Halabja poison gas attack
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The '''Halabja poison gas attack''' was an incident on 15 March-19 March 1988 during a major battle in the Iran-Iraq war when chemical weapons were used, allegedly by Iraqi government forces, to kill a number of people in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja (population 80,000). Estimates of casualties range from several hundred to at least 7,000 people. Halabja is located about 150 miles northeast of Baghdad and 8-10 miles from the Iranian border.
Almost all current accounts of the incident regard Iraq as the party responsible for the gas attack, which occurred during the Iran-Iraq War. The war between Iran and Iraq was in its eighth year when, on March 16 and 17, 1988, Iraq dropped poison gas on the Kurdish city of Halabja, then held by Iranian troops and Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas allied with Tehran; throughout the war, Iran had supplied the Iraqi Kurdish rebels with safe haven and other military support. For example, the http://www.terrorismcentral.comweb site states, "The poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja was the largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian population in modern times. ...The CW attack began early in the evening of March 16, when a group of eight aircraft began dropping chemical bombs, and the chemical bombardment continued all night. ... The Halabja attack involved multiple chemical agents, including mustard gas, and the nerve agent|nerve agents sarin, Tabun (nerve gas)|tabun and VX." Some sources have also pointed to the blood agent hydrogen cyanide. An undated ANSA story quoted by the RAI website of a November 2005 Sigfrido Ranucci documentary, ''Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre'', about the use of White phosphorus (weapon)|white phosphorus during the Iraq War, stated that white phosphorus was also one of the components of the chemical cocktail used.http://www.rainews24.rai.it/ran24/inchiesta/mk77.asp
The massacre at Halabja did not raise protests by the international community in March 1988. At the time, it was admitted that the civilians had been killed "collaterally" due to an error in handling the combat gas. Two years later, when the Iran-Iraq War was finished and the Western powers stopped supporting Saddam Hussein, the massacre of Halabja was attributed to the Iraqis.
The most authoritative investigation into responsibility for the Halabja massacre, by Dr Jean Pascal Zanders, Project Leader of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) concluded that http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/research/monterey2_iran_cw.pdf and not Iran.
Some debate existed, however, over the question of whether Iraq was really the responsible party. The U.S. State Department, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame. According to an article published in the International Herald Tribune by human rights researcher Joost Hiltermann http://www.iht.com/articles/2002/11/29/edjoost_ed3_.phpand declassified State Department document demonstrate that US diplomats received instructions to press this line with United States allies.
While the United States did not supply full-fledged chemical weapons to Iraq, it did provide chemical and biological weapons precursors to Iraq, according to a 1994 report issued by the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs (aka the http://www.gulfweb.org/bigdoc/report/riegle1.html) The US also provided satellite photographs and battlefield intelligence to Iraq which it knew was to be used in "calibrating" Iraqi chemical weapons attacks against Iran (Bob Woodward, "CIA Aiding Iraq in Gulf War; Target Data From U.S. Satellites Supplied for Nearly 2 Years" Washington Post December 15 1986.) Furthermore, the http://temp.svendtofte.com/bighelp.htmlostensibly for crop spraying, which intelligence sources believe were used to deploy the chemical weapons in Halabja (Henry Weinstein and William C. Rempel, "Big Help from U.S.; Technology was Sold with Approval and Encouragement from the Commerce Department but Often over Defense Officials' Objections," The Los Angeles Times, 13 February 1991.)
After the US formally denounced Iraqi use of CWs on March 5, 1984, it created the global system to stop CW precursors from being shipped to Iraq starting on March 30, 1984. The United States took these steps after it was discovered that Al-Haddad Enterprises (Nashville, Tennessee) had shipped 60 tons of DMMP to Iraq. DMMP (dimethyl methylphosphonate) is a nerve gas precursor. Al-Haddad Enterprises appears to have been an Iraqi front company. The owner of Al-Haddad, Sahib Abd al-Amir al-Haddad, is wanted in Germany for attempting to supply weapons to Iraq. Other countries, most notably India and Singapore supplied thousands of tons of precursors to Iraq.
