Views of Halabja

Yesterday I was treated to a very unique and educational experience. Those are adjectives that I can use talking about it while enjoyable and fun are not. The place that we visited is called Halabja and it is located just 10 miles from the Iranian border.
Google Map - Halabja

Twenty four years ago on March 16th (the end of the Iran/Iraq war), this town was bombarded with chemicals killing around 5,000 and wounding around 10,000 inhabitants of Halabja and surrounding villages. Theories about as to the reason behind the attack. Some say it was an attack on the Kurds to prevent rebellion, others say that it was because it was overrun with Iranian soldiers and the civilian casualties were simply a by product of taking back that area. What is known is that there are two rivers that cut Halabja off from the rest of Iraq and the bridges over them were destroyed. There were Iranian soldiers in the area and it was under fierce contention.

In this picture you can see the memorial in the background, two fists rising to the sky, and the hoards of people that were there for the commemoration. Security was tight to get near the memorial and my camera was confiscated for a time (got it back! Yay!) but inside it reminded me of visiting the Holocaust Museum. Horribly grotesque images of victims, relics of the time and macabre mementos of the punishments of the perpetrators. One of the things that I noticed when perusing the "before" pictures was the remarkable change that took place between the years of 1970 and today. There was little difference in the dress of the people of Halabja in the 1970's and the people of the U.S. during that same time. The girls were wearing knee length skirts and there were no head scarves to be seen. A picture of a local soccer team showed men sporting those ridiculous short shorts and snazzy mustaches, similar to pictures I have seen of my father. Now, there were very few women who are not wearing the headscarf and most of the men I saw were in traditional Kurdish clothing.

There were lots of artistic pieces there as well, one of the most disturbing to me was this bomb shell that was painted and then curved into a plaything for children.

There are three mass graves in the Halabja graveyard for the victims of the bombardment. This is the largest one. The headstone is depicted here, but it is set on a massive marble structure. We arrived at the graveyard at the same time the Iraqi dignitaries were leaving. Security was highly visible all day - they were literally lining the highways on our drive down from Suli. I'm not sure what good they were doing, standing by the side of the road seems kind of strange to me, but what do I know of security protocols.

Eventually they created gravestones to represent the people who died there. Each of gravestones has a family inscribed on it.

Just outside the graveyard was this sign, as symbol of the hatred still felt towards Sadaam's political
party. It's also a good way to show the insane weather of the day. I think I experienced just about all the kinds of weather possible. There was snow, rain, hail, wind, sun, hot and cold. It was like that day had multiple personality disorder. I was very glad I had worn layers.

 Peshawa Ahmad is the reason I got invited on this soiree. He is a student at the American University and is interning at my company. The entire trip was arranged by him in two days and the reason he is so invested is that he is from Halabja. The wall that he is standing in front of is the place of one of the most famous pictures from that day.

This father is curled over his only son, neither survived to escape the attack. We later visited the site of the man's house. The house has long since disappeared, but a museum has been erected in it's place. Inside the museum are the Iraqi ID cards of all the victims.

Not much is left from the Halabja of 1988, the town is full of new and renovated homes. Most of the people I talked to would rather forget this painful past, but there is a lingering legacy in elevated cancer rates. Additionally, fueling the anger of the inhabitants, the focus of the government has been on preserving the past, not helping in the present. As a student of history, I feel like it should never be forgotten, but I fully understand why these people do not want it to be the focus of the beautiful place.

But for now, whenever you type in Halabja, the overwhelming majority of the hits are not about new prosperity or opportunities, it is about the past.