Idolizing Suffering

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Halabja became a poignant symbol of all that was evil in Saddam's regime. Bush, Powell, Rice all focused upon Halabja as an example of both the threat that Saddam Hussein represented to the world, and the terrible suffering that had to be rectified through invasion. The Bush Administration did not have to work too hard to find a sympathetic ear for its reading of the Halabja massacre. Human rights groups and other international aid organizations had long cited Halabja as an example of genocide, and used it to call for sanctions prior to the Gulf War. The Halabja poison gas attacks, which killed as many as 8,000 Kurds through the use of mustard gas and nerve agents, were explained as an ethnic assualt.

This reading conveniently papered over the US role in the wider conflict of which Halabja became a horrifying part. In March 1988, Iraq was in the midst of major fighting in the Iran-Iraq War, heavily supported by the US. On March 15, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Iranian Royal Guard forces took Halabja. The Iraqi army unleashed its terrible chemical attack the following day, which succeeded both in ousting Iranians from their foothold in the region and crushing Kurdish resistance. It was against this complicated international backdrop that Saddam was able to operate, and in which the Kurds suffered the focus of his brutal rule.

Through the extreme simplification of this scenario, the Kurds are portrayed today only as the great victims of a barbaric Third World regime. But last week local Kurds made a bid to rewrite that role. Protesters arrived early Thursday morning, the 18th anniversary of the Halabja attack, countering the memorial ceremony arranged for the day. The protest quickly escalated, and the local protesters stormed the museum, smashing windows, display cases, and eventually setting it on fire.

It was in sharp contrast to the scene three years earlier, when Colin Powell was in attendance for the Halabja Museum's inauguration ceremony. On that occassion, Powell defined the museum's purpose: "By your actions here at this spot and by the construction of this museum, you have made sure that you will never forget but above all, the world will never forget. And I will always remember Halabja."

But Halabja's protesters appear to object to their inauguration as eternal victims. Some may ask, why attack a museum that honors the victims of Saddam's regime? The protesters realize, however, that such memoriams to suffering are directly at odds with their interests. The New York Times quoted one protester as saying "That monument over there has become the main problem for Halabja...All the foreign guests are taken there, not to the city." Another young Halabjan told the times that she came both to remember her sister who was killed in the attacks and to stop the PUK from taking advantage of the ceremony. "Kurdish officials used Halabja to gather money...Millions of dollars has been spent, but nothing has reached us."

Such complaints are worth considering. The international focus on the Halabja attacks creates problems for Halabjans, not only when Kurdish politicians use it cynically for their own political or financial gain. The problem, unfortunately, runs far deeper. To a significant extent, Kurdish political groups have been able to exercise relative power and autonomy in Iraq due to the victim status that tragedies such as Halabja garnered them. Thus Kurdish politics relies upon currying its darling status with the international community, based almost entirely upon victimhood. Kurdish frustration with the memorial museum serves to highlight that this peculiar dynamic has limited Kurdish control over its own leadership--and that their present and future interests must compete with (and lose out to) the glorification of their suffering. That the international community is tripping over itself to transform sites of horrible atrocities into reverent memorials and places of pilgrimmage, all in the name of representing the local residents, provides some indication of just how far the distance is between the aims of such humanitarian campaigns and the reality for the local objects of their campaigning.

The New York Times ran a correction to its story yesterday. The article had originally run under the headline, "Kurds Destroy Shrine in Rage at Leadership." The Times explained that it had "misidentified" the building that was destroyed, which was a museum dedicated to the people killed in the 1988 attacks, not a shrine. The Times may, unwittingly, have been more accurate the first time. Three days after the riot, the Swedish Left Party called for the Halabja anniversary to become an international day against weapons of mass destruction. The Kurds may have to destroy further golden calves of western humanitarianism if they are to be any more than international idols of suffering.