Saddam's gas attacks claim more victims

Times:

Hadi Khosorojerdi lies on his bed in a Tehran hospital, a drip in his arm. In a weak, breathless voice the former Revolutionary Guard recalls the day in August 1987 that he was hit by shrapnel on Majnoon island during the Iran-Iraq War. As he lay unconscious on the ground, the Iraqis unleashed mustard gas.

Mr Khosorojerdi was 19. Amazingly he survived, recovered and went on to marry and have two children. But in recent years he has developed severe respiratory problems and nine months ago was admitted to Sasan hospital. “I trust in God,” he replies when asked his prognosis, but the nurse shakes her head sadly. “He has lung cancer,” she says quietly. “He will die.”

Mr Khosorojerdi is not alone in his plight. Two dozen other victims of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapon attacks fill the hospital's specially designated wards — most are middle-aged men but there are women too. All are slowly dying.

Across Iran thousands more cases are emerging each year because the effects of mustard gas poisoning can take a decade or two to surface. Although the war ended 18 years ago, at least 55,000 Iranians are now being treated. Another 40,000, mostly civilians, need help but lack documents proving that they are war victims. A million Iranian soldiers and civilians may have been exposed to chemical agents during the 1980-88 conflict.

“The number of new cases is unbelievable,” says Shahriar Khateri, of the Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support. “We have new ones every day.”

Iraqi Kurds yesterday commemorated the 20th anniversary of Saddam's infamous chemical weapon attacks on his own citizens in the town of Halabja, in northern Iraq, but Dr Kahteri says that the Iranians are truly “the forgotten victims of Saddam's war crimes” because of their country's pariah status.

...

Saddam launched more than 350 chemical weapon attacks across the border. Iraq has since admitted using 1,800 tonnes of mustard gas and 740 tonnes of the highly toxic nerve agents sarin and tabun. It was the worst use of mustard gas since the First World War and the first use of nerve agents. Iranian soldiers often had inadequate masks and little detection and decontamination equipment. Civilians had nothing.

...

Iran earned its pariah status just as Saddam did. Still, they did not deserve to be victims of Saddam's war crimes. The crimes against the Kurds were even more heinous.

Those who are saying that the world would have been better off if we had left him in charge of Iraq are engaged in wishful thinking. He was ready to rebuild his sick arsenal as soon as the UN backed away from the inspection regime, which it was prepared to do as the "Oil for Food" scam demonstrates.

We were right to liberate Iraq and that fact that it has been harder to defeat the insurgency than we anticipated does not make the liberation wrong. Those who make the bogus claim that the liberation was a disaster know nothing of warfare or history.