Anger boils in Halabja, Iraq’s “town of martyrs”

By Ibon Villelabeitia

HALABJA, Iraq (Reuters) – Broken glass crunched under
Adnan’s feet as he walked through Halabja’s vandalized
memorial. He stopped and pointed to an inscription on the wall.

“There is my father’s name. I remember the day they gassed
us as if it were yesterday. We ran but my father and sister
didn’t make it,” said the 27-year-old Kurdish Peshmerga
militiaman.

Near Iraq’s border with Iran, Halabja became synonymous
with atrocities against civilians after Saddam Hussein’s forces
killed 5,000 people here in a gas attack in 1988. Iraqi Kurds
call Halabja the “town of martyrs” and hold the massacre in
their collective memory as a Kurdish Auschwitz.

Today, the victims’ memorial also bears witness to more
recent violence and simmering discontent in this dusty town.

In March, on the 18th anniversary of the gas attack,
hundreds of locals attacked the memorial and set it on fire as
anger at perceived neglect and corruption by Kurdish
authorities boiled over.

“It is sad to see what happened to the museum,” said Adnan,
who camps with his unit on cots in what used to be an
exhibition room. In another room, decapitated statues of women
and children, representing victims of the gas attack, lie
scattered.

Local officials blamed Islamists and outsiders, a veiled
reference to Iran. But youths in Halabja said the protests were
spurred by local anger at the Kurdish government.

They said Kurdish leaders had exploited Halabja for their
political ends, and that donations and investment from outside
had not translated into better schools, roads or services.
Adnan, who was 9 when Halabja was gassed and survived by
fleeing to the mountains with his uncle and mother, does not
understand the reasons.

“We are all from Halabja. Why did they do this?” he said.

FEELING NEGLECTED

Makuan Raouf has an answer.

“The government has done nothing for Halabja. The only
thing they built here was the memorial,” the 29-year-old barber
said.

“Politicians only come to Halabja for the anniversary. They
built the memorial on the outskirts to avoid seeing our faces
and asking us about our problems.”

Nearly two decades after the gas attack, Saddam faces
genocide charges over the military campaign that razed hundreds
of Kurdish villages — his trial resumes on September 11 — and
Kurds have an autonomous government in peaceful Kurdistan.

Nearby Sulaimaniya and other cities are enjoying a
construction boom and foreign firms are considering investing
in oil and communications here.

But the prosperity is not reaching the villages, which bore
the brunt of Saddam’s Anfal — or Spoils of War — campaign.

Kurdish leaders say 100,000 people were killed during the
seven-month onslaught. The populations of entire villages
disappeared, rural areas were declared “out of bounds to all
persons and animals” and troops were allowed to fire at will.

Although the Halabja gas attack took place in the same
period as Anfal, Saddam will be tried separately for it.

MOVING ON

Like most villages in Kurdistan, Halabja’s streets are
unpaved, its schools are old and residents complain of
electricity shortages and unemployment.

The road to Halabja runs along a fertile valley with
massive rocky mountains. At the town’s entrance, sunflowers
sprout next to a large billboard that shows women and children
lying dead after the gas attack. “Welcome to Halabja. We, the
trees and the water are the Kurdish people,” it reads.

Kocher Mohammed, 23, said he wants his town to be known as
more than just a symbol of Saddam’s persecution against Kurds.

“Our parents keep telling us what happened in Halabja
during the war but we want to move on. The only way to make a
living here is smuggling gasoline from Iran.”

Mayor Fouad Saleh Ridha blamed the lack of reconstruction
programs in Halabja on violence in the rest of Iraq and the
financial constraints of the regional government.

“The Kurdish government cannot rebuild all the places at
the same time but we need more attention in Halabja,” he said.

For Meth Ali, 21, the neglect seems deliberate.

“The world knows of Iraq because of Halabja but the
donations have gone into the pockets of the politicians. They
all live in Europe and don’t even come here.”

(Editing by Clar Ni Chonghaile)