Regards, Ivan
Posted on 02/22/2003 3:46:35 PM PST by MadIvan
Nazaneen Rashid says peace protesters ignore the plight of her people, the Kurds
Saddam Hussein must be thrilled by the support offered him by British peace protesters. But as an Iraqi Kurdish woman I want to ask my friends who marched last week: why are you defending Saddam? Why didn’t one slogan demand that Saddam be brought to justice?
Maybe they were not aware that 182,000 young men, women and children were killed or maimed or went missing in Saddam’s Anfal campaign in the 1980s? Perhaps they had no idea that Kurds were experimented on in Saddam’s laboratories to develop his biological weapons.
As a Kurd I don’t need to see weapons inspectors in Iraq. All the inspectors need to do is go to Kurdish villages in Iraq to examine the water and to see people dying and the birth defects caused by Saddam’s chemical weapons.
I grew up in Iraqi Kurdistan, what is known as northern Iraq. I was born in Kirkuk, the richest city in Iraqi Kurdistan, the fourth child in a family of three sons and three daughters. We were not rich, but we were well-educated. In the 1960s I studied history at Baghdad University and became a teacher. As a girl I was used to seeing Iraqi soldiers on the street when the government was trying to resettle oil-rich Kirkuk with Arab tribes.
But it all got infinitely worse when Saddam came to power. You couldn’t get a job unless you joined his Ba’ath party, and then he forced Kurdish people to leave their villages for camps in the south. Our family fled east from Kirkuk to Sulaymaniyah, but the worst was yet to come. Soldiers jeered at us: “We’ll teach you how to cheer for Saddam.” Soon it was too dangerous to go on the streets by ourselves.
Saddam’s stroke of monstrous genius was the way he violated the Kurdish people through Kurdish women. In the 1980s I knew many Kurdish women who were picked up by soldiers, thrown into prison then tortured and raped. One woman who spent nine years in jail had three children in prison through rape. When she was released she killed herself.
One tactic was to imprison a freedom fighter along with his wife. When he wouldn’t talk they’d bring in his wife and rape her in front of him.
Terrible things happened in my own family. My cousin, Sallah Ibrahim Rashid, was arrested, his house demolished, then his wife and four children were arrested. We didn’t know where they’d been taken but eventually the police released my cousin’s wife and told her to collect him. They gave her a body bag. In it was my cousin’s body, burnt by electricity.
A few years later one of their children was taken away by the security forces. He hasn’t been seen since. Two brothers of my sister-in-law were arrested and killed by the Iraqis. This kind of random brutality, murder, rape and “disappearance” was the experience of every Kurdish family during the Anfal campaign.
In 1991 Saddam surrendered after the Gulf war, and we saw the Iraqis kissing the shoes of American and British soldiers. It was fantastic for us Kurdish people and we seized the opportunity to try to recapture our cities. But the western help we had expected never came and the uprising failed. I had l8 cousins with me in Sulaymaniyah when I came home and everyone said: “We must escape now!”
The following morning, April 4, at 8am, Kirkuk was bombed by the Iraqis. I escaped with my brother, his wife and a good friend. We fled to the border mountains, which were covered with snow. Old people fell over dead with exhaustion; children died from cold, hunger and dysentery, and were buried by their parents. Eventually we got to the Iranian border, which we begged the soldiers to open. This was the start of the “safe haven” guaranteed by the British.
Eventually I returned to my students in Kirkuk and continued to teach, but I was being watched by the Iraqi security forces. In l995 I was told I was no longer safe. As a Kurd I had no passport so I had to be smuggled out to Britain. My flight cost £5,000. I live with the memories of my family and friends; yesterday I woke up crying.
I don’t like war because as a Kurd I’ve lived through war all my life. But the alternative is much worse. Of course I am worried for the family I have left behind but I want Saddam removed by any means, including war. My dream is that Saddam will be put on trial, like Slobodan Milosevic, so all the families he has destroyed can confront him and humiliate him. Perhaps then he would know how much people hate him.
Nazaneen Rashid was talking to Anne McFerran
Regards, Ivan
99% of the "so-called" peace marchers were just plain bums.
The other 1% were merchants of pure evil and hatred!
Reading that article really opened my eyes. Not only to what has been done to the Iraquis and Kurds, but what Saddam has in store for us. It was written by a journalist who interviewed some of those who managed to survive. They told about the attack in excruciating detail and it was heart wrenching. Like I said, the reality these people have lived with is more horrible than anything we can even imagine.
I really wish I had bookmarked that thing.
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