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In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
The Venerable Chief and Leader, the Honorable Saddam Hussein (May God Protect Him), President of the Republic and Head of the Honorable Revolutionary Command Council:
Struggling Comrade, I greet you. And I present myself to you as a devoted citizen.
I implore you in the name of Ba'athist Justice to hear my plight, which has deprived me of sleep night and day. For I lost all hope and when I had no one left to turn to except yourselves, I came to you with my problem, which may be of some concern to you.
Sir:
I, the undersigned, Assi Mustafa Ahmad, who returned as a prisoner of war on August 24, 1990, am a reserve soldier born in 1955. I participated in the Glorious Battle of Saddam's Qadissiyat in the Sector of Al-Shoush and was taken prisoner on March 27, 1982. I remained a prisoner until the day that the decision to exchange prisoners of war was issued. Then I returned to the homeland and kissed the soil of the Beloved Motherland and knelt in front of the portrait of our Victorious Leader and President Saddam Hussein. In my heart I felt a tremendous longing to return to my family. They would delight in seeing me, and I would delight in seeing them, and we would all be caught up in an overwhelming joy that could not be described.
However, I found my home completely empty. My wife and my kids were not there. What a catastrophe! What a horror! I was told that the whole family had fallen into the hands of the Anfal forces in the Anfal operation conducted in the Northern Region, under the leadership of Comrade Ali Hassan al-Majid. I know nothing of their fate. They are:
1. Azimah Ali Ahmad, born 1955/ My wife. 2. Jarou Assi Mustafa, born 1979/ My daughter. 3. Faraydoun Assi Mustafa, born 1981/ My son. 4. Rukhoush Assi Mustafa, born 1982/ My son.
I have thus come to you with this petition, hoping that you would take pity on me and inform me of their fate. May God grant you success and protect you. You have my thanks and respect.
[signature]
Former Prisoner of War Reserve Soldier/Assi Mustafa Ahmad Without home or shelter in Suleimaniyeh/ Chamchamal/Bekas Quarter/ Haji Ibrahim Mosque October 4, 1990
The Reply In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
Republic of Iraq Bureau of the Presidency Reference No.: Sh Ayn/B/4/16565
Date: October 29, 1990
Mr. Assi Mustafa Ahmad Suleimaniyah Governorate Chamchamal District Bekas Quarter Haji Ibrahim Mosque
With regard to your petition dated October 4, 1990. Your wife and children were lost during the Anfal Operations that took place in the Northern Region in 1988.
Yours truly, [signature] Saadoun Ilwan Muslih Chief, Bureau of the Presidency
Iraqi secret police documents find home in CU archives Rocky Mountain News September 27, 1998
Papers of Iraq's secret police, captured in 1991, tell an atrocious story of genocide
By Ann Imse and Hanan Hammad
A bureaucracy of horror has found a home in the University of Colorado's archives.
Tucked away in a CU warehouse are 18 tons of the everyday paperwork of Saddam Hussein's secret police: orders for mass murder, rebels' arrest reports, lists of people turned in by informers, a top secret record of an Iraqi rocket attack on an Iraqi town.
The boxes also contain photographs of bodies shot in the head, beaten or burned. Seven pictures, in color, show different views of a large, black-bearded man with the bloody wounds of torture and beatings on his open mouth, face and bare chest.
The 2,500 cardboard boxes are hidden in a secret location in a CU warehouse. Most of the estimated 4 million to 5 million pages of documents are in Arabic; some are in Kurdish.
The documents were captured from secret police offices during the Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq in 1991 just after the Persian Gulf War. They paint a detailed picture of how a police state maintains utter control over everyone in Iraq.
"I could not read everything, because the events were horrible and made me sick," said Farhad Barzani, Washington representative of the Kurdish Democratic Party.
His party and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan shared the files with the respected international Human Rights Watch organization and with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Human Rights Watch has used the documents to prepare a case charging that Iraq committed genocide when it destroyed 4,000 villages in the Kurdish areas of Iraq and arrested 50,000 to 100,000 Kurds who were never seen again.
With a language and culture different from Iraqi Arabs, the 4 million Kurds living in northern Iraq have fought for independence for decades. Human Rights Watch says that Saddam's long battle with Kurdish rebels expanded into genocide when he attacked noncombatants in the Kurdish areas, using chemical weapons, artillery and executions to wipe out the entire population in certain areas.
CU archivist Bruce Montgomery persuaded the Kurdish groups that own the documents to store them in CU's growing human rights archive, which includes records of abuse from around the world.
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency copied the roomful of documents onto 176 CD-ROMs, which the CU library hopes to make available to the public within a month.
If millions of dollars in donations can be raised, Montgomery would like to have the documents translated from Arabic to English, annotated and placed on the World Wide Web.
Montgomery and his staff found handcuffs and razor nunchakus in the boxes, as well as a film of Saddam Hussein weeping at a political meeting as he ordered the removal of former allies who were plotting to overthrow him. All were executed. The film was widely distributed in Iraq to frighten others who might oppose Saddam, Montgomery said.
Iraq claims the entire roomful of documents was faked.
But their authenticity is clear to experts who see the sheer volume of documents, the scribbled handwriting of native speakers of Arabic and the typical Iraqi document format.
Many of the documents date from the late 1980s, when Saddam and his ruling Ba'ath Party decided to end the Kurds' persistent uprisings.
First, the government blockaded their stronghold in the northern mountains, forcing nearly everyone in the area to smuggle to survive. That made them liable for arrest as smugglers, according to Iraq's Crime of Genocide, a book published by Human Rights Watch after examining the secret police documents and interviewing Iraqi Kurds.
