In Sardasht, Iranian civilians gassed by Saddam Hussein cannot forget - France 24

Sardasht (Iran) (AFP)

Thirty-three years have passed but the survivors of the Iraqi bombardment with mustard gas on the Iranian city of Sardasht are still suffering in their flesh and are fighting for the recognition of a massacre that has remained largely unnoticed.

"If someone lost a leg or an arm in the war, we can put a prosthesis on him (...) but when our lungs are burned (...) who will breathe in our place?"

asks Saleh Azizpour, president of the Association of Victims of the Chemical Attack in Sardasht, a Kurdish town in northwestern Iran.

The Iraqi raid of June 28, 1987 on Sardasht is considered the first use of chemical weapons on an urban area.

"The dead and wounded range from a three-month-old child to a 70-year-old man. All were civilians," said Mr. Azizpour.

The official toll of the tragedy is 119 dead and 1,518 injured.

But, according to Mr. Azizpour, who was 25 at the time, some 8,000 people were exposed to mustard gas and its consequences, and many of them died.

"Even today, there is sometimes so much pressure on my lungs (...) that I really cannot sleep", laments Mahmoud Assadpour, a 50-year-old professor.

- "Crimson breast" -

"Unfortunately, the consequences of mustard gas (on those who have been exposed) are permanent", explains Dr Rojane Qadéri, director of the Sardasht public health network.

"It affects or destroys the lungs. You have to learn to live with it. The majority suffer from dry eyes or tearing, inflammation of the eyes or skin, itchy skin, withering of the skin, shortness of breath, difficulty in moving, dejection ", she lists.

And since the reinstatement of US sanctions against Iran in 2018, it has become increasingly difficult to find effective drugs to treat the ailments suffered by survivors.

Volunteer nurse at the time of the raid, Leïla Marouf Zadeh recounts the cries of the wounded at the field hospital, all "familiar" faces begging for her help: "Some had crimson breasts, others the whole body."

But after a few hours in the service of the survivors, she herself is stricken with temporary blindness.

Just like Rassoul Malahi, a retired farmer forced to use an artificial respirator daily and who says he was "totally blind" for "18 days".

During the war between Iran and Iraq (1980-1988), which Tehran commemorates on Monday the 40th anniversary of the outbreak by Baghdad (September 22, 1980 in the Gregorian calendar), the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had massive recourse to chemical weapons, as early as 1982, on the battlefield.

But it was not until 1986 that the United Nations Security Council deplored the "use of chemical weapons" in the conflict between Iran and Iraq, and it adopted the same formula on July 20, 1987, after the attack on Sardasht, in a new resolution on the conflict.

Without directly blaming Iraq.

- International "Silence" -

The fact that the five "Bigs" of the Security Council (China, United States, France, United Kingdom and Soviet Union) then militarily support Saddam Hussein is no stranger to the "silence" that several survivors accuse of "world powers ", especially Westerners, to have kept on this irregular attack.

Several Western companies and governments are accused of having contributed to Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program in the 1980s.

For the "chemical injuries" as they are called in Persian, the new coronavirus pandemic, which does not spare the city, looks like a double sentence.

"As their immune system is weak (...) their chances of survival are low" if they catch Covid-19 and "they are asked not to go out", explains Dr Qadéri.

"We are at home, we do not go out, we are like in a cage", confirms Mohammad Zamani, 59 years old.

Sardasht now has more than 46,000 inhabitants (compared to nearly 18,000 in 1987), mainly from the Sunni Kurdish minority.

At the end of summer, the modest buildings and houses with flat roofs stretch out on the heights of a hill, in the middle of yellowed mountains dotted with small oaks of local essence, at an altitude of more than 1,400 meters.

Agriculture, breeding and commerce keep the city alive as best it can.

The area is regularly the scene of clashes between Iranian security forces and Kurdish rebels from across the Iraqi border, a dozen kilometers as the crow flies.

At first glance, life seems normal in Sardasht, so hardly any material trace remains of this tragedy, except for a commercial building on the upper floor gutted by one of the bombs dropped that day.

- "Rotten garlic smell" -

Here, the ruins are human and the testimonies of the survivors often begin with "the day the planes came ..."

Iraqi warplanes, however, regularly flew in at the time, which bombed the city.

The oldest have a lasting memory of it.

But that afternoon, the bombs dropped on four neighborhoods fell without hearing explosions.

"I saw white dust and smelled rotten garlic. I was the first to say it was a chemical bomb because I had experienced it before. at the front (...) in 1984 ", remembers Mr. Zamani.

Other witnesses recall the "incredulity" of the inhabitants at the possibility of an irregular attack on an inhabited area.

Many follow the usual procedures by lying in the gutters or by taking refuge in underground shelters quickly invaded by gas.

Others get it and run away, like Ali Mohammadi, now 56 years old and a street vendor of cheese.

When he returns a few hours later, he finds "a catastrophic, indescribable situation".

"At the crossroads in front of the building of the Red Crescent, the corpses were piled up in order to be evacuated", he said badly containing his emotion.

- A symbol" -

When Saddam Hussein was arrested in 2003, Mr. Assadpour said he was "happy" before being "disappointed" to learn three years later that the deposed dictator had been executed without being tried for his crimes in Sardasht.

In 2005, Marouf Zadeh gave moving testimony in a Dutch court during the trial of Frans van Anraat, an industrialist from the Netherlands who helped Saddam Hussein acquire chemical weapons.

He was sentenced to seventeen years in prison for complicity in war crimes in connection with the chemical attacks on Sardasht and on the city of Halabja, in Iraqi Kurdistan (nearly 5,000 dead in March 1988).

This verdict has put balm in the hearts of the families of Sardasht's victims, without quenching a thirst for justice which they know deep down will never come again.

So the survivors are campaigning for international recognition of what happened in Sardasht and for their city to become a "symbol" just as Hiroshima has been since the atomic bomb, so that "it does not happen again. ".

© 2020 AFP