Longtime victims of Iraq, Kurds understand case for war
Sunday February 09, 2003By SANDRA MARQUEZ
Associated Press Writer
SAN DIEGO (AP) While Americans waver on war with Iraq, Kurdish refugees in the United States have no doubt about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
The Kurds, a persecuted ethnic minority that fell victim to a deadly nerve gas attack by Iraqi forces in 1988, say they know the dictator at his core.
The attack, considered the biggest single chemical assault on a civilian population in history, killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds, left survivors struggling with blindness and ruptured lungs, and sent thousands into exile.
At supermarkets, mosques and social halls in San Diego and Nashville, Tenn. home to the nation's largest Kurdish communities talk among the refugees now centers on the possibility of war. Support for Saddam's ouster is high, but many worry about civilian casualties and a possible retaliatory attack on Kurds remaining in Iraq.
``I am very happy that the United States might attack Iraq,'' said Mohammed Aziz, 38, a survivor of the gas attack who now lives in Nashville. ``Saddam Hussein killed many people, and he would do it again ... The only thing I hate to see is more people die.''
Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell cited the Iraqi president's persecution of the Kurds in his speech before the United Nations Security Council.
``Saddam Hussein's use of mustard and nerve gas against the Kurds in 1988 was one of the 20th century's horrible atrocities,'' Powell said.
Aziz lost 15 relatives, including his father, two uncles and a brother, when Iraqi war planes pelted his hometown of Halabja with sarin and mustard gas. His elderly mother, left blind by the attack, still resides in the town. He fears she could be victimized again.
Aziz suffered permanent respiratory problems because of his exposure to the chemical weapons and is on a hospital transplant list waiting for a new pair of lungs.
The experience of the Kurdish people offers evidence that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and is willing to use them against his enemies, Aziz said.
Despite the attack, some Kurds complain that the world has long ignored their suffering.
``Nobody knew who the Kurds were in 1988. All those people got killed, nobody cared. Now it's a little bit in their interest, they do care,'' said Chinar Hussein, an Iraqi Kurd who emigrated to the San Diego area in 1992.
Aziz recalled how planes attacked the town with conventional bombs all day on March 16, 1988. The bombing stopped in the early evening and residents attempted to flee for the border with Iran.
The planes suddenly returned, Aziz said, and he was overcome with a smell he compared to rotten cucumbers. The children reacted first, falling to the ground, their eyes swelling first with tears, then blood.
``Parents didn't even try to save them,'' Aziz said. ``They were trying to escape for their own lives.''
Chinar Hussein said Kurds have suffered in other ways under Saddam's regime.
``Everybody has a different kind of story,'' she said. ``I was forced to leave my house, my country, live in a camp for four years. That is a torture.''
The Kurds, a stateless people scattered over four countries Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria have a long history of persecution, said Richard Dekmejian, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Southern California.
Denied a homeland promised after World War I by the allies, the Kurds have been deemed a destabilizing threat by some Middle Eastern governments because of their aspirations for autonomy, Dekmejian said. In Turkey, for example, speaking Kurdish is punishable by death.
The deadly gas attack came after Saddam accused the Kurds of supporting Iran in the war between the countries.
``The lesson of this whole thing, the whole episode of Kurdish struggle for survival, is that they should be given independence,'' Dekmejian said. ``But no one is going to give it to them, and they know it.''
Kurdish migration from Iraq to the United States has long mirrored the group's failed uprisings and subsequent retaliatory attacks.
The first major wave of 2,000 people arrived in the mid-1970s after a 15-year effort to gain autonomy from the Iraqi government. The refugees settled mostly in San Diego and Nashville, due in part to resettlement efforts by government agencies. They were followed by relatives and friends. About 6,000 people now live in each area.
In 1996, another 5,000 Kurdish refugees were admitted to the United States through Guam.
In the San Diego area, the refugees found climate and geography similar to their homeland. Many took up agricultural jobs or opened small businesses.
Alan Zangana, director of Kurdish Human Rights Watch, a national organization providing counseling and other services to Kurdish refugees, settled in the suburb of El Cajon in 1988. He fled Iraq after government officials tried to force him to join the political party of Saddam.
``In Iraq, a person does not have a right,'' said Zangana, 46. ``Basically, they abuse you. They jail you.''
(