The Kurdish Woman At The U.S. Senat

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: mail06672 at pop.net (AKIN)
Subject: The Kurdish Woman At The U.S. Senate

Washington, D.C.

The Kurdish Woman At The U.S. Senate

"I was violated" the Kurdish woman wanted to say, but she could not. She, 
instead, sobbed and sobbed. Senator Diane Feinstein wanted to help. "Speak as 
if you were in the company of some good friends." It did not help.

This was the scene at a recent hearing on "Iraqi Atrocities Against The 
Kurds." A number of experts and some victims of Saddam's misconduct were 
invited to testify. The event took place on August 3, 1995, at the 
Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs in the Dirksen 
Senate Office Building.

To be sure, there never was a shortage of evidence to allow one to give the 
benefit of doubt to the ruler of Baghdad. Speaker after speaker spoke of the 
horrors that the Kurds had endured. The woman's inability to put her 
anguish into words left an indelible impression on the Senators. Others 
described the meticulous Baghdad schemes through operations such as 
"Anfal", a word taken out of the Koran, the holy book of Islam, to market the 
diabolical plans of Saddam and his cronies. 

As a Kurd, I was extremely disturbed by the proceedings, not because I was a 
novice to these tales of brutality against my people, but rather crying
for help 
at the U.S. Senate did not seem to be a proper way to tackle this wrongdoing 
against the Kurds. I felt impotent; the world, historians tell us, had contempt 
for such peoples.

There were other disquieting moments during the hearing. A Kurdish man 
spoke of a number of coordinated chemical attacks that had rained instant 
death on the unsuspecting Kurdish civilians. For example, in Halapja, 
Kurdistan, on March 16, 1988, some 5,000 Kurds had dropped dead after 
inhaling poisonous fumes. At the time, the international community did not 
consider imposing sanctions on Baghdad. It did so only after the invasion of 
Kuwait.

A film put together by United States government officials serving in 
northern Iraq was also shown. It portrayed life in Iraqi Kurdistan. It was a 
page out of Hobbes' Leviathan. Some Iraqi soldiers blindfolding and tying 
Kurdish men to poles and shooting them in the sight of camera-recorders. 
The footage, the narrator said, was captured by the Kurdish fighters from the 
archives of retreating Iraqi soldiers during their brief liberation of
Kurdistan.

In a span of four years, from early 1987 to early 1990, approximately 4,000 
Kurdish villages were destroyed. Some 182,000 people, mostly men, were 
killed. Today, in northern Iraq, the narrator went on to say, there is a higher 
ratio of women than men. Orphans and widows, hopelessness and 
prostitution have become facts of life.

Kathryn Cameron Porter, president of the Human Rights Alliance, spoke of 
her recent visit to the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. The situation of the 
Kurds has not changed, she said. Death visits them often and does so at an 
alarming rate. The Iraqis and the Turks and the Iranians would rather see all 
Kurds dead. The Kurds of Iraq are now doing exactly that: killing one another 
to the dismay of their friends. 

Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, spoke next. He noted 
the meticulous plans of Ali Hasan Al-Majid, the man Saddam had hand-
picked to deal with the Kurds. In what became known as the "Anfal" 
campaigns, the Iraqi army began military attacks on Kurdish settlements, 
making use of chemical weapons, with the express purpose of dealing with 
the Kurdish question once and for all. 

Mr. Roth went on: "... the stores of documented testimonial and forensic 
evidence in the possession of Human Rights Watch provide incontrovertible 
proof that in 1988 the Iraqi state killed tens of thousands of Kurdish men, 
women, and children because they were Kurds. Our goal is to ensure that the 
Iraqi government is brought to account for its heinous crime of genocide."

After the hearing, I felt like a Jew who had the misfortune of urging the West 
to rescue his kind from the fury that was Hitler during the Second World 
War. That help never came. The Kurds, too, will not get it. Saddam will 
either be his own nemesis or wait until my generation of Kurds catches up 
with him.

Kani Xulam
American Kurdish Information Network

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American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)
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