@@ Waiting for justice in Iran - Evil West and their forgotten victims @@
Arash
October 15, 2005
Waiting for justice in Iran
By Frances Harrison
In July 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranian village of Zardeh was hit by
Iraqi chemical bombs. Frances Harrison returns to the village to see how local people
are coping with the legacy.
It was a smell like rotten herbs they say, the odor of a new form of death.
Early that morning, in July 1988, the people of Zardeh were gathered in the local
shrine.
First they heard the planes flying overhead, nothing out of the ordinary for a
village nestling in the side of a dusty dry mountain dividing Iran from Iraq.
Today everyone mentions how small the sound of the explosions was, oddly
disproportionate with the calamity they unleashed.
Each plane dropped four bombs, weighing 250kg each. The smoke was yellow, green, red,
black. One man said it was like a rainbow, another said it was as if the sky was
covered in plastic clingfilm.
The birds started dropping out of the trees and then the people fell.
Two hundred and seventy five died that morning in a place of worship - many of them
women and children.
Some of those who survived now believe it would have been better to have perished
instantly.
Like 19-year-old Hedieh. Her name means "a gift", but now she is a terrible burden to
her family.
She has to spend four hours a day attached to an oxygen cylinder. It is expensive and
needs refilling every week in the nearest town, three hours drive away.
Hedieh would like to go to university, but that is out of the question.
The most she can do is help her mother shell the walnuts which are now in season. "I
am waiting to die", she says.
"Every day I get steadily worse and the doctors cannot do anything".
Her eyesight, her skin, her breathing have all been affected.
She says she has absolutely no hope for the future. I ask her if there is anything
anyone can do if they want to help her and she shakes her head and cries.
"Whoever did this to me should have the same thing done back to them so they
understand", she says.
Chemical burns
Others have more energy for anger.
Gulpari says she wants to kebab Saddam like he kebabed her sister. It sounds brutal
but that is actually how Gulbanoo's face now looks.
She is horribly disfigured, the burned skin stretched over her nose and her mouth all
chapped.
Gulbanoo holds up a black and white passport photo from before the bombing.
"Look", she says", Saddam is the main reason why my husband left me and my six kids,
because I am no longer beautiful".
Gulbanoo was at the shrine that morning and rushed to the nearest stream to wash off
the chemicals.
As she drank and splashed the water over her face the last thing Gulbanoo remembers
is that the water was hot.
Little did she know that one of the chemical bombs had landed on the reservoir
contaminating the main water supply for the village.
By washing she only injured herself more. Gulbanoo woke up in hospital to learn that
five of her brothers and her father had been killed in the attack.
Health effects
Visiting the shrine, I found myself mobbed by survivors, desperate to tell their
story.
Old women in traditional Kurdish dress lifting up their skirts or opening their
blouses to show me scars and terrible burns all over their bodies.
"Everyone knows the story of Halabja", they said, "but what about our village, for
God's sake do not forget us".
And yet forgotten is what they are.
I was told I was the first journalist, Iranian or foreign to visit Zardeh after the
initial aftermath of the bombing.
It took nine years before local doctors realized almost the entire population of this
village was suffering from the long-term effects of exposure to mustard gas and nerve
agent.
And that means 1500 people ill in a population of 1700, 70 cases of cancer and a 30%
miscarriage rate.
Nobody even knows the environmental damage caused or what the consequences will be
for future generations. This was, after all, the first war in which nerve agent was
used.
'Blind eye'
So why is Saddam not being tried for what he did to villages like Zardeh?
Iran has documented 30 such attacks on its soil, some of them using as many as 300
chemical bombs.
Iranians say it is a clear case of discrimination that Saddam has been charged for
war crimes in Halabja, but not what he did just across the border in Iran.
Western governments supplied Saddam with chemical weapons. After all in the 1980's
Saddam was an ally of the Americans, the Europeans, and the West in general against
Iran.
Eighteen years later the people of Zardeh are still waiting for the record to be put
straight and until it is, they say the trial of Saddam will not be a fair one.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40909000/jpg/_40909980_zardeh203.jpg
Zardeh: The "forgotten" village
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40909000/jpg/_40909982_gulbanoo203.jpg
Gulbanoo's injuries worsened when she washed in contaminated water
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40910000/jpg/_40910056_hediehandmother203.jpg
Unable to go to university, Hedieh helps her mother shell walnuts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4341368.stm
Related:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/
Shaking Hands: Saddam greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald
Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.
U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s WMD Connection to Saddam
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0406g.asp
The Reagan-Saddam Connection: "West Creates These Monsters And When It's Not
Convenient West Covers Them Up"
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/09/1445208
U.S. Links to Saddam During Iran-Iraq War
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4859238