Comment by Marion Studdert
The repeated reports of the Iraqi gassing of the Kurds at Halabjeh were one of the most effective media contortions to justify the West's attack on a Third World country.
A different slant on that event comes from The Middle East from the Iran-Contra Affair to the Intifada, edited by R.O. Freedman (pp. 187-8), and an article by Knutt Royce, "A Trail of Deception", published in Lies of Our Times, January 21, 1991.
Up to the Iran-Iraq war, the Kurdish separatists in Iraq had been divided. However, by 1986 the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic Party joined forces and a de facto alliance was formed between this Kurdish front and Iran.
Early in 1988 Iranian troops, in close cooperation with Kurdish guerillas, launched an offensive against population centres in Iraqi Kurdistan. It was successful enough for the Iranians to announce that 100,000 Iraqis around halabjeh had been liberated and "were now with the Islamic Republic of Iran".
It was expected that Iraq would send troops from the south to deal with this crisis. Instead, it used chemical weapons against the Iranian/Kurdish forces in the north. Tehran claimed that from 3000 to 5000 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed from exposure to mustard and cyanide gas. There was worldwide condemnation of Iraq.
Subsequently, US officials stated that there was evidence that Iran, too, had used chemical weapons at Halabjeh, but this did little to erase the incident's negative effect on Iraq's international image.
Knutt Royce reports: "There is incontrovertible evidence that Iraq used gas against Iranian troops during the 1980-88 war. The Iranians also used gas against Iraqi troops. But the evidence that Iraq purposely gassed Kurds is flimsy, according to officials who have reviewed the classified material. A review by US analysts also showed that the Kurds died of cyanide gas, which produced tell-tale blue lips on the corpses. Only the Iranians possessed cyanide gas."
Accusations were made of a second Iraqi gas attack on the Kurds shortly after the war. Turkish doctors, who treated Kurds for various ailments at the time, said that the use of gas could not be verified. The US Army War College study, completed in February 1990, also states that it was impossible to confirm the use of gas by the Iraqis in this instance.
None of this has stopped repeated claims of Iraqi gassing, claims presented in such a way that the attack appeared purposely genocidal and not an attack against declared enemies. Also, Iraq's use of gas has been made to appear more demoniacal and savage than any other such attack. Of course the use of gas is wicked, but so is the use of napalm, cluster bombs and the new high-tech weapons against which there is no defence. To single out this one example and to repeat it again and again had the effect of giving support to reasons put forward by the US for its attack on Iraq.