prominent officials including the state secretary of USA Mr. Collin Powell, many other American , UN and British officials as well as many Arab Iraqi officials who are holding now key positions in the interim government. The Kurds are still treated like sub-humans, whose lives can be taken with impunity, their identity can be ignored maliciously by United States and Great Britain as well as the autocratic chauvinistic Arab states, the Arab Iraqi religious leaders are issuing edicts (Fatwa) to authorize and incite killing of innocent Kurds because they are seen as collaborators with the multi-national forces .As a reward for Kurdish steadfast commitment to liberation and democratization of Iraq, the Americans and Briton are deliberately trying to suppress the Kurdish national identity in favor of the Arab domination of Iraq. They have solely denied the Kurdistan province of Iraq any consular or diplomatic representation, they have been trying by all means to obstruct reversal of Arabisation in Kirkuk, by putting pressure on Kurdish leaders of KDP and PUK to accept the status quo in Kirkuk and drop their demands to return Kirkuk to Kurdistan where it geographically and historically belongs.

Falluja on the other side is an Iraqi Arab Sunni city on the desert terrains of west Iraq, This city was one of the cities which formed the backbone of the Baath regime in Iraq, they have been always very loyal to Saddam Hussein, they contributed generously to his murderous army and security and suppressive agencies and they were given key positions and great privileges under the regime of Saddam Hussein. After the fall of Saddam Hussein , Falluja has turned into a hotbed of insurgency and a safe haven for Al-Qaida terrorists and the remnants of Saddam loyalists as well as Islamic reactionary fundamentalists. They were engaged in an orgy of terror and killing of Iraqi civilians, children, and new Iraqi Army and police recruits, they kidnapped Iraqis and foreigners only to behead them in front of the video cameras which they showed on their beloved television channel (Al-Jazeera) or on their websites. They hijacked the whole future of Iraq and Iraqi people and were adamant on destroying the infrastructure of Iraq and any efforts to bring stability and democracy into Iraq, those killers and terrorists were hailed by neighbouring Turkey, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia as resistance champions and are encouraged to commit more killings on Iraqi civilians, police and army. The multinational forces and Iraqi national guards at the end stormed this city after exhausting all means to convince the inhabitants of Falluja to handover the foreign terrorists and to engage in the political process to build a new Iraq on democratic principles. The same forces which denied the atrocities of Halabja, namely Turkey , Syria and other Arab states and the disillusioned Islamic states cried out for Falluja this time and considered the precise military operations to root out the terrorists as mass murder of civilians in Falluja and started inciting more hatred and terror against the Iraqi people and multinational forces. As the operations is almost over, those forces are sending aid and money to support the terrorists of Falluja and to exaggerate the civilian causalities of the military action. The Arab interim Iraqi government, didn't waste time to declare that it has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the city and compensate its people about any damages incurred to their houses and properties ( even when those houses really belonged to terrorist sympathizers!).

The paradox is why this government ignores the real victims of Halabja and are so far refused to allocate any sums of money to rebuild the Hiroshima of Kurdistan or to compensate its destitute people, when it does not waste any time to allocate huge sums of dollars to the Iraqi Arab terrorists of Falluja to rebuild their infrastructure and reward them for their anti-Iraqi, anti-democratic and anti-American stand ? If you don't call this chauvinism and double standards , what else you can call it.

Dr.Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany Switzerland

[NurdlyPeon]

My sympathies and respects to you, sir. Well said.

[lainde]

Very enlightening post!