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KurdistanObserver.com
The Halabja- Falluja
Paradox
By:
Dr. Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany
Dec 1, 2004
For an uninformed
outsider the names of cities like Halabja and Falluja might be just exotic names
for foreign cities like many similar other names all over this planet. For us
Kurdistanis and Iraqis, these names have very deep and different meanings,
because we are acquainted with the events and stories attached to those cities.
It simply tells the story of Kurds and Arabs in Iraq, the story of decades of
suffering and genocide on one side and of human cruelty and disregard of human
lives on the other side.
Halabja used to be a
beautiful town surrounded by snow covered mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan with
peaceful people very much lively and colorful like the splendid nature of
Kurdistan. This city was suddenly and without previous warning subjected to
the brutal wrath of a vile dictator called Saddam Hussein on one of the
beautiful days of the spring of 1988, when this brutal dictator ordered his Army
and Air force to attack this city with mustard gas and nerve gas continuously a
day long, killing instantaneously five thousand men, women and children and
causing over twenty thousand people to be permanently crippled with lung
diseases or blindness. The reaction of the world to this act of genocide was as
terrible as the crime itself, the reaction was muted by countries like United
States and European states, and even denied by countries like Turkey, and of
course all Arabic states, and if it wasn't for the cameras of Iranian
television, those terrible scenes of whole families dead corpses scattered all
around the streets, homes and cellers would have been lost and with the proof of
this hideous crime against humanity. To date 16 years after this crime against
peaceful Kurds in Iraq, neither the international community, nor the United
Nations, nor the United States nor the new interim Iraqi government after the
fall of Saddam Hussein on April 2003, bothered itself to provide any material
help to rebuild this wounded city nor to compensate the remaining relatives of
the victims morally and financially. So far we have heard nothing of any sums of
money allocated to help Halabja, although it was visited by many prominent
officials including the state secretary of USA Mr. Collin Powell, many other
American , UN and British officials as well as many Arab Iraqi officials who are
holding now key positions in the interim government. The Kurds are still treated
like sub-humans, whose lives can be taken with impunity, their identity can be
ignored maliciously by United States and Great Britain as well as the autocratic
chauvinistic Arab states, the Arab Iraqi religious leaders are issuing edicts
(Fatwa) to authorize and incite killing of innocent Kurds because they are seen
as collaborators with the multi-national forces .As a reward for Kurdish
steadfast commitment to liberation and democratization of Iraq, the Americans
and Briton are deliberately trying to suppress the Kurdish national identity in
favor of the Arab domination of Iraq. They have solely denied the Kurdistan
province of Iraq any consular or diplomatic representation, they have been
trying by all means to obstruct reversal of Arabisation in Kirkuk, by putting
pressure on Kurdish leaders of KDP and PUK to accept the status quo in Kirkuk
and drop their demands to return Kirkuk to Kurdistan where it geographically and
historically belongs.
Falluja on the other side is an Iraqi Arab Sunni city on the desert terrains of
west Iraq, This city was one of the cities which formed the backbone of the
Baath regime in Iraq, they have been always very loyal to Saddam Hussein, they
contributed generously to his murderous army and security and suppressive
agencies and they were given key positions and great privileges under the regime
of Saddam Hussein. After the fall of Saddam Hussein , Falluja has turned into a
hotbed of insurgency and a safe haven for Al-Qaida terrorists and the remnants
of Saddam loyalists as well as Islamic reactionary fundamentalists. They were
engaged in an orgy of terror and killing of Iraqi civilians, children, and new
Iraqi Army and police recruits, they kidnapped Iraqis and foreigners only to
behead them in front of the video cameras which they showed on their beloved
television channel (Al-Jazeera) or on their websites. They hijacked the whole
future of Iraq and Iraqi people and were adamant on destroying the
infrastructure of Iraq and any efforts to bring stability and democracy into
Iraq, those killers and terrorists were hailed by neighbouring Turkey, Syria,
Iran, Saudi Arabia as resistance champions and are encouraged to commit more
killings on Iraqi civilians, police and army. The multinational forces and Iraqi
national guards at the end stormed this city after exhausting all means to
convince the inhabitants of Falluja to handover the foreign terrorists and to
engage in the political process to build a new Iraq on democratic principles.
The same forces which denied the atrocities of Halabja, namely Turkey , Syria
and other Arab states and the disillusioned Islamic states cried out for Falluja
this time and considered the precise military operations to root out the
terrorists as mass murder of civilians in Falluja and started inciting more
hatred and terror against the Iraqi people and multinational forces. As the
operations is almost over, those forces are sending aid and money to support the
terrorists of Falluja and to exaggerate the civilian causalities of the military
action. The Arab interim Iraqi government, didn't waste time to declare that it
has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the city and compensate
its people about any damages incurred to their houses and properties ( even when
those houses really belonged to terrorist sympathizers!).
The paradox is why this
government ignores the real victims of Halabja and are so far refused to
allocate any sums of money to rebuild the Hiroshima of Kurdistan or to
compensate its destitute people, when it does not waste any time to allocate
huge sums of dollars to the Iraqi Arab terrorists of Falluja to rebuild their
infrastructure and reward them for their anti-Iraqi, anti-democratic and
anti-American stand ?
If you don't call this chauvinism and double standards , what else you can call
it.
Dr.Nazhad Khasraw Hawramany
Switzerland
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