As a Kurd who has had family members murdered by the Iraqi government, the basic story that Jeffrey Goldberg told-- of Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons in a genocidal campaign against the Kurds-- was not new to me ("The Great Terror," March 25th). (Kurdistan Observer )

My younger brother, Jabar, was arrested one day in 1990 and has been missing ever since. My pregnant sister's husband was snatched from their bed one night; his body was found in a ditch months later, along with that of my old physics teacher and many of our neighbors. My nieces, nephews, and other relatives are now scattered as refugees in Holland, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and the United States, part of the Kurdish diaspora. 

Yet I cried all over again when I read Goldberg's gripping account of the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja and of the mother who, after losing three of her sons, saw her youngest boy die and then get eaten by dogs. 

I was outraged, however, by the comments of Benon Sevan, the United Nations official in charge of the oil-for-food program, who dismisses the Kurds' pressing needs by saying, "I don't know if they'e ever had it so good? and "Nobody is innocent." Obviously, the Kurds have it better now that the bombs have mostly stopped falling, but does that mean they should be satisfied with inadequate health care, an infrastructure that hardly exists, and the condescension of U.N. bureaucrats? 

When Goldberg asked Sevan about the morality of allowing Saddam's regime to control the flow of food and medicine into Iraq, he retorted, "Don't talk about morals with me." But until the United States and the U.N. guarantee reasonable security and humane treatment for Kurdistan as a legitimate entity worthy of a minimum of international protection-- until, in effect, they begin to talk morals-- boatloads of hopeless Kurds will continue to risk their lives with smugglers in order to seek asylum elsewhere.

Jalal Jonroy
New York City