Lets counteract the atrocities of Halabja Day

It happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to war, that Saddam Hussein carried out one of his most sinister experiments on the Kurdish population of Halabja. It was March 16, 1988, when the people of Halabja began their day to a barrage of bombs raining down from the sky — chemical cocktails engineered to inflict maximize damage on the civilian population. But the Butcher remained in Baghdad, safely six hours away.

In many ways Halabja Day is the day the Preemptive Love Coalition began. Born as an organization in 2008, our raison d'être began twenty years prior, the chemical capstone to the genocidal campaign against the Iraqi portion of the stateless, scattered Kurdish population.

On the heals of a decades-long, ethnically targeted campaign in which no less that 182,000 Kurds were systemically murdered and un-personed and over 4,000 Kurdish villages were razed to the ground, the Baathists began a regimen of chemical experiments against the population in 1987 and carried out roughly 280 chemical attacks on civilians and Kurdish "freedom fighters" throughout 1987-88.

But Saddam Hussein was not alone in his fight. Some 24 foreign governments - including the United States - were involved in supplying his regime with the chemicals necessary to launch these offensives. Amongst the materials exported pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce were bacillus anthracis, cause of anthrax; histoplasma capsulatam, cause of a disease attacking the lungs, brain, spinal cord and heart; brucella melitensis, a bacteria that can damage major organs; and clotsridium perfringens, a highly toxic bacteria causing systemic illness. Many other pathogenic biological agents were exported to Iraq during the 1980s and through at least November 28,1989—after it was widely-reported that Hussein had used these types of chemicals to attack the Kurdish and Shi'i populations. [1]

But what might otherwise be seen as "old news" is highly relevant to the thousands of children now born with congenital diseases that plague the region these twenty-one years hence. As we tend to have a very limited consciousness and memory of atrocities like these, most of us are only familiar (if at all) with the fact that five thousand men, women, and children died in Halabja on that dreadful day. But another twenty thousand Kurds sustained serious injuries ranging from blindness to lethal cancers and cardiopulmonary diseases. Furthermore, it is locally maintained that many of the fifty thousand remaining Kurds exposed to the gases eventually became symptomatic to varying degrees.

Unfortunately, for all the ways in which the Kurds have played a major role in international politics by way of the "Halabja card" (both in 1990 and 2003 as predication for preemption against Saddam Hussein), remarkably little has been done to re-build infrastructure in the region or to service the medical needs of the population.

And that brings us to today, two decades on, when we, the Preemptive Love Coalition, find ourselves now serving a growing list of largely Kurdish children suffering from congenital heart disease. Halabja-area incidence of pediatric blood diseases, thyroid disorders, and lukemia are all higher than the rest of the population.

How should we account for these victims? Should these casualties be continually appended to the Halabja Day numbers from 1988? Should not their graves be marked alongside those remembered each year on March 16th?

The Preemptive Love Coalition exists today for a different kind of surgical strike — one that leaves in its wake happy, hopeful families celebrating the life-saving heart surgeries they've received through generous donors from around the world.

To give life and hope to an Iraqi child and to counteract some of the likely after-effects of Saddam Hussein's attack on Halabja, visit http://PreemptiveLove.org.

[1] "U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War," Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with Respect to Export Administration, reports of May 25, 1994 and October 7, 1994.