Memories of massacre shape Kurds' view of the world

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HALABJA, Iraq -- Rafiq Laiq learned two difficult lessons as he and his family fled the chemical-gas attack Saddam Hussein's army launched on this town 20 years ago.The first was that tabun gas smells like apples, and can kill almost instantly. The second was that big, powerful friends like the United States have a tendency to help you only when it suits their interests.A memorial service held here this past weekend in this traumatized town focused on the horrors witnessed over a three-day period between March 15 and 17, 1988, when the Iraqi army used tabun and other chemical gases to kill more than 5,000 people, punishing the town's Kurdish population for siding with the enemy in the final stages of Iraq's eight-year war with Iran.Thousands of villagers, many of them dressed in black, filled the town's muddy streets Sunday for the unveiling of a monument depicting a father trying to shield his infant daughter from the effects of the gas with his own body. Most of the anger that poured out at the anniversary ceremony was directed at Hussein and his henchmen. Many here are anxiously awaiting the execution of the chief perpetrator, Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali" for his role in the Halabja massacre. Convicted of genocide, he has been sentenced to hang some time this month.But few Kurds have forgotten that the United States and other Western countries stood idly by at the time, unwilling to criticize Hussein, whom they were supporting against Iran.Twenty years later, many here in semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan see disturbing parallels in how the U.S. army allowed the Turkish army to enter northern Iraq last month in pursuit of Kurdish rebels.The Turkish government portrayed the eight-day incursion by 10,000 troops as an "anti-terrorism" operation targeting fighters from the banned Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which allegedly uses Iraqi soil to launch cross-border attacks into Turkey.But many of Iraq's Kurds interpret things very differently: They believe Turkey, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, launched the assault because it is opposed to the birth of a Kurdish state in the region. And the United States -- forced again to choose between its support for the Kurds and its alliance with another country -- left the Kurds to fend for themselves."We are afraid the Americans will collaborate with our enemies against us, just like in the past," said Laiq, now the dean of the Halabja Fine Arts Institute. His eyes are still blood red from the gas attack 20 years ago.What happened at Halabja, and the international community's muted response to it, has become a rallying cry for those seeking an independent Kurdish state based in northern Iraq -- an argument for a Kurdish state just as the Jewish Holocaust was part of the rationale for creating the state of Israel.But while full independence still remains distant for Iraq's 5 million Kurds, they've moved closer than ever to that goal in the five years that have passed since the U.S. army -- at the encouragement of Kurdish leaders, and with the support of Kurdish guerrilla fighters -- invaded Iraq to oust Hussein. In that sense, the Kurds are perhaps the war's clearest winners thus far.While using their clout in Baghdad -- President Jalal Talabani is a Kurd, as are other top officials -- to redesign Iraq as a loose federation in which the various regions are given increasingly broad autonomy, the feeling in Kurdistan is that this place wants little to do with the rest of Iraq.Kurdistan has remained an oasis of calm compared with the violence that has consumed the rest of the country since the 2003 invasion. The region is effectively sealed off from the south by a thick network of peshmerga checkpoints that examine every vehicle seeking to cross into what is clearly now a separate entity. The region's economy is also rapidly expanding.But while most Kurds are pleased with their growing independence, their neighbors -- Turkey, Iran and Syria, all of which have substantial and restive Kurdish populations of their own -- are not.Now, most Kurds see the United States as the only guarantor of their fledgling mini-state. Many say that their biggest fear is that, with American public opinion now firmly against the war, the United States will soon withdraw from Iraq and leave the Kurds once more at the mercy of the Arabs, Persians and Turks who have repressed them for decades."The U.S. has no stable policy toward the Kurdish people. We hope that this time there will be no bargaining at the expense of us," said Hawrani, the Halabja legislator.But history, he said, has taught the Kurds to be wary. He has a saying every Kurd knows by heart: "We have no friends but the mountains."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)