Halabja poison gas attack

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 5,000 people. Halabja is located about 150 miles northeast of Baghdad and 8-10 miles from the Iranian border.

Related Topics:
15 March - 19 March - 1988 - Chemical weapon - Iraq - Kurd - Halabja - Baghdad - Iran

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Most 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 TerrorismCentral web 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 agents sarin, tabun and VX." Some sources have also pointed to the blood agent Hydrogen Cyanide.

Related Topics:
Iran-Iraq War - Halabja - Chemical weapons - Civilian - March 16 - Mustard gas - Nerve agents - Sarin - Tabun - VX

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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.

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Some debate continues, however, over the question of whether Iraq was really the responsible party, perhaps stemming from well supported claims that the United States supplied chemical weapons to Iraq. The matter is further complicated by the fact that 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 the US intentionally tried to shift the blame for the gassing of Halabja off of Saddam, and declassified State Department document demonstrate that US diplomats received instructions to press this line with United States allies.

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While the United States never supplied full-fledged chemical weapons to Iraq, it did provide chemical and biological agents such as anthrax and sarin gas, as well as satelite 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 US provided "civilian" helicopters, ostensibly 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.)

Related Topics:
December 15 - 1986 - 13 February - 1991

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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.

Related Topics:
March 5 - 1984 - March 30

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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=F60816FC3D5C0C728FDDA80894DB404482 opinion 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

Related Topics:
Defense Intelligence Agency - Central Intelligence Agency - January 31 - 2003 - George W. Bush

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Another extensive analysis of the incident is contained in a post http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00034.html to 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.htm and 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).

Related Topics:
Listserv - Human Rights Watch - Al-Anfal Campaign

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Thus, while some facts surrounding the incident remain murky, most evidence and analyses indicate that the gas attack was an Iraqi attack on Iranian forces, pro-Iranian Kurdish forces and Halabja's citizens during one of the major battles of the Iran-Iraq War. The attack likely served a dual-purpose, as both a military act and a part of the Al-Anfal campaign.

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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 first public court appearance.

Related Topics:
Saddam Hussein - Ali Hasan al-Majid - Iraqi Special Tribunal - First public court appearance

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