Then, the Ba'ath Party declared most of Iraq's Kurdish areas "prohibited zones" where no people or animals would be allowed to live. Some residents declared loyalty to the regime and were moved to camps in other parts of the country. Those left behind were killed or arrested, the book says.
Human Rights Watch found the most incriminating documents in the boxes and published them in Arabic and English in its book.
For example, Directive 4008 orders the execution of anyone aged 15 to 70 found in the prohibited zones. Joost Hiltermann, who directed the Human Rights Watch effort, said the organization found numerous copies of this directive in the boxes because it was sent to the secret police in all the cities and towns the Kurds overran.
Hiltermann said his group documented 40 chemical weapons attacks by Iraq against Iraqi Kurds from evidence in the files and interviews with victims. Some documents explicitly report the use of chemical weapons.
For example, Human Rights Watch published one document signed by Capt. Kifah Ali Hassan, director of the Intelligence Center of Kalar. In it, Hassan reported, "During the month of March 1988, our aircraft bombed the headquarters of the sabotage bands in the villages of Saywan (4,596) and Balakjar (4,294) in a chemical strike." (Iraq numbered the villages.)
Many documents simply refer to attacks on specific towns on specific dates with "special ammunition." Hiltermann tracked down victims of those attacks and learned that "special ammunition" meant nerve gas and mustard gas.
Other documents reported victims going blind, a symptom of a chemical attack, Hiltermann said.
One volume of the archived papers begins Sept. 12, 1987. Each day, an officer reported events in black ink; his superior replied with orders in green ink.
On Sept. 24, 1987, the officer wrote, "Saboteurs have developed Karad missiles with a range of 20 kilometers. They might attack oil facilities in Kirkuk."
The superior replied, "Intensify the chemicals and direct artillery attacks on the probable roads and depots."
The order was signed, "Hassan" -- possibly Ali Hassan al-Majid, first cousin of Saddam who led the campaign to wipe out the Kurdish villages.
The files also contain routine accounting reports. One listed informants and their pay of 150 to 1,000 dinars in 1990. Another listed officers and their pay of only 85 to 100 dinars in 1988.
One file was a dossier on the political leanings of a bureaucrat in the social security department. He was detained in a cell for two days for "not doing his job correctly."
Many documents in the 2,500 cardboard boxes are chilling. One top secret report from an informant, stamped with the bird seal of Iraqi military intelligence, reported on a meeting of Kurdish saboteurs and listed 10 people who attended.
Another reported that "Iranian agents" killed 17 people in an attack on a police station in a Kurdish Iraqi village. Iraqi military forces responded with a rocket attack on the village, and the arrest of 1,100 "Iranian agents."
Human Rights Watch found that after the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan made an alliance with Iran in 1986, the Iraqi government started referring to members of the party as "Iranian agents."
A pink volume captured in the Kurdish town of Erbil shows how thoroughly the Iraqi regime had infiltrated this Kurdish party. It contains names of leaders, their place in the party hierarchy, addresses of their headquarters and information on their daily activities.
Another box has the record of an illiterate school guard who confessed to being a communist. After he pledged an oath of "cooperation" and turned in a list of other communists, the record says he was released.
Explanations from the Human Rights Watch book make the documents come alive. For example, an arrest record of two men for the crime of "transferring wheat" came after Iraq blockaded the Kurdish areas in hopes of starving the population into leaving.
The boxes also contain maps showing the placement of Iraqi land mines in Kurdish areas.
Another box yielded an order from Saddam Hussein changing the name of a Kurdish Iraqi town called Halabja to Al-Ekhaa -- Arabic for Brotherhood. Halabja was the site of an Iraqi chemical attack that killed 5,000, Human Rights Watch says.
Who would punish Iraq?
Despite all this evidence, Human Rights Watch has been unable to find a country willing to take its case of genocide against Iraq to the World Court.
Two small countries were willing to take on the case but only if a major European nation joined them. None did, Hiltermann said.
The United States has questionable standing to back the case because it did not ratify the convention on genocide until the Clinton administration, and even then did so with serious limitations, Hiltermann said.
Yet, Hiltermann said, every time the dispute with Saddam Hussein heats up, U.S. officials say, "We're really interested in this case."
Part of the problem, he admitted, is that even if Iraq is found guilty, who is going to punish it? The world is already unable to agree on how to deal with Iraq's refusal to cooperate with weapons inspectors, he noted.
All human rights cases are political, he added. Asked if the United States would place in a university library similar documents from a U.S. ally, Hiltermann said, "Of course not."
The genocide case may be difficult to prove, even with documents ordering mass killings in the Kurdish areas. That's because "these people were arrested by the government and disappeared," but only a small percentage of their bodies have been found, Hiltermann said.
Human Rights Watch has excavated three mass graves in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, and that evidence is part of its genocide case. But most of the missing are assumed to be buried in the southern desert, still controlled by Saddam Hussein.
"It would help to have documentary evidence that they were killed," he said.
On one document listing 307 people arrested on April 11, 1988, Human Rights Watch has found at least 58 never returned and three did. The three survivors reported that they escaped a mass execution.
After their uprising in 1991 was halted by Saddam's troops, 1.5 million Kurds fled to Iran and Turkey. That prompted creation of the United Nations no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect the Kurds and allow them to return home.
But the Kurds later split and began fighting each other. The Kurdish Democratic Party allied with Saddam, despite all he'd done to the Kurdish people. There is