halabja and its aftermaths

Last week I heard Joost Hilterman, the International Crisis Group's Middle East Project Director, speak about his new book on the Halabja gas attack—A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja. The talk was excellent, if very bleak (audio available here) and I'm partway into the book already—far enough to recommend it to anyone interested in Iraq, the Kurdish question, the Iran-Iraq War, and the tainted roots of America's current involvement in the region. Hilterman is particularly good on the issue of how American complicity (remember that famous Rumsfeld handshake?) with and tolerance for Saddam Hussein's crimes in the 1980s helped chip away at US credibility in the region,with predictable consequences for later foreign policy adventures. He also provides a damning account of the spread of the accusation that Iran too had used chemical weapons at Halabja--a charge for which Hilterman finds no evidence, but which was championed by US intelligence either through deliberate misinformation or a case of anti-Iran prejudice so severe that it overcame the lack of evidence.

(nb: Verbal Privilege hearts ICG, so much that we once applied for a job there. Have had excellent impressions from encounters with their staff--right up to the president, former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, who once took the time to meet and talk for several hours with a motley group of concerned grad students in Oxford during the run-up to the Iraq War. ICG's website and CrisisWatch newsletter are excellent sources of information and analysis about assorted flashpoints and thorny conflicts.)