The Halabja massacre (Kurdish: کیمیابارانی ھەڵەبجە, romanized: Kêmyabarana Helebce) took place in Iraqi Kurdistan on 16 March 1988, when thousands of Kurds were killed by a large-scale Iraqi chemical attack. A targeted attack in Halabja, it was carried out during the Anfal campaign, which was led by Iraqi military officer Ali Hassan al-Majid. Two days before the attack, the city had been captured by Iran as part of Operation Zafar 7 of the Iran–Iraq War. Following the incident, the United Nations launched an investigation and concluded that mustard gas as well as unidentified nerve agents had been used against Kurdish civilians. The BBC later reported that a mixture of mustard, tabun, sarin, and VX, was used. The United States Defense Intelligence Agency initially blamed Iran for the attack, though the majority of evidence later revealed that Iraq had used the chemical weapons to bolster an ongoing military offensive against Iran, pro-Iranian Kurdish fighters, and ordinary Halabja residents.
To date, the Halabja massacre remains the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated region in human history, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more. Preliminary results from surveys of the affected areas showed increased rates of cancer and birth defects in the years since the attack took place.
In 2010, the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal officially defined the Halabja chemical attack as a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people during the time of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. That same year, it was also formally condemned by the Parliament of Canada, which classified it as a crime against humanity. Al-Majid, who was captured during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was put on trial and found guilty of ordering the attack; he was sentenced to death in June 2007 and executed by hanging in January 2010.
Background
Northern Iraq was an area of general unrest during the early stage of the Iran–Iraq War, with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) militias joining forces, with Iranian support, in 1982 and 1983, respectively. From 1985, the Iraqi Ba'athist government under Saddam Hussein decided to eradicate pockets of Kurdish insurgents in the north and strike down the peshmerga rebels by all means possible, including large-scale punishment of civilians and the use of chemical weapons. The Halabja event was also part of Iraqi efforts to counter-attack Kurdish and Iranian forces in the final stages of Operation Zafar 7.
Chemical attack
The five-hour attack began in the evening of 16 March 1988. Following a series of indiscriminate conventional (rocket and napalm) attacks, Iraqi Mig and Mirage aircraft began dropping chemical bombs on Halabja's residential areas, far from the besieged Iraqi army base on the outskirts of the town. According to regional Kurdish rebel commanders, Iraqi aircraft, coordinated by helicopters, conducted up to 14 bombings in sorties of seven to eight planes each. Eyewitnesses told of clouds of white, black and then yellow smoke billowing upward and rising as a column about 150 feet (50 m) in the air.
It was a beautiful spring day. As the clock approached 11:00 in the morning, I felt a strange sensation; my heart convulsed as if it were telling me that we were on the verge of a major calamity. Within minutes, artillery rounds began to explode in Halabja and planes began dropping bombs on the town. The bombing was concentrated on the northern neighborhoods, so we ran and hid in our basement. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon, as the intensity of the bombing wound down, I carefully sneaked out of the basement to the kitchen and carried food to my family. When the bombing stopped, we began to hear noises that sounded like metal pieces falling on the ground. But I didn’t find an explanation.
I saw things that I won't forget for as long as I live. It started with a loud strange noise that sounded like bombs exploding, and a man came running into our house, shouting, 'Gas! Gas!' We hurried into our car and closed its windows. I think the car was rolling over the bodies of innocent people. I saw people lying on the ground, vomiting a green-colored liquid, while others became hysterical and began laughing loudly before falling motionless onto the ground. Later, I smelled an aroma that reminded me of apples and I lost consciousness. When I awoke, there were hundreds of bodies scattered around me. After that I took shelter again in a nearby basement and the area was engulfed by an ugly smell. It was similar to rotting garbage, but then it changed to a sweet smell similar to that of apples. Then I smelled something that was like eggs.
When you hear people shouting the words 'gas' or 'chemicals'—and you hear those shouts spreading among the people—that is when terror begins to take hold, especially among the children and the women. Your loved ones, your friends, you see them walking and then falling like leaves to the ground. It is a situation that cannot be described—birds began falling from their nests; then other animals, then humans. It was total annihilation. Whoever was able to walk out of the town, left on foot. Whoever had a car, left by car. But whoever had too many children to carry on their shoulders, they stayed in the town and succumbed to the gas.
Survivors said the gas at first smelled of sweet apples and reported that people "died in a number of ways, suggesting a combination of toxic chemicals." Citing an interview with a university student who survived the attack, the international NGO, Human Rights Watch, reported that "some [victims] 'just dropped dead'. Others 'died of laughing.' Others took a few minutes to die, first 'burning and blistering' or 'coughing up green vomit'". "Those who were in the thick of the 'death cloud' died in suspended animation" according to Dlawer Ala'Aldeen of Nottingham University, who collected detailed data between 1987 and 1988, including numbers, places and types of chemical weapon attacks across Iraqi Kurdistan. Many were injured or perished in the panic that followed the attack, especially those who were blinded by the chemicals.
"Iranian physicians reported that victims of the chemical attacks on Halabja showed characteristic symptoms of cyanide poisoning," while other reports indicated substantial quantities of mustard gas and other chemical weapons were used. Most of the wounded taken to hospitals in the Iranian capital Tehran were suffering from mustard gas exposure. A United Nations (UN) medical investigation concluded that mustard gas was used in the attack, along with unidentified nerve agents; the UN's investigator was "unable to obtain any definitive information about the [reported] use of hydrocyanic gas as an aggressive chemical." It is generally accepted that "a lethal cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX" was used, as reported by the BBC. Prior to the Halabja incident there were at least 21 documented smaller-scale chemical attacks against Iraqi Kurds, none of which prompted any serious response from the international community.
