Thirty-seven years ago, on this very day, at exactly 11:35 AM, several bomber aircraft of the Ba’athist Iraqi regime, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, circled over the small city of Halabja in Kurdistan. They dropped their first chemical bombs on children, women, men, the elderly, and the entire city.
In the early hours of that fateful day, more than five thousand people perished, were wounded, or suffered poisoning. Halabja became the Hiroshima of Kurdistan, leaving a deep, bloody wound on the people of the region. The Ba’athist government committed numerous crimes against the people of Iraq, particularly in Kurdistan. During the infamous Anfal campaign, thousands were executed and buried in mass graves in central Iraq, while cities and thousands of villages were destroyed. People were forcibly relocated to camps that resembled military barracks rather than settlements.
Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist regime carried out these crimes against humanity in Kurdistan while the two global superpowers of the time the former Soviet Union and the United States maintained extensive political, economic, and even cultural relations with his government.
During the war against the Kurdish people and the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein’s regime was fully armed with weapons of mass destruction in exchange for Iraq’s oil revenues. Western countries and corporations, which claimed to uphold democracy and human rights, participated in arming Saddam Hussein and the Ba’athist government with chemical and mass-killing weapons. Without their cooperation and their later silence regarding the use of chemical weapons the crimes of Halabja would not have been possible.
When Halabja was bombed with chemical weapons, what is referred to as the “international community” remained silent in the face of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities and the chemical bombing of an entire city and its inhabitants. Even in the years and decades following this crime, no real investigation was conducted against the governments and companies that facilitated the Ba’athist regime’s access to chemical bombs. Instead, they remained silent and hid the evidence.
Today, thirty-seven years after the massacre of five thousand people in Halabja, the Arab nations, Saddam Hussein’s Western supporters, and the corporations involved have concealed their records of collaboration with the Ba’athist regime and have even avoided discussing it in the media.
The birds and animals that suffocated and died in the Halabja chemical bombing have no graves or markers, but perhaps today, melodious partridges sing a mournful song for the birds and creatures that perished alongside the five thousand human victims of the attack.
The time of 11:35 AM on this day, thirty-seven years ago, will forever remain in the history of war crimes. The people of Halabja and Kurdistan rebuilt their city, while Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist government rotted in their graves.
These days also mark the anniversary of the martyrdom of the Peshmerga fighters of the Shwan Battalion, one of Komala’s combat units. When the attack on Halabja occurred, this battalion was resting in the border village of Biyara. As the attack began, they attempted to leave the war zone and retreat to a safer area. However, they faced two major obstacles: first, the toxic gases that had spread across the region severely weakened their ability to move; second, the bridge that could have facilitated their retreat was seized and destroyed by Iranian regime forces.
Left with no choice, the Peshmerga of the Shwan Battalion retreated towards Lake Sirwan, where Komala’s reinforcement forces awaited them on the other side. Despite attempts to send rescue boats, several fighters lost their lives. Eventually, the battalion engaged in a fierce and unequal battle with regime forces in the reeds by the lake. The exhausted and wounded Peshmerga fought to their last bullets. Sixty-eight fighters lost their lives in this incident twelve were captured, and eleven were later executed after enduring brutal torture in the prisons of the Islamic regime.
On the 37th anniversary of the Halabja chemical bombing and the martyrdom of the Shwan Battalion Peshmerga, as well as the thousands of victims from Halabja and its surrounding areas, we pay tribute to their memory. We hope for a day when war and insecurity, torture and imprisonment, poverty and inequality sustained by the capitalist system are replaced with peace, freedom, prosperity, and equality among all people, the ideals for which the fallen comrades of the Shwan Battalion sacrificed their lives.