IRAQ AND IRAQI KURDISTAN

The regional Kurdish government and parliament based in Erbil, elected in May 1992, is treated in this chapter as a self-governing entity, with all due responsibilities for the maintenance of accepted norms of government behavior toward citizens and upholding of human rights standards. This approach by Middle East Watch does not imply recognition of the Kurds' right to self determination, a topic outside the mandate of Human Rights Watch, nor of the legitimacy of the local authorities.

Human Rights Developments

There were no indications during 1993 of improved respect on the part of the regime headed by President Saddam Hussein for the human rights of Iraq's eighteen million citizens. Iraq is a party to most international human rights instruments, but its compliance with their provisions has been only on paper. In the twenty-five years since the Ba'th Party seized power in a coup d'état, for the second time, in 1968, the party relied almost constantly on maintaining control through a system of "terror and reward"-the alliterative expression in Arabic is tarhib wa targhib.

After Iraq's defeat in the Persian Gulf War, in February 1991, the totalitarian nature of the regime became increasingly visible. A rubber-stamp National Assembly remained in existence. But President Saddam came to rely exclusively on a small circle of long-time aides from the ruling Revolutionary Command Council (RCC). All key government posts were held by close relatives of the President. In a new cabinet announced on September 5, 1993, Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan, Saddam's half brother, became Interior Minister; Hussein Kamel Hassan, his son-in-law, was made Minister of Minerals and Industry; and Ali Hassan al-Majid, the president's first cousin, retained the post of Defense Minister. An élite security agency, the Amn al-Khas (Special Security), responsible for the protection of the regime, was headed by Saddam's youngest son, Qusai Hussein.

In a little publicized move disturbing even by Iraq's standards of flagrant disregard for the rule of law, on December 12, 1992, the RCC issued a decree effectively absolving members of the Ba'th Party from criminal responsibility for their actions in defending security and order. As published by the state-run Iraqi News Agency, the decree stated that the RCC "bans the interrogation of members of the Party and popular patrols charged by the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party with the task of conducting security and observation missions under the slogan, 'the People's Guards never tire in establishing security and providing tranquillity for people.'" Members of the Ba'th were already a privileged caste in Iraq, provided with better employment and educational opportunities than non-members. Additionally, many Iraqis told Middle East Watch that, at a time of extreme food shortages and high prices in the country, as a consequence of U.N. sanctions, Ba'th members received favored access to the state-controlled food distribution system.

During 1993, the regime focused its energies at home on preserving its own survival and abroad on securing the lifting of economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations in August 1990, following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and periodically renewed. As sanctions are tied to compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 of March 1991, mandating the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the government avoided confrontation with UNSCOM, the U.N. agency charged with carrying out this task. It also issued a steady stream of propaganda about the effects of sanctions on vulnerable sectors of the Iraqi population.

While sanctions have undoubtedly had a highly negative impact on the health of the Iraqi population, Middle East Watch believes that an exclusive focus on the deleterious effect of U.N.-ordered actions ignores the government's own responsibility to ameliorate the situation, within its capabilities. Iraqcontinued to refuse to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions 706 and 712 (of August and September 1992), which provided, inter alia, for a "food-for-oil" arrangement that could have alleviated hunger in the country. Negotiations between Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, at Geneva in August, broke down under Iraqi insistence that it had met the terms of Resolution 687, and should be permitted to resume oil exports without any constraint. Furthermore, the imposition of internal sanctions against northern Iraq and parts of the south exposed the government's bad faith in claiming to be concerned about the wellbeing of the people.

Economic and military blockades of the Kurdish enclave and of the marshes were maintained throughout the twelve months under review, preventing virtually all food, medicine and fuel from crossing army lines. Smuggling, made possible by rising levels of corruption in all corners of Iraqi society as the economy collapsed, was the principal means of survival for the embattled regions, in which the lives of an estimated four million persons were put at risk by the government actions. U.N. agencies, foreign nongovernmental organizations and-in the case of Kurdistan-the U.S. government took part in large-scale relief operations.

Following the expiration in March of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Iraq and the U.N. on relief arrangements, the activities of international bodies in Iraq became increasingly problematic. In early 1993, three foreign aid workers were killed by unknown gunmen, in attacks blamed on agents of the Baghdad government; visas for the workers of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to enter Iraq became hard to obtain; and U.N. guards charged with protecting relief operations could not be deployed outside Baghdad and the rebel-controlled north.

