Halabja

I am not even sure where to being for today. It was such an amazing and heart-breaking experience all in one. The day began by meeting one of the long-term couples here and heading with their neighbors to their farm in Halabja. This city is about an hour away from Suli, and the drive took us through some interesting spots. The country and mountains here never cease to amaze me with their beauty and wonder. Once we arrived at the farm, we were warmly greeted by the rest of the family that was no longer staying in Suli. Here we were served water and soda and talked for a while in an outside canopy (complete with couch, tv, swamp cooler, and fan). After staying for a while and chatting, we hit the road again to head to the actual town of Halabja to see the monument that was built to commemorate the gassing attacks from Saddam’s regime. The monument and museum we visited depicted the day when 5,000 people were killed by gassing. All occurred in about a 2 hour time span. It was a small museum that had a few pictures of the city and it’s life prior to Saddam’s rule. The next room was filled with what it looked like as you walked down the street following the gas attacks on March 13, 1988. Bodies of children, adults, animals, and anything living were destroyed. Then we were ushered into a round room that had marble walls with all 5,000 victim’s names. The following two rooms were filled with pictures from the actual event. Heart-wrenching experiences for anyone as you are able to look at the innocence of the people that were gassed. Some survived, but with severe burns or other injuries.

This monument shows the most famous image from this day. This father had 8 daughters and finally had an infant son. When the gas attacks happened, he wanted to protect his son by covering him with his body to save him. Unfortunately, both perished in the attacks.

This is an example of one of many attempts Saddam’s regime took to eradicate the Kurdish people. We passed many villages that had been bulldozed to the ground after his troops marched all of the people in the village to mass graves to kill them. To this day, they are still finding these mass graves and trying to identify the lives lost. We were told that the most recent discovery was about 5 months ago.