Several European nations also participated in arming Iraq, specifically Germany.
A preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) study at the time concluded, apparently by determining the chemicals used by looking at images of the victims, that it was in fact Iran that was responsible for the attack, an assessment which was used subsequently by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for much of the early 1990's. The CIA's senior political analyst for the Iran-Iraq war, Stephen C. Pelletiere, co-authored an unclassified analysis of the war http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/which contained a brief summary of the DIA study's key points. In a January 31, 2003 ''New York Times'' http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60816FC3D5C0C728FDDA80894DB404482opinion piece, Pelletiere summarized the DIA's findings and noted that because of the DIA's conclusion there was not sufficient evidence to definitively determine whether Iraq or Iran was responsible. Pelletiere also felt that the administration of George W. Bush was not being forthright when squarely placing blame on Iraq, since it contradicted the conclusion of the DIA study. However the DIA's final position on the attack was in fact much less certain than this preliminary report suggests, with its final conclusions, in June 2003, asserting just that there was insufficient evidence, but concluding that "Iraq ..used chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in 1988" http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Pentagon/us-dod-iraqchemreport-060703.htm The CIA altered its position radically in the late 1990s and cited Halabja frequently in its evidence of WMD before the 2003 invasion http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm#01
Another extensive analysis of the incident is contained in a post http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00034.htmlto the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq listserv by Cambridge political theorist Glen Rangwala. Rangwala describes how the attack followed the occupation of the city by Iranian and pro-Iranian forces, leading to the conclusion that the gassing was an attack on these forces by the Iraqis. Rangwala also cites studies done by non-governmental organizations that concluded different chemicals were used than the ones cited in the DIA study, although a 1991 DIA report stated that Iraq did also possess Hydrogen Cyanide gas supplied by the US. Rangwala's analysis effectively sums up the current prevailing view of the event, that Iraq was indeed responsible for the attack on Halabja, and that the DIA analysis is in error. This evidence backed up by extensive witness testimony gathered by organisations like Human Rights Watchhttp://hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/ANFAL3.htmand Indict (www.indict.org.uk), has, more recently, added to the growing evidence that the initial DIA appraisal of the events was mistaken. The most categorical proof is the many further well-documented incidents of deliberate attacks on Kurdish civilians occurring at the same time throughout Kurdish northern Iraq also perpetrated without doubt by Iraqi forces (Al-Anfal Campaign).
Both Saddam Hussein and Ali Hasan al-Majid (who commanded Iraqi forces in northern Iraq in that period) have had charges relating to the events at Halabja included within the charges for which they are appearing before the Iraqi Special Tribunal for alleged crimes against humanity. Hussein has repeatedly denied the Tribunal's legitimacy (claiming it to be a "play" of American "theatre"), and refused to sign documents reflecting the charges against him during his Trials of Saddam Hussein|first public court appearance.
See also
Al-Anfal Campaign
External links
Joost Hiltermann's article in the International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/articles/2002/11/29/edjoost_ed3_.php#discusses the US role of shifting the blame for the gassing of Halabja off of Saddam and onto Iran.
A http://www.casi.org.uk/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.htmlof US involvement with Iraq's chemical weapons program prepared by Glen Ringwala and Nathaniel Hurd, two human rights researchers at the University of Cambridge.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=-4&bh=2Glen Rangwala, http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00034.htmlPost to CASI listserv
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/ Army War College unclassified report by Dr. Stephen C. Pelletiere and LTC Douglas V. Johnson II
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm#05http://www.terrorismcentral.com/Library/Teasers/ChemIraq.html- Christine M. Gosden, Professor of Medical Genetics, University of Liverpool
Stephen C. Pelletiere, "http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html" ''New York Times'', January 31, 2003.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1991/IRAQ913.htm Human Rights Watch
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/18714.htm U.S. State Department
http://www.halabja.de.vu
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