The blockades of regions of Iraq outside government control were accompanied, particularly in the south, by intensive military action. Scores of villages in the central Amara marshes were regularly shelled, causing thousands of civilian casualties. Marsh villages were burned and their inhabitants dispersed, denied medical care in government facilities or rationed food supplies. Mines placed in the waters of the marshes and on earth embankments protecting drainage schemes caused an untold number of casualties among noncombatants. All such actions were grave violations of international humanitarian law. While rebel groups based in Iran could be accused of similar violations, by using civilian settlements in the marshes as shields for military positions, or by targeting civilians for assassination as was claimed in frequent communiqués, the vast preponderance of abuses were on the government side of the conflict.

A vast hydrological scheme, to divert Euphrates and Tigris waters away from the Amara and Hammar marshes, advanced apace during 1993. U.S. government-released satellite photographs showed that, as of March, a significant part of the marshes had been drained, destroying the habitat and way of life of an ancient people, the Maadan or Marsh Arabs. Between July and September, as summer temperatures rose and water disappeared, an estimated 7,000 Iraqi Shi'a from the marshes region took refuge across the border in Iran. They reported that frequent army attacks on fleeing persons made the crossing highly precarious.

At least 105 Shi'a clerics, some of them very elderly, were rounded up in Najaf and Kerbala after the March 1991 uprising. They were not seen again by friends or relatives; nor did the government respond to enquiries from abroad as to their safety. However, contrary to some fears, Middle East Watch heard in September 1993 that the clerics were probably still all alive, and were being held in an undisclosed detention center. During the year, the regime moved to consolidate its control over Shi'a religious institutions in Iraq, particularly in Najaf and Kerbala. It also attempted to influence the succession to the late Grand Ayatollah Abdul Qasim Musawi al-Khoie, spiritual leader of Iraq's eleven million Shi'a and of many other Shi'a Muslims worldwide, who died in August 1992.

Iraq's maintenance of secret prisons and temporary detention centers, within the premises of security forces and in other locations, such as under public buildings, complicated the task of estimating the number of political prisoners in Iraq or determining their physical and mental condition. U.N. Special Rapporteur Max Van der Stoel estimated in February 1993 that there were over a hundred such detention facilities in different parts of the country. Access by the International Committee of the Red Cross andby other outsiders-except for one visit in 1991 by the Special Rapporteur-was barred.

Based on the rough estimates of Iraqi human rights organizations located abroad as well as information from opposition political parties, the total number of persons being detained without charge was estimated conservatively by Middle East Watch at 10,000 to 12,000. The majority were probably Shi'a men, detained on the grounds of their beliefs, and not because of any specific crimes. However, an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Kurds-men, women and children-taken into government custody during the Anfal military operations, in 1988, and not seen again also remained to be accounted for. Most are believed to have been executed. But reports persisted during 1993 of Kurds being held in secret detention centers camouflaged to disguise their location.

Following a July 1991 amnesty, hundreds-possibly thousands-of prisoners were released later that year. However, many other detainees remained incarcerated beyond their prison terms. The U.N. Special Rapporteur said in February 1993 that he had gathered the names of 153 persons who should have been released in the amnesty, but remained in detention as of that date. A small number of foreigners sentenced to excessively long prison terms for offences such as illegal entry into the country also remained in jail during 1993; among them were three British citizens. Three Swedes and an American were, however, quietly released.

The largest single detention facility in 1993 was believed to be the Radwaniya military camp, west of Baghdad, which was estimated to hold somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 detainees. Most of the Radwaniyya inmates were arbitrarily detained after the 1991 uprisings. Former inmates described to Middle East Watch conditions of gross overcrowding at Radwaniyya, and of periodic public executions. Gross reports of torture, such as the rotation of prisoners strapped to metal drums over open fires, were also reported, but could not be confirmed.

The execution of many persons was reported periodically during the year under review by relatives who either managed to flee the country or were able to communicate to others abroad. In August, hundreds of young Shi'a men held at Radwaniyya were executed, most of them apparently after no legal process. Families in Amara and Nasiriyya said that bodies returned to them sometimes bore marks of torture.

