Joost R. Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), xxxii + 314 pp.
Choman Hardi, Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2011), xiv + 217 pp.

Both of these books analyze the usage of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein's Iraq against the Kurds during the notorious Anfal campaign at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988 and against the city of Halabja on March 16, 1988. Both authors have done extensive field work on their subjects and make comparisons with other genocides, especially the Jewish Holocaust, but also other events such as the atomic bombing of Japan, which I do not think should be considered as a case of genocide. Thus, both authors provide valuable primary accounts of man’s inhumanity towards others and stand out as major contributions to the necessary analysis of these most unfortunate events.
Hiltermann is a Dutch practitioner and scholar who has done considerable field work in Iraq for Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, while Hardi is a Kurdish woman with a Ph.D. from a British university whose research focused on the mental health of Kurdish women refugees who survived the Anfal campaign and whom she interviewed during a return to her native land. Commendably, both studies also are written in jargon free, reader friendly styles.
Hiltermann’s title about the “gassing of Halabja” seems to suggest a more narrow focus than Hardi’s title about women survivors of the Anfal in general. In practice, however, Hiltermann ranges much more broadly over such other related issues involving Iraq’s usage of chemical warfare in the Iran-Iraq war that raged from 1980-1988; the response to the war by the United States, United Nations, and others; Lebanon in 1983; Iraq’s attack on Kuwait and the resulting brief war in 1991, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions in the 2000s, among others. Thus, the two books complement each other instead of simply covering the same ground.
As Hardi explains, the “Anfal consisted of a series of eight [Iraqi] military offensives that annihilated Kurdish rural life between February and September 1988” (p. 13). Although most Kurdish politicians claim that 182,000 Kurds died as a result, Hardi states that “I believe the number is closer to 100,000” (ibid.). Hiltermann says “perhaps as many as 80,000 Kurds, the vast majority civilians, were thus killed” (p. 113). Hardi claims that “thousands of civilians died immediately” (p. 19) in Halabja, while Hiltermann writes that the figure is “thought to be several thousand” (p. 2). Most other scholars have written that approximately 5,000 died in Halabja. Hiltermann explains the Iraqi rationale for the Anfal as retribution for “the enemy within, the treasonous Kurds, a fifth column of ‘saboteurs’ and their families” (p. 106) who had supported the existential Iranian enemy.
Criticizing those in the world who tilted towards Iraq, Hiltermann argues “that however unpleasant the alternatives, the decision to support Iraq and turn a blind eye to its worst atrocities had very specific, highly deleterious consequences, the blowback of which continues to haunt us today” (p. 18). He concludes that “the Reagan administration’s wartime collusion with Iraq and its virtual silence over Halabja amounted to a green light that culminated in genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan” (p. 17). The United Nations also does not escape his scathing condemnation: “The Security Council president issued a weak consensus statement that strongly condemned chemical weapons use but refrained from naming Iraq as the culprit” (p. 61), “even if Iraq alone was guilty” (p. 152). Why did the UN take such a weak position? “The Council’s feeble rebuke underscored its growing fear of an Iranian victory” (p. 73). Thus, “Iraq was able to gas with impunity until the end of the conflict, arguably gassing the Iranians to the negotiating table” (p. 156). “Iraq’s leadership thus understood once again that, literally, it had gotten away with murder” (p. 98).
The United States’ “Fixing the Evidence” (pp. 183-205) to blame both Iraq and Iran for gassing Halabja also stemmed from its fear of an Iranian victory and ironically served as a prelude to its “cherry picking the evidence” to rationalize its attack on Iraq more than a decade later in 2003. Hiltermann explains that “to the extent that such misinterpretation was deliberate, it may have been part of a calculated effort to relieve pressure on the Iraqi regime by shifting responsibility for gas attacks at least partially onto Iranian shoulders, taking advantage of the fog of war, independent observers’ lack of access to the battlefield, and public animus against Iran” (p. 181). CIA analyst Stephen Pelletiere went so far as to shamelessly and falsely contend “that it was ‘common knowledge’ in the profession that it was Iran that had used chemical weapons at Halabja, but that the evidence was contained in a classified annex to his co-authored 1990 book, which in turn was based on the secret War College study” (p. 202). What nonsense!