Aftermath
Discovery and response
The first images after the attack were taken by Iranian journalists who later spread the pictures in Iranian newspapers. Footage taken by a British ITN camera crew, airlifted by the Iranians, was also shown worldwide via news programmes. Some of those first pictures were taken by Iranian photographer Kaveh Golestan, who described the scene to Guy Dinmore of the Financial Times. He was about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) outside Halabja with a military helicopter when the Iraqi MiG-23 fighter-bombers flew in. He said "it was not as big as a nuclear mushroom cloud, but several smaller ones: thick smoke." Golestan was shocked by the scenes on his arrival in the town, though he had seen gas attacks before at the front lines:
It was life frozen. Life had stopped, like watching a film and suddenly it hangs on one frame. It was a new kind of death to me. (…) The aftermath was worse. Victims were still being brought in. Some villagers came to our chopper. They had 15 or 16 beautiful children, begging us to take them to hospital. So all the press sat there and we were each handed a child to carry. As we took off, fluid came out of my little girl's mouth and she died in my arms.
The Iraqi government did not publicly comment on the use of chemical weapons at Halabja until 23 March, and early statements by Iraqi officials on the matter were inconsistent. Although Iraq ultimately denied responsibility for the attack and blamed it on Iran, its initial silence, as well as the fact that Halabja was never a major part of Iraq's wartime propaganda campaign against Iran, raises questions about the sincerity of this deflection.
International response at the time was muted. The United States (U.S.) government and its intelligence agencies suggested that Kurdish civilians had not been deliberately targeted, and attempted to place responsibility for the attack on Iran. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and Central Intelligence Agency analyst Stephen C. Pelletiere claimed at the time that Iran was responsible for the gassing, an allegation which Pelletiere repeated in a 2003 op-ed in The New York Times. However, these claims were subsequently discredited. A briefing paper produced by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office about how the British government should respond to the massacre, and whether or not economic sanctions should be imposed, came to the following conclusion: "We believe it better to maintain a dialogue with others if we want to influence their actions. Punitive measures such as unilateral sanctions would not be effective in changing Iraq's behaviour over chemical weapons, and would damage British interests to no avail." According to Tony Benn, the issue was raised in Parliament, but he was told that "Saddam was an ally". Joost Hiltermann states that Iraq took the U.S. "disinformation" about Halabja as "another green light ... to gather up and methodically kill tens of thousands of Kurds" over the course of the ensuing Anfal campaign, which continued until September 1988. In Hiltermann's analysis, the Anfal campaign "surely was not a US policy objective; nevertheless, it resulted directly from failing to call the Iraqis to a halt [after Halabja]."
In response to further Iraqi chemical attacks on Kurdish civilians after the August 1988 ceasefire with Iran, U.S. senators Claiborne Pell and Jesse Helms called for comprehensive economic sanctions against Iraq, including an oil embargo and severe limitations on the export of dual-use technology. Although the ensuing legislation passed in the U.S. Senate, it faced strong opposition within the House of Representatives and did not become law. In a rare rebuke, United States Secretary of State George Shultz condemned Iraq's "unjustified and abhorrent" attacks, which Shultz's assistant Charles E. Redman characterized as "unacceptable to the civilized world." Even after these pronouncements, however, the State Department advised against sanctions.
Iraqi government documents dating from 16 March 1988 to several weeks later refer to "a firm escalation of military might and cruelty [in Halabja]," "the bombing by our planes and our artillery on the area of Halabja and Khurmal, [killing] approximately 2,000 enemy forces of the Persians and Iranian agents [the PUK]," the "recent attack on Halabja with special ammunition," and, in one case, explicitly refer to "the Iraqi chemical attack on Halabja." A 20 March 1988 Iraqi memorandum "placed the casualty figures 'as a result of the chemical attack' as 900–1,000 'killed and a large number wounded' near Halabjah and some 2,500 in the city itself. These numbers included 'Khomeini guard, saboteurs, and the rest were civilians.'" An Iraqi pilot explained in 2003 that the attack was motivated, in part, by the Iraqi perception that Kurdish collaboration with invading Iranian soldiers constituted "high treason."
Legal framework of Iraqi chemical warfare
Iraq was a signatory of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits "the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids materials or devices". However, legal experts stated that such use was only applicable between signatory states and not against its own nationals, noting the Protocol's sentence "That the High Contracting Parties...agree to be bound as between themselves according to the terms of this declaration." In other words, the Iraqi chemical attacks against Iran was a war crime, but not against its own population.
Such legality was reinforced when the United Nations Security Council condemned Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran in Resolutions 612 and 620, while leaving out any reference of the same use against its own nationals. The Council was also at the time preoccupied with trying to get Iraq and Iran to accept Resolution 598 (which called for a ceasefire between the two nations), and restrained by concerns about Iraq's sovereignty in what was regarded as an 'internal affair'.
Destruction and partial restoration of Halabja
Survivors assisted by peshmerga and Iranians hastily buried most of the dead in makeshift mass graves. After Halabja was retaken from Iranian and Kurdish rebel forces, Iraqi troops in NBC suits came to Halabja to study the effectiveness of their weapons and attacks. The town, still littered with unburied dead, was then systematically razed by Iraqi forces using bulldozers and explosives. The Japanese government financed a $70 million project to provide access to safe drinking water in response to this. In the meanwhile, an Iraqi high-ranking authority officially confessed in a meeting with Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations for the utilization of chemical weapons by Iraq.