In mid-November, dozens of prominent individuals detained in July and August, apparently on suspicion of participating in plots to overthrow the regime, were executed. Among them were serving and retired military officers. The total number could not be reliably estimated, because of an information blackout on this sensitive subject for the regime; but relatives claimed that the number ran into the hundreds. Many were members of major families from Mosul and Tikrit, part of the Sunni heartland of the country. According to relatives, they were not informed of charges having been brought or of any trials having taken place. Several of the victims had been killed with a bullet to the head, gangster-style. Families were forbidden from burying the victims in family plots or holding mourning ceremonies. As of mid-November, there had been no reference to this wave of executions in the government-controlled Iraqi press.

Many thousands of Iraqis took advantage of the relative ease of travel abroad during 1992 and 1993 to move to Amman, the Jordanian capital, where they waited for visas to enter other countries. Even here, though, they were not safe from the attention of the Iraqi secret police. On December 7, an Iraqi nuclear scientist, Moayyad Hassan al-Janabi, was assassinated in front of his family in Amman by suspected Iraqi agents, as he was attempting to secure refuge abroad. In 1993, following reports of alleged plots to replace President Saddam, fresh travel restrictions on serving and former army officers were imposed.

The military-backed blockade of the Kurdish-held enclave, where approximately 3.5 million people were living, continued during 1993. As a consequence of the blockade, fuel prices in Iraqi Kurdistan were usually twenty times higher than in government-controlled parts of the country, imposing considerable hardship. In a further tightening of these internal sanctions, commencing in July, electricity supplies were cut off by the government to the Dohuk region of the enclave. Random bomb explosionsoccurred frequently during the year, causing many civilian casualties. The bombs were frequently left in crowded public places such as open-air markets, and appeared designed to destabilize the Kurdish authorities and increase the pressure on them to negotiate with Baghdad over the region's return to central control.

Outside the Kurdish enclave, foreign human rights groups gathered credible information about the renewal of pressure on Kurds living in the major city of Kirkuk to evacuate Kurdish-dominated districts. Periodic sweeps through Kurdish districts resulted in many arbitrary arrests, although detainees were often freed by paying bribes to their captors. The "Arabization" of Kirkuk and its surrounding oil fields region has been a longstanding goal of the Ba'th regime.

U.S. Policy

In January, shortly before taking office, President-elect Bill Clinton signaled that his administration would be taking a softer approach to Iraq than had the Bush administration. In a newspaper interview, Clinton said he wanted to "depersonalize" the conflict with Saddam Hussein. Faced with uproar over the implication that the new administration was prepared to tolerate the continuation of Saddam's regime, U.S. officials scrambled to insist that there would be no change of policy. As evidence that nothing had changed, it was pointed out that "air exclusion" zones in northern and southern Iraq remained in force.

As if to prove the new administration's resolve, U.S. aircraft patrolling the "no-fly" zones acted preemptively on several occasions to strike at missile batteries they claimed had threatened allied aircraft monitoring Iraqi military behavior on the ground. In a signal to Baghdad that the new team would not be softer than its predecessor, in June President Clinton authorized the launch of a missile attack on the Baghdad headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's external intelligence service. Eight civilians were killed during the June 26 attack, justified by Washington as a legitimate defensive action, in reprisal for an alleged plot by Iraqi agents to kill former President George Bush during a visit to Kuwait. Middle East Watch considered both the rationale and the legal justification for the missile attack to be dubious.

Washington insisted that the U.S. still sought the replacement of President Saddam Hussein by a regime that promoted a democratic form of government. A clear manifestation of this commitment was meetings Secretary Christopher and Vice President Al Gore held in late April and early May with leaders of the Iraqi National Congress, a multiparty opposition coalition. At these meetings, the administration promised to continue protection for the Kurds, so long as the threat from Saddam Hussein remained potent. It also announced the U.S. intention to seek the establishment of a U.N. commission of inquiry into Iraqi "war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide." The commission could lead to the holding of a Nuremberg-style war crimes tribunal.

U.S. muscle-flexing notwithstanding, U.S. policy toward Iraq did indeed appear to undergo a subtle, but far-reaching, shift during the Clinton administration's first year. Officials told Middle East Watch that policy had evolved toward a medium-term strategy of "containment." The logic appeared to be that, given the administration's overriding preoccupation with the Arab-Israeli peace process, a dramatic change of regime in Iraq could create fresh instability in the Middle East, distracting Syria and Jordan from the task of reaching peace agreements with Israel.

