Ghosts of Halabja

Ghosts of Halabja: Saddam Hussein and the Kurdish Genocide

This book is an extension of my previous research for Nowhere to Hide: Defeat of the Sovereign Immunity Defense for Crimes of Genocide & the Trails of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein (Peter Lang Publishers, 2005). There, I chronicled the evolution of genocide over time from an accepted stratagem of warfare in antiquity to an international crime today, the erosion of sovereign immunity as a defense for leaders who commit genocide, and the prosecutions of Milosevic and Saddam as heads of state on charges of genocide. Milosevic has since died and Saddam has now been executed. Death allowed both men to escape completion of the genocide trials against them.

The unspeakable atrocities visited by Saddam specifically upon the Kurds of Iraq are explored here together with the trials of Saddam by the Iraqi High Tribunal—both the completed prosecution for the Dujail massacre against the Shi’ites and the incomplete one for the Anfal Campaigns against the Kurds. However, this work is more than a litigation history. It is also an exploration of the motivations behind and the depths of organized evil in the context of a single brutal despot at the helm of an artificially created multiethno/religious state lying atop massive oil wealth but situated in the most dangerous part of the world. Saddam’s background and the context of his rule explain much about his actions, but not all. He remained an unpredictable tyrant to the end of his reign...