Thus, concludes Hiltermann, “Washington’s wink-and-nod policy amounted to culpable complicity” (p. 243). Or as Peter Galbraith, who was then a Senate staffer following developments in Iraqi Kurdistan, concluded: “twisting the facts to fit your purposes as the Reagan administration did, that [italics in the original] is evil” (p. 205). Interestingly, Hiltermann also points out that the Iranian Kurdish city of Serdasht “was indeed the first gassing of a town in history. As such, it foreshadowed the Halabja attack the next year” (p. 84), but was fated to be forgotten while Hababja will always be remembered.
Chillingly but accurately, Hiltermann illustrates why the Kurds so many years later remain adamant about defending their newly-found autonomy from Baghdad: “Even now, deep in the recesses of the Kurdish unconscious still lies this fear, equivalent to an unmovable conviction, that no central government can ever be trusted not to repeat such abominations” (pp. 225-226). He adds also that “the international community’s inability to comprehend the transformative significance of Anfal and Halabja to the Kurds is roughly equivalent to failing to grasp how the events of 9/11 affected the American psyche, or how crushing were any of the 20th century genocides to those who survived them” (pp. 226-227).
Hiltermann does allow a few minor errors to slip into his otherwise solid analysis, claiming, for example, that the Iranian Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Qasemlou “was assassinated by Iranian agents in Vienna in April 1989” (p. 163). The actual date was July 13, 1989. He also confusingly tells his readers that in 1946 Mulla Mustafa Barzani helped to establish “the KDP [Kurdistan Democratic Party], which promptly split into Iraqi and Iranian wings” (p. 86). Actually, the famous Iranian Kurdish leader Qazi Muhammed founded what became to be known as the KDP-Iran (KDP-I) in September 1945, while Barzani established his better known KDP on August 16, 1946, famously the day his son and the current president of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, Massoud Barzani, was born. Hiltermann’s statement that “in the 1980s the Cold War was waning” (p. 148) is misleading since it actually heated up in the early 1980s during Reagan’s first term before finally waning in the late 1980s.
After proclaiming the Anfal campaign “a case of genocide” (p. 30), Hardi’s more nuanced study analyzes the various ways women were affected by it and how many of them managed to survive. She examines such issues as sexual abuse faced by women who were arrested and detained in camps, the situation of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), the ordeal of gas survivors, the challenges of rebuilding life after the devastation, and the mental health consequences of all this. Hardi notes how “in Kurdish society, rape brings disgrace on the victim . . . and even [being] killed by her own relatives. Women are held responsible for the crimes committed against them” (p. 60). In one particularly humiliating experience, “the [Iraqi] soldiers put a woman’s undergarment on a stick and raised it in the air. ‘Hay allam Akrad,’ they shouted: This is the Kurdish flag” (p. 63). In another poignant scene, Hardi describes how just after giving birth, “Meena was then shivering from cold and exhaustion. Her mother, Hajar, lay down on top of her and covered her like a blanket because they had nothing else to cover her with” (p. 69).
As for those who survived, “the women I interviewed mentioned money, being helped by others and luck” (p. 72). “Sometimes survival was random and outside the individual’s control. Freezing to death, falling off a mountain during flight and falling ill without access to medication in the camp, being gassed, or poisoned were unlucky events that could not be prevented” (p. 102). “Since the Kurdish parties had been an ally of Iran during the Iraq-Iran war, Iran was more receptive to refugees compare to Turkey,” (p. 86) and even transported some of them “by Iranian vehicles to safety” (p. 80).
Hardi also points out how “farming never recovered since Anfal. . . . Lack of investment in the rural areas went hand in hand with political instability during the [Kurdish] civil war [1994-1998], droughts, and importing cheap goods from abroad. The UN Oil for Food program also contributed to this because it provided free food stuff to Iraqi civilians in return for oil. The various factors have meant that there is no market for local goods and it is too expensive to produce” (p. 155). Furthermore, “the international community has not yet acknowledged its responsibility towards the survivors who are victims of not only a brutal dictatorship but also of Western companies that sold chemical precursors to Baghdad throughout the 1980s” (p. 120).
In conclusion, both books can be read for great understanding of how supposed real politik can lead to not only a travesty of justice, but simply bad foreign policy. Fortunately, Hiltermann and Hardi have produced testimonies to document this situation and thus will provide necessary reading for those who want to understand better what really occurred.

Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University and most recently has published the 2nd edition of his The Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).