At the end of a nondescript side street in the city of Halabja lie the victims of Saddam Hussein’s most callous atrocity.
An inscription carved into cracked marble above one the mass graves containing 440 bodies reads: “These are some of the victims of the ruthless attack by chemical weapon on the city of Halabja by Saddam’s regime on 16 March 1988. May God bless them.”
This was the site of the largest chemical weapons massacre directed against a civilian-populated area in history. It killed at least 5,000 and injured twice that number. It was a monstrous act of genocide for which Halabja has remained forever synonymous.
Yet many of those who survived Saddam’s toxic five-hour air raid are still struggling. More than 35 years after huge canisters containing nerve agents and mustard gas were dropped to quell Kurdish resistance in the area, some 6,000 people are still suffering serious health effects.
Many attend the Halabja Hospital for the Treatment of Victims of Chemical Weapons, which opened in 2019 to provide specialist help for those still dealing with the consequences.
Jamal Hussein was just 12 at the time of the chemical attacks. Now 48, he lives with his brother in Halabja, trapped indoors by debilitating injuries that doctors believe were caused by exposure to the lingering poisonous yellow gas cloud.
On the morning of the atrocity, Jamal and his siblings were looking after themselves at home; their parents were visiting relatives nearby. Then just before 11am, Saddam’s forces began their onslaught – initially using conventional rockets, artillery and napalm.
Panicked, the boys ran to a neighbour’s house where they sheltered in a basem*nt until they thought the raid was over.
But the first salvo was a cruel ploy. Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan Majid – better known by his notorious nickname Chemical Ali – used it to lure the city’s residents into the open.
People were tempted into leaving Halabja for somewhere safer in the surrounding mountains, only to be caught by the gas clouds which drifted slowly, almost invisibly, towards the conurbation.
It was the culmination of Saddam’s counterattack against Iranian forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga, known as the Al-Anfal campaign, to take back territory in the Kurdish north of Iraq.
Halabja, surrounded on all sides by the mountains which mark the nearby Iranian border, was an easy target.
“We went outside thinking everything was okay,” recalls Jamal, “my sister went to another friend’s and my parents were still not back. I didn’t really hear the chemical bombs dropping; it was so quiet compared to the incendiary bombs before.
“I started coughing violently and vomiting. I think if I had been outside in the street at the start, I would have died. There was this smell that even managed to get through the gaps in the windows, which was sickly and sweet.”
Later, when he heard voices outside, Jamal went looking for their sister and parents.
The streets were lined with corpses, whole families slumped where they fell on the roads with white foam on their lips.
Their faces were contorted in a permanent grimace of agony.
In a traumatic image captured by an Iranian press photographer – the only one in Halabja at the time – a father clutched his inert baby girl in a desperate final embrace before he too was asphyxiated.
It was, perhaps, during Jamal’s desperate mission to find his family that he inhaled more of the toxins, sufficient for him to suffer immediate health problems.
As the days went by, his breathing difficulties became increasingly severe, and the situation has never improved.
He has been left effectively paralysed by the effects of the lethal fumes he breathed in, a co*cktail of substances believed to have also included sarin and VX.
Within a few years, Jamal had lost the ability to walk and had become incontinent, unable to fend for himself. He now spends most of his time in a hospital bed inside his house, and depends on his older brother Rizgar, 56, to push him in a wheelchair for his regular hospital visits.
Many other survivors have subsequently died from the effects of chemical weapons. Halabja continues to have higher cancer rates than other comparable cities in the same region.
A study published in 2019, entitled ‘Health perspectives among Halabja’s civilian survivors of sulphur mustard exposure with respiratory symptoms’, found that many have issues with their eyes and skin too.
At the grim memorial museum on the edge of the city, survivor Kishwar Mawlood, 54, recounts how doctors informed her that the chemical weapons attack was a contributory factor in her early cancer diagnosis.
“On the day of the bombardment, they used heavy bombs to break the glass so that the gas could penetrate into homes more easily,” testifies Kishwar. “After that they returned with chemical weapons.
“I stayed underground for nearly three hours in the afternoon, but then some of us came out, and we could still smell the gas. We started running towards a village on the edge of the city, and as we were moving, we started to feel dizzy.”
Kishwar fled across the border to Iran, returning to Halabja six months later to be confronted by a ghost town, with most of the buildings demolished.
“I discovered then that most of my friends from school had died instantly as they tried to escape,” Kishwar remembers. “The gas stayed low, like a fog that you couldn’t really see as it dispersed, so they just dropped where they were.
“We were not even able to rebuild our house because Saddam’s soldiers were still terrorising us. It was so dangerous to be growing up here. We were always on the run and hungry because we were Kurdish.
“I feel lucky to have made it, to be able to stand here and talk about the chemical bombings, but what happened that day ruined my life. I was diagnosed with breast and lymph cancer in 2015 and had to have a mastectomy. My health has never been good.”
At a new housing development overlooking Halabja, 50-year-old Halala Jalal explains how the cleaner air away from the traffic helps with her breathing problems.
Halala uses a face mask attached to a nebuliser machine installed in her living room. Sometimes, she struggles so much that she cannot take off the mask all day.
“When it happened, we couldn’t actually see anything,” she says. “At first, we didn’t believe the neighbour who shouted, ‘Gas, you need to run!’ But quickly, as we ran out of the city, we all started vomiting.
“My brother tried to drive us away in his car, but he couldn’t see probably because his eyes were streaming from the effects of the gas.”
Halala and her sister walked across the mountains into neighbouring Iran, where they stayed for several months at a camp for Halabja refugees.
Tens of thousands remained in exile for many years, unable to obtain proper treatment following chemical bombing raids which Saddam’s forces also carried out in many other Kurdish villages.
The wards in Halabja’s only hospital overflowed with patients in the days after the attack, so the city’s stadium had to be commandeered.
“One of the worst things has been completely losing my sight in my left eye,” Halala complains, listing the multiple ailments which all date back to the chemical weapons attacks. “Both my eyes were affected; I worry constantly about completely losing my sight.
“Another big problem for me is hypertension, which again I think has been made worse by the weakened state of my body, and all of the medication I have been taking for so long.
“All of us have been affected, all four of my siblings, mostly problems with our eyes and our lungs. Having the chemical weapons hospital here is a big help, but I know I will never have a normal life. I cannot really travel anywhere without breathing apparatus.”
Halabja’s haunted residents live permanently in the shadow of the chemical weapons attack.
The memorial to the victims looms large by the main road as you enter the town, behind which is the museum which retells the events of 1988 in a brutally unflinching model exhibition.
At the back of one glass case is the noose by which Chemical Ali was hanged in 2010 following his conviction for war crimes.
In the main atrium, the names of those who died are engraved on the walls in a list that is constantly being updated as more of those who incurred long-term illnesses pass away.
Headstones at a cemetery overlooked by the border mountain range are dedicated symbolically to individual families, whose descendants congregate for the anniversary each year.
Many have joined a group lawsuit led by an American lawyer against European corporations alleged to have provided the technology, equipment and raw materials for Saddam’s chemical weapons.
After every ceremony, they march past a six-feet-high rusting gas canister leant against one of the marble tombs, a weapon that still affects every family in Halabja.
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