Halabja Chemical Attack 1988: Iraq's Gas Attack on the Kurds

The Halabja chemical attack was the bombing of the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq with chemical weapons by the Iraqi air force on 16 March 1988. Between about 3,200 and 5,000 people, most of them civilians, were killed within hours, and thousands more were injured.

It remains the deadliest chemical weapons attack against a civilian population in history. The attack took place in the last months of the Iran–Iraq War and during the Anfal campaign against Iraq’s Kurds, and it became a lasting symbol of Kurdish suffering under Saddam Hussein.

Background

The Kurds of northern Iraq had fought for autonomy against Baghdad for decades. During the war with Iran, which began in 1980, the main Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Jalal Talabani and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), cooperated with Iran against the Iraqi government.

In March 1987 Saddam Hussein gave his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid sweeping powers over the north. In 1988 al-Majid directed the Anfal campaign, a series of military operations that destroyed thousands of villages, deported their inhabitants and killed large numbers of Kurdish civilians. Human Rights Watch estimated that 50,000 to 100,000 people died in the campaign; Kurdish authorities give a figure of 182,000. Iraq had already used chemical weapons against Iranian troops and against Kurdish villages in 1987.

Halabja, a town of perhaps 40,000 to 70,000 people close to the Iranian border, was captured by Iranian forces and PUK fighters in mid-March 1988.

The attack

On 16 March 1988 Iraqi aircraft first struck Halabja with conventional bombs and then dropped chemical munitions on the town over several hours. A sweet-smelling cloud spread through the streets and cellars where people had sheltered. Victims died from suffocation, convulsions and burns; many were found where they had collapsed, in houses, cars and on the roads leading out of town.

Investigators later concluded that the weapons included mustard gas and nerve agents, most probably sarin and possibly tabun. Those who fled towards Iran carried the injured with them, and many survivors were treated in Iranian hospitals and, later, in Europe.

Iranian authorities brought foreign journalists and photographers to the town within days, and images of whole families lying dead in the streets were published around the world. Iraq denied responsibility and at first blamed Iran. Some Western officials at the time suggested that both sides had used gas, a claim that later research did not support. The weight of evidence, including Iraqi documents captured after 1991 and 2003, shows that Iraq carried out the attack.

Aftermath

The international response at the time was muted. Iraq was seen by many Western and Arab governments as a counterweight to revolutionary Iran, and no sanctions were imposed. After the war ended in August 1988, Iraq launched a final stage of the Anfal campaign, and tens of thousands of Kurds fled to Turkey and Iran.

Survivors suffered long-term effects, including respiratory disease, eye and skin damage, cancers and, according to local doctors, higher rates of miscarriage and birth defects. Many families were never able to identify their dead, who were buried in mass graves.

Justice and recognition

After the fall of Saddam Hussein in the Iraq War, the Iraqi High Tribunal tried former officials for crimes against the Kurds. In January 2010 Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as Chemical Ali, was sentenced to death for the Halabja attack, and he was executed on 25 January 2010. The court described the attack as genocide. In the Netherlands, the businessman Frans van Anraat was convicted in 2005 of complicity in war crimes for supplying Iraq with chemicals used to make mustard gas.

The attack also strengthened international efforts to ban chemical weapons. The Chemical Weapons Convention was opened for signature in 1993 and came into force in 1997.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, a memorial and museum were opened at the entrance to Halabja in 2003. Residents later complained that money given in the town’s name had not improved their lives, and in March 2006 protesters set part of the memorial on fire; it was afterwards restored. Iraqi institutions have recognised the attack as genocide, and several foreign parliaments, including the United Kingdom’s House of Commons in 2013, have recognised the wider Anfal campaign against the Kurds, of which Halabja is seen as part, as genocide.

Myths and facts

A common claim in the years after 1988 was that the gassing of Halabja was the work of Iran, or of both armies. This idea was encouraged at the time by Iraqi denials and by an early United States intelligence assessment, but it has not stood up to later study of the evidence, including captured Iraqi documents and survivor and medical testimony. Historians and human rights investigators today attribute the attack to the Iraqi government.

It is also sometimes said that Halabja was an isolated incident. In fact Iraq used chemical weapons repeatedly against Iranian troops from 1983 onwards and against Kurdish villages in 1987 and 1988, before and after Halabja.

Timeline

• 1987, March: Ali Hassan al-Majid is given authority over northern Iraq.
• 1988, February: The Anfal campaign begins.
• 1988, mid-March: Iranian forces and Kurdish fighters take Halabja.
• 1988, 16 March: Iraqi aircraft bomb Halabja with chemical weapons.
• 1988, 20 August: A ceasefire ends the Iran–Iraq War.
• 1997, 29 April: The Chemical Weapons Convention enters into force.
• 2010, January: Ali Hassan al-Majid is sentenced to death for Halabja and executed.

Why it matters

Halabja showed the horror of chemical weapons used against civilians and the cost of international silence when it happened. For Kurds it is a central memory of persecution, marked each year on 16 March, and it shaped later debates about Iraq, including the Gulf War and the case made for war in 2003.