For Kurds, a Long Wait for Justice

Hussein Begins Trial Today for 1988 Offensive That Used Chemical Attacks

DAHUK, Iraq, Aug. 20 -- Mustafa Arab Youssef walked up the grimy, stone steps of the crumbling, sand-colored Nizarkeh fort. As he reached the second floor, his neighbor Haji Mohammed pointed at dark patches on the cracked floor and said, "When I first came in 1988, there were bloodstains here."

Youssef, 35, who wore a gaunt look, a thin beard and oil-stained clothes, nodded in agreement and walked inside a room with a stove, a refrigerator and peeling walls. He gazed up at the ceiling: Thin, black ropes dangled from a long, rusted hook. "Saddam's men used to hang people here to beat them and make them talk," said Youssef, as his 3-year-old son Cihad grabbed his hand.

This room is now Youssef's home, and he has left the ropes hanging from his ceiling as a reminder of what he and other Iraqi Kurds endured during Saddam Hussein's infamous 1988 Anfal campaign, in which poison gas was dropped from the skies and hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed, tortured, maimed or displaced. Youssef, too, was beaten with clubs at Nizarkeh, leaving his right arm lame and curved.

On Monday, Youssef and his neighbors in Nizarkeh, now home to scores of poor Kurdish families, plan to tune their television sets to watch the Anfal trial of Hussein; Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known here as "Chemical Ali," who ran the campaign; and six other defendants. The trial is to be held in Baghdad. Both Hussein and Majeed are charged with genocide, while the others are charged with crimes against humanity.

"He destroyed us. Our families and neighbors are all gone. I will be very happy when I see Saddam in that cage," Youssef said, referring to the courtroom box with steel bars where defendants sit.

Across the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the Anfal trial is raising a flurry of expectations and emotions. In interviews Sunday, survivors said they were living proof of Hussein's atrocities, and, in their minds and hearts, they have already convicted him. Still, the trial, they said, is the biggest development in 18 years to bring the justice that has long eluded them.

"This is a gift from God," said Haji Musa Mohammad, 76, who spent weeks in several concentration camp-like detention centers and lost seven relatives, including a son, during the attacks. "Saddam made us cry for our children. Tomorrow, we're going to laugh."

But the trial, survivors said, is also a painful reminder of the immense, and irreversible, losses they've suffered. A 60-mile drive from Dahuk to the village of Chemanke on Sunday, partly along the road Hussein's army controlled during the attacks, unveiled a Kurdish landscape still reeling from the Anfal campaign.

Shattered villages lie silent, their stone homes left in ruins. Sons grow up without fathers, and widows struggle to provide for their children. Women remain unmarried in the hope their husbands, who disappeared 18 years ago, will miraculously return.

Headaches, coughs, burn marks and other ailments plague those who were exposed to poison gas. Grown men, including peshmerga fighters, cry openly when they speak about Anfal, while children have grown up with nightmares and other psychological problems.

"We're nearing justice, but it's too late," said Rizgar Mohgadeh Basher, 24, whose father was taken away by Hussein's soldiers and never seen again.

Anfal, which in Arabic means "the Spoils," is the name of the eighth sura of the Koran. The eight-stage campaign lasted 6 1/2 months and followed a long history of attacks against the Kurds by Hussein's Baath Party, which viewed the Kurds as a threat to their power.