Together with its chief allies on Iraq policy, Britain and France, the U.S. remained admirably forthright in its condemnation of Iraqi human rights violations, politically convenient though this may have been. The administration gave solid support to a tough denunciatory resolution against Iraq, at the U.N. Human Rights Commission, in March, and was supportive of the work of the Special Rapporteur, including his proposal to establish a team of U.N. monitors for Iraq.

In late August, the State Department issued a statement of grave concern about Iraqi government actions in the marshes region. And, on September 8, this was followed by a written protest delivered to Iraq at the United Nations by four of the five Security Council permanent members: Britain, France, Russia and the United States. The four "noted an increasing pattern of repressive and unacceptable actions by the goverenment of Iraq, including the cut-off of electricity to civilians in the north, attacks against humanitarian workers, repression of civilians in the marshes, violations of the no-fly zones, and newmilitary attacks in the south." The note also protested Iraq's lack of cooperation with international humanitarian organizations.

Faced with growing pressures from Arab and other developing countries to relax U.N. sanctions against Iraq, the U.S. led the group of U.N. members who insisted that there could be no let-up until Iraq complied fully with the terms of Security Council resolution 687, covering the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The Right to Monitor

The freedom of private citizens, individually or collectively, or of international organizations, to monitor government violations of human rights does not exist in Iraq. The dissemination of information about state abuses, even those affecting oneself or one's own relatives, is treated extremely severely. All Iraqi human rights organizations are thus either located abroad or, since October 1991, in the Kurdish-controlled enclave of northern Iraq.

The Iraqi government extended unprecedented cooperation to U.N. Special Rapporteur Van der Stoel during the first year of his mandate, to February 1992, permitting him to travel within the country, visit prisons and meet officials. The harshly critical report that Van der Stoel, a former Netherlands Foreign Minister, delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Commission that month terminated all cooperation. Since then, the Special Rapporteur has not been permitted to return to Iraq. (U.N. sensibilities over sovereignty have, unfortunately, prevented him even from taking advantage of the valuable information available in that part of Iraqi Kurdistan outside central government control.) Baghdad likewise made clear that it would not cooperate with U.N. resolutions calling for the deployment in Iraq of human rights monitors by the U.N., as proposed by Van der Stoel. Iraq's obdurate attitude and U.N. budget problems left this important initiative stillborn, as of November 1993.

When the MOU with the United Nations covering relief operations expired, in March 1993, the government refused to negotiate its renewal. An informal understanding permitted U.N. agencies to continue operating in Iraq on the same terms as before, but the practical consequence was to block the deployment of U.N. guards-a lightly armed security contingent-in any part of government-controlled Iraq outside the capital. The relief program, and guards designated to ensure the delivery of supplies and protect U.N. personnel, had been envisaged by some Western governments as a stratagem to ensure that international observers were present in all parts of the country, to guard against further human rights abuses. In practice, this ploy was an utter failure.

In the year under review, no U.N. officials were based in southern Iraq, where the worst abuses took place. When the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs was negotiating to send a mission to the southern region, Iraq conditioned its agreement on team members not attempting to monitor human rights-related matters or to speak about them on their return.

Middle East Watch requested permission in March 1993 to visit the marshes region of southern Iraq, to examine first-hand the claims and counter-claims of the government and rebel groups concerning the draining of marsh waters and forced depopulation of the region. No reply was received from the government. In common with most other nongovernmental human rights organizations, to date Middle East Watch has never been granted official permission to visit Iraq. It has, however, made frequent visits to the Kurdish enclave, entering through Turkey, in the process gathering valuable information about past and current abuses. In 1993, the focus of Iraqi government policy remained the lifting of U.N. trade sanctions; foreign groups interested in documenting the impact of sanctions on vulnerable sectors of the population were thus given ready access to the country and its institutions.

Monitoring by Iraqi exiles of human rights developments in their country was carried out primarily in Tehran, Damascus and London. The Iraqi National Congress, a London-based coalition of opposition parties; the Documental Centre on Human Rights in Iraq, affiliated with the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq; the Organization for Human Rights in Iraq, a private London-based body; and Gulf War Victims, a private relief organization located in Tehran, were the principal sources of information. The last three named all focused on the rights of the Iraqi Shi'a.

The Work of Middle East Watch

After the intensive field activity of 1992 in Iraqi Kurdistan, which had examined the Anfal campaign against the Kurds, in the year under review Middle East Watch's efforts were concentrated on three areas: publication of two reports on the Anfal, examination of captured Iraqi secret police documents transported to the U.S. for safekeeping, and investigation of the lesser-known situation of the Iraqi Shi'a, particularly residents of the southern marshes.

While many foreign reporters and nongovernmental organizations were able to visit Iraqi Kurdistan, thanks to its Western military protection and shared border with Turkey, few were able to conduct independent studies of the Shi'a-the largest religious group in Iraq and one long suppressed by the Sunni-led Ba'th Party regime. Middle East Watch felt it necessary to redress this balance and make its own evaluation of grave reports from opposition parties about developments involving both human rights and humanitarian law in the southern marshes.

Denied permission from Baghdad to make an on-the-spot investigation in southern Iraq, in January and February, a Middle East Watch delegation spent three weeks in Iran meeting Iraqi exiles, activists and refugees; part of this time was spent at the marshes border, in southwest Iran. A report issued in March concluded that a "no-fly" zone imposed by the U.S., Britain and France in August 1992, as a means of protecting the population on the ground, had been of little or no practical consequence. It also alerted the international community to the speed with which the marshes were being deliberately drained by the government as a means of facilitating attacks on local inhabitants, including Shi'a rebels. Based on these findings, Middle East Watch engaged in extensive advocacy work with the U.N. and permanent members of the Security Council, to press for the deployment of U.N. monitors and a halt to the large-scale hydrological works being carried out.

Middle East Watch lobbied for the adoption of the U.S. plan to hold a U.N. commission of inquiry into Iraqi crimes, including genocide. However, as of mid-November, lack of enthusiam from Western allies on the Security Council, and strong opposition from China and other developing countries, had blocked the plan's progress. Of comparable, or even greater, importance to Middle East Watch, however, was the bringing of a Genocide Convention case against Iraq at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, based on the Anfal campaign against the Kurds. A team of researchers made steady progress in evaluating the documents brought from northern Iraq. And legal research was conducted into the theory of the case, to be brought by a putative state party to the convention.

In January, Middle East Watch published its first substantial report on the Anfal, The Anfal Campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan: The Destruction of Koreme. Based on forensic, testimonial and documentary research carried out in 1992, this report was a case study of the fate of one destroyed village in Dohuk governorate, where an on-site massacre occurred in August 1988. A second, overview report on the Anfal, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds, was released in July. A painstaking reconstruction of the seven-month-long Anfal campaign-during which an estimated 100,000 Kurds were taken away and killed at remote locations-the 350-page report marked the summation of eighteen months of research. Included in the media coverage on the subject generated by Middle East Watch's work, was a BBC television documentary on the Anfal based on this book and a cover article in The New York Times Magazine in early January that featured Middle East Watch's work on the Anfal.

Two missions were sent to Iraqi Kurdistan during the year, to recover further consignments of Iraqi documents. Advantage was taken of the presence of a researcher in the region, to investigate current issues such as the Iranian shelling of border villages and to meet with local human rights activists. Approximately four and a quarter tons of documents were shipped out of the region in August, to add to the fourteen tons already in the United States. Out of a total number of pages estimated at four million, about 40 percent had been examined as of mid-November.

Arrests without charge, and subsequent executions after summary trials or, in some cases, no legal procedures, involving Iraqi Shi'a detained after the March 1991 uprising and others accused of plotting against the regime, formed a significant part of Middle East Watch work on Iraq in the latter partof the year. In November, the organization reported the execution of dozens of prominent Sunni Iraqis detained in July and August. Hundreds of Shi'a young men were reportedly executed in August and early September at Prison Number One, at the al-Rashid military base outside the capital.

One focus of research attention, given Iraq's previous use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in 1987 and 1988, was the government's maintenance, or use, of banned weapons of mass destruction in defiance of international treaties and U.N. Security Council Resolution 687. In its examination of the captured documents, Middle East Watch discovered, for the first time, explicit references to the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988. Documents referring to the maintenance of biological weapons stockpiles were also found. In November, Middle East Watch received unconfirmed reports about the use of chemical weapons by Iraqi troops against Shi'a rebels in the Hammar marshes, near Basra. This information was relayed to the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, UNSCOM.