IRAQ: Survivors of Saddam's Anfal campaign are glued to his latest trial, but they have already convicted him, writes F Sudarsan Raghavan in Dahuk, Iraq
Mustafa Arab Youssef walked up the grimy, stone steps of the crumbling, sand-coloured Nizarkeh fort. As he reached the second floor, his neighbour Haji Mohammed pointed at dark patches on the cracked floor and said: "When I first came in 1988, there were bloodstains here."
Youssef (35), gaunt with a thin beard and oil-stained clothes, nodded in agreement and walked inside a room with a stove, a refrigerator and peeling walls. He gazed up at the ceiling: thin, black ropes dangled from a long, rusted hook. "Saddam's men used to hang people here to beat them and make them talk," he said as his three-year-old son, Cihad, grabbed his hand.
This room is now Youssef's home, and he has left the ropes hanging from his ceiling as a reminder of what he and other Iraqi Kurds endured during Saddam Hussein's infamous 1988 Anfal campaign, in which poison gas was dropped from the skies and hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed, tortured, maimed or displaced. Youssef, too, was beaten with clubs at Nizarkeh, leaving his right arm lame and curved.
Yesterday, Youssef and his neighbours tuned their television sets at Nizarkeh, now home to scores of poor Kurdish families, to watch the Baghdad Anfal trial of Saddam, as well as Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known here as "Chemical Ali", who ran the campaign, and six other defendants. Both Saddam and al-Majeed are charged with genocide, while the others are charged with crimes against humanity.
"He destroyed us. Our families and neighbours are all gone. I will be very happy when I see Saddam in that cage," Youssef said, referring to the courtroom box with steel bars where Iraqis charged with crimes sit.
Across the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the Anfal trial is raising a flurry of expectations and emotions. Survivors say they are living proof of Saddam's atrocities, and, in their minds and hearts, they have already convicted him. Still, the trial, they say, is the biggest development in 18 years to bring the justice that has long eluded them.
"This is a gift from God," said Haji Musa Mohammad (76), who spent weeks in several concentration camp-like detention centres and lost seven relatives, including a son, during the attacks. "Saddam made us cry for our children. Tomorrow, we're going to laugh."
But the trial, survivors say, is also a painful reminder of the immense, and irreversible, losses they've suffered. A 60-mile drive from Dahuk to the village of Chemanke on Sunday unveiled a Kurdish landscape still reeling from the Anfal campaign.
Shattered villages lie silent, their stone homes in ruins. Sons grow without fathers, and widows struggle to provide for their children. Women remain unmarried in the hope their husbands, who disappeared 18 years ago, will miraculously return.
Headaches, coughs, burn marks and other ailments plague those who were exposed to poison gas. Grown men, including peshmerga fighters, cry openly when they speak about the Anfal, while children have grown up with nightmares and other psychological problems.
"We're nearing justice, but it's too late," said Rizgar Mohgadeh Basher (24), whose father was taken away by Saddam's soldiers and never seen again.
Anfal, which in Arabic means "the Spoils", is the name of the eighth sura of the Koran. The eight-stage campaign lasted 6½ months and followed a long history of attacks against the Kurds by Saddam's Baath Party, which viewed the Kurds as a threat to its power.
Human rights groups estimated that as many as 100,000 Kurds were murdered.
The trial is expected to hinge on evidence from official documents, survivor testimonies, and forensic data from unearthed mass graves across Iraq. In recent days, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch has expressed concern about whether Iraq's tribunal is capable of conducting a trial of this magnitude in a fair manner. The group said it found "serious shortcomings" in the way the tribunal handled the earlier Dujail trial, in which defendants allegedly ordered the murder of villagers following a failed plot to assassinate Saddam.
The group said Iraqi judges and lawyers showed little understanding of international criminal law and the court's administration of the trial was "chaotic and inadequate." Two US officials close to the tribunal, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed confidence in the court's ability to carry out the Anfal trial, and said the Iraqi lawyers and judges have received proper training in conducting a genocide trial.
To Amina Khalid Saleem (54), Saddam is already guilty. She still vividly remembers the morning the chemical bombs pounded her village of Siareh nestled in the foothills of Gara Mountain.
"It entered my nose, and I started coughing, and something yellow began to seep from my mouth," said Saleem, a short, strong-voiced woman in a blue skirt and white head scarf. "Everything around me turned yellow, and it became dark."
She placed a wet rag against her face and escaped into the mountains, where she and her husband took shelter in caves. As she remembered, she broke down into tears. "I still have headaches until now," she said.
- (LA Times-Washington Post service)