The Halabja poison gas attack was an incident on 15 March-19 March 1988 during a major battle in the Iran-Iraq war when chemical weapons were used, allegedly by Iraqi government forces, to kill a number of people in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja (population 80,000). Estimates of casualties range from several hundred to 7,000 people. Halabja is located about 150 miles northeast of Baghdad and 8-10 miles from the Iranian border.

Photo said to have been taken in the aftermath of the attack.

Most accounts of the incident regard Iraq as the party responsible for the gas attack, which occurred during the Iran-Iraq War. For example, the TerrorismCentral (http://www.terrorismcentral.com) web site states, "The poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja was the largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian population in modern times. ...The CW attack began early in the evening of March 16th, when a group of eight aircraft began dropping chemical bombs, and the chemical bombardment continued all night. ... The Halabja attack involved multiple chemical agents, including mustard gas, and the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX."

Some debate continues, however, over the question of whether Iraq was really the responsible party. In part, this controversy stems from the fact that the Halabja incident and other uses of chemical weapons by Iraq occurred while Iraq was receiving military and economic support from the United States. "By any measure, the American record on Halabja is shameful," says Joost R. Hiltermann of Human Rights Watch, which has extensively investigated the Halabja incident. In fact, the U.S. State Department even "instructed its diplomats to say that Iran was partly to blame. The result of this stunning act of sophistry was that the international community failed to muster the will to condemn Iraq strongly for an act as heinous as the terrorist strike on the World Trade Center."

In addition, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) study following the incident concluded, apparently by determining the chemicals used by looking at images of the victims, that Iran was responsible, and this assessment subsequently became the position of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for much of the 1990's. The CIA's senior political analyst for the Iran-Iraq war, Stephen C. Pelletiere, co-authored an unclassified analysis of the war [1] (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/) which contained a brief summary of the DIA study's key points. In a January 31, 2003 New York Times [2] (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60816FC3D5C0C728FDDA80894DB404482) opinion piece, Pelletiere summarized the DIA's findings and noted that because of the DIA's conclusion there was not sufficient evidence to definitively determine whether Iraq or Iran was responsible. In addition, Pelletiere felt that the administration of George W. Bush was not being forthright when citing the incident and squarely placing blame on Iraq since it contradicted the conclusion of the only study conducted by a US intelligence agency.

Perhaps the most complete and extensive analysis of the incident is contained in a post [3] (http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00034.html) to the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq listserv by Cambridge political theorist Glen Rangwala. Rangwala describes how the attack followed the occupation of the city by Iranian and pro-Iranian forces, leading to the conclusion that the gassing was an attack on these forces by the Iraqis. Rangwala also cites studies done by non-governmental organizations that concluded different chemicals were used than the ones cited in the DIA study. This analysis effectively sums up the prevailing view of the event, that Iraq was indeed responsible and that the DIA analysis is in error.

Thus, while some facts surrounding the incident remain murky, most evidence and analyses indicate that the gas attack was an Iraqi attack on Iranian forces, pro-Iranian Kurdish forces and Halabja's citizens during one of the major battles of the Iran-Iraq War.

• Also see Al-Anfal Campaign

External links

• Glen Rangwala, Re: Halabja (http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2002/msg00034.html) Post to CASI listserv
• Lessons Learned: Iran-Iraq War (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/docs/3203/). Army War College unclassified report by Dr. Stephen C. Pelletiere and LTC Douglas V. Johnson II
• Section of a CIA report on Iraq Weapons of Mass destruction program relating to Halabja (http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.htm#05)
• The 1988 Chemical Weapons Attack on Halabja, Iraq (http://www.terrorismcentral.com/Library/Teasers/ChemIraq.html) - Christine M. Gosden, Professor of Medical Genetics, University of Liverpool
• The Iraqis' Use of Poison Gas (http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/05feb03ti.html)
• Joost R. Hiltermann, "America Didn't Seem to Mind Poison Gas (http://www.iht.com/articles/83625.html)," International Herald Tribune, January 17, 2003.
• Stephen C. Pelletiere, "A War Crime or an Act of War? (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html)," New York Times, January 31, 2003.

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