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A poisonous affair: America, Iraq, and the gassing of Halabja


Auteur :
Éditeur : Cambridge University Press Date & Lieu : 2007-01-01, New York
Préface : Pages : 314
Traduction : ISBN : 978-0-521-87686-5
Langue : AnglaisFormat : 155x235 mm
Code FIKP : Liv. Eng. 2857Thème : Politique

Présentation
Table des Matières Introduction Identité PDF
A poisonous affair: America, Iraq, and the gassing of Halabja

A poisonous affair: America, Iraq, and the gassing of Halabja

Joost R. Hiltermann is a seasoned Middle East analyst. While researching this book, he was working as Executive Director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch. He is currently the Deputy Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa for the International Crisis Group. His publications include Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women's Movements in the Occupied Territories (1991).

In March 1988, during the Iran—Iraq war, thousands of people were killed in a chemical attack on Halabja, a remote town in Iraqi Kurdistan. In the aftermath of the horror, confusion reigned over who had carried out the attack, each side accusing the other in the ongoing bloodbath of the war. As the fog lifted, the responsibility of Saddam Hussein's regime was revealed, and with it the tacit support of Iraq's Western allies. This book, by a veteran observer of the Middle East, tells the story of the gassing of Halabja. It shows how Iraq was able to develop ever more sophisticated chemical weapons and to target Iranian soldiers and Kurdish villagers as America looked the other way. Today, as Iraq disintegrates and the Middle East sinks further into turmoil, those policies are coming back to haunt America and the West.

Praise for a poisonous affair

"Joost Hiltermann is one of the Iraq observers that journalists and policymakers count on most for historical memory and acute analysis. In A Poisonous Affair he has produced a gracefully written and timely reminder that the combination of weapons of mass destruction, geopolitical mendacity, and vast human suffering has a rich history in Iraq. The story of Halabja reveals at once why the regime of Saddam Hussein deserved to fall and why America was .a dubious agent of its demise."

— George Packer, author of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq

"In A Poisonous Affair Joost Hiltermann has crafted a gripping narrative out of some of the most chilling events of the last two decades. But A Poisonous Affair is not simply a rigorous and important piece of history. By revisiting Saddam Hussein's worst massacre and the U.S. response to it, Hiltermann masterfully excavates the roots of our current predicament. He shows how the traumatization of the Kurds spawned their mistrust of all things Iraqi, fueling the separatism of the present. He reveals the degree to which America's support for Saddam while he was gassing his own people bred fierce and lasting skepticism about whether Washington could be trusted in the region. And he demonstrates how America's indifference to Saddam's chemical attacks on Iran helped convince Iran to go it alone, and to acquire its own weapons of mass destruction. Hiltermann has given us a necessary book about a ghastly crime, the legacy of which we will be managing for decades to come."

— Samantha Power, Harvard University, and author of "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide

"Joost Hiltermann has written an authoritative account of the real use of weapons of mass destruction in the contemporary Middle East - Saddam Hussein's massive use of chemical weapons against Iran in the 1980s. His research documents with great persuasiveness not only Iraqi crimes but also the culpability of those in the international community who carefully looked the other way or tacitly collaborated. As Hiltermann shows, the consequences and implications of those actions are likely to haunt us for many years to come."

— Gary Sick, Director of the Gulf/2000 Project, Columbia University, and former member of the National Security Council staff


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