The Kurds a Nation Denied

The Kurds: A Nation Denied

In March 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranian air force flew a group of foreign journalists to a town in Iraqi Kurdistan which had just been taken over by a Kurdish guerrilla group and handed over to the advancing Iranian forces. The town was called Halabja, and most of us who were being taken there had never heard of it before. We were told that Iraq had counter-attacked with chemical weapons, and that 5000 people had died. Few of us, I suspect, thought it was more than the standard propaganda line.

When we reached Halabja we saw that, if anything, the figure was an underestimate. Bodies lay heaped up, ready for mass burial. Others lay where they had fallen when the bombs fell. Halabja stank of death and of one of the nastier forms of destruction. Saddam Hussein had responded in characteristic fashion to the Kurdish demand for an acknowledged political identity....