DATE=03/19/01

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=IRAQI KURDS

NUMBER=5-49168

BYLINE=ED WARNER

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: It has been more than a decade since Saddam Hussein's troops used chemical weapons to attack the Kurds of northern Iraq. Aside from the immediate deaths, the region has experienced widespread health problems attributed to the 1988 assault. VOA's Ed Warner has this report on a recent conference dealing with the aftermath of the attack.

TEXT: Novelist Hama Dostan was going back to Halabja in northern Iraq after many years. He remembered vividly the sights, sounds and people of a vibrant region. But on his return, all were missing. There was no more city, he recently told an audience on Capitol hill. Or rather it was a city of ghosts, a monument to death.

At a meeting held by the Washington Kurdish Institute, Mr. Dostan recalled finding his home in Halabja, or what was left of it. A man had put up a makeshift shelter in the ruins:

// DOSTAN ACT //

I told him what our house looked like before this tragedy. The house I grew up in was full of varieties of fruit trees. There were three walls left in my parents' house. On one I saw my writing in the part that was once my room. My mother was never pleased with my drawing on the wall, and now here I stood and saw these drawings as the only thing left from my childhood.

// END ACT //

In 1988, Saddam Hussein unleashed his chemical weapons on the Kurds of Halabja as punishment for siding with Iran in the inconclusive war with Iraq. Thousands died in the attack. Thousands of others have suffered lingering after effects: cancers, heart disease, birth defects. In that sense, Halabja is a city of the future, if the future includes the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Mike Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute, said Halabja offers the world a stark lesson in the use of weapons of mass destruction. But in coming conflicts, chemical toxins may still be the weapon of choice:

// AMITAY ACT //

They are cheap. They are easy to produce. They are difficult to counteract. They can produce many casualties, terrify opponents. They often have long-term effects. In reality, thirteen years later, this genocide is ongoing.

// END ACT //

While Halabja has achieved a certain fame, Mr. Amitay noted that many other Kurdish areas came under chemical attack. Saddam Hussein, he said, was doing his best to depopulate the region with mass executions, deportations and the destruction of entire villages.

The toll in human health has been overwhelming, said Doctor Christine Gosden, of the University of Liverpool in Britain. She has been analyzing the results of the chemical attacks. In addition to an upsurge in familiar life-threatening diseases, some have appeared that had not been seen before.

During a presentation at the conference, the doctor detailed the suffering of children from the devastated region:

// GOSDEN ACT //

Here is a little girl who has probably the most severe breathing difficulties in the group. She gasps for breath. She desperately needs oxygen. She cannot see because she is blind from the mustard gas. All her family has been lost. She is an orphan.

// END ACT //

Despite the need, Doctor Gosden says the international community has been slow to respond, weary perhaps of crises claiming their attention. Only recently has Halabja been provided with clean water, medical equipment, an ambulance and a phone system for its hospital.

Getting help to this Kurdish region is complicated by its precarious status. Though protected by U-S and British planes in the so-called "no-fly zone," it remains part of Iraq and still subject to Saddam Hussein's pressures. But Doctor Gosden says nothing should stand in the way of helping the people who have endured one of history's great atrocities. (signed)

NEB/EW/KBK