Saddam's hanging came too soon for Kurds

These are bitter times in the town that Saddam Hussein gassed. It's painful enough that many people still suffer the aftereffects of nerve and mustard gas nearly 20 years ago. It's even worse, some lament, to feel largely forgotten and cheated of what they call a rightful revenge. On Dec. 30 the people of the Kurdish Iraqi town of Halabja saw Saddam hanged for crimes against Shiites, but not for crimes against Kurds.

"It is unfair," said Nesreen Shamerani, now 53, who lost her father, two brothers and a sister in the 1988 gassing. "We lost our loved ones, too. They could have waited" to execute Saddam until a Halabja trial could be held, she cried.

There is little sign that comfort is at hand.

Saddam was hanged for the killings of Shiites following a 1982 attempt to assassinate him in the town of Dujail. After his death, a second trial in which he was also a defendant _ for the deaths of 100,000 Kurds in the so-called Anfal campaign _ continued without him in Baghdad.

Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for allegedly using chemical weapons against Kurds, is one of six defendants still on trial for the Anfal campaign.

But the Anfal case does not include the Halabja deaths _ widely considered the biggest use of chemical weapons on civilians in modern times.

An estimated 5,600 people died on one day in March 1988, in a scorched-earth campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion in the north, which Saddam saw as aiding Iran in the final months of its war with Iraq.

Officially, Iraqi prosecution officials say the Halabja deaths are still being investigated and they won't decide whether to file charges until after the inquiry ends.

But on a practical level, a second Kurdish trial does not seem to be a priority even for Kurdish leaders, preoccupied with pushing for larger aims, including making the key city of Kirkuk part of their semi-independent northern zone.

Some Kurdish politicians say people in Halabja must accept that the trials are meant to achieve justice, not revenge.

Many here feel that the lack of attention to their case in the courts is mirrored by indifference to their physical pain.

Shoulders bent, her head hidden behind a black scarf, Nasreen Jaffar is partially blinded in one eye, has scars on her legs and says she has trouble breathing. She says she cries herself to sleep at night because of the pain in her legs.

She remembers holding her children _ two small boys, one in each arm, and her infant daughter strapped to her shoulders _ as she ran, terrified, toward a cave to escape the gas that March 1988 day.

"I had one in each arm and my baby daughter on my shoulders. We found a cave but it was too late. My brother could see that my children were sick. He made me look," she said.

The children died.

For a moment in a recent interview, on a bitterly cold day inside her stark cinderblock cement home, Jaffar stopped speaking. Her hands covered her face and she cried.

"I will never forget the look of fear and pain on my boy's face," she whispered.

Jaffar said she has ceased to see any point in telling her story to foreigners.

"We are like laboratory rats here in Halabja. Everyone comes to interview us and hear our tragedy and look at us, but no one helps us," she said.

Some survivors received treatment in Europe and elsewhere soon after the attack, but they say the help has dwindled over the years.

Their town 150 miles northeast of Baghdad is poor, with two hours of electricity each day and rutted, sandy trails for roads. A ball that children toss around is just a stuffed plastic bag.

Aris Abid Akram, a lanky, mustachioed man, was 20 when the bombs spewed their deadly chemicals, and was the only member of his family to survive, because he happened to be in a basement.

As night fell after the attack, he escaped to Iran, a 10-hour walk across the mountains. When he returned to Halabja four days later, he found the twisted, swollen bodies of his mother, father, seven brothers and three sisters.

"I screamed. I just screamed and screamed," he remembered.

He believes Halabja's victims will never get the satisfaction of telling their stories at a trial because at the time of the attack, the United States was siding with Saddam against Iran.

Indeed, the United States at first hinted Iran was to blame for the Halabja gassing and only later acknowledged Saddam's regime was responsible.

U.S. officials, however, strongly deny they have held up any Kurdish trials because of that past support.

None of that matters to Akram, denied his chance to ever confront his tormentor. He said he and other victims want compensation from Western countries they accuse of aiding Saddam to develop the chemical weapons.

"What have we gotten? Nothing. They can help those who survived. They can help those who are suffering, give us development," said Akram.

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AP correspondent Yahya Barzanji also contributed to this report from Halabja.