Long mistreated by Iraq, the Kurds need America’s attention now
NY Post
In March 1988, the deadliest use of chemical weapons against a civilian population in history took place.
Ordered by megalomaniacal Saddam Hussein, Iraqi air force planes dropped napalm, mustard gas and other deadly agents on Halabja, a Kurdish city in Iraq’s north. An estimated 5,000 people were killed.
Why would Iraq’s leader attack his own citizens?
First, it was part of a larger campaign, launched in the 1950s, and intensified by Hussein, to target non-Arab minorities in Iraq.
The Kurds are a distinct ethnic community dating back thousands of years. They were unwilling to be “Arabized,” showing remarkable resilience and resistance, hence the malevolent Iraqi plan either to annihilate them or force them into submission and Arabization.
And second, the Kurds harbored an age-old dream of self-determination. Hussein had no intention of offering it, even though Iraq itself was an artificial nation cobbled together by distant Western mapmakers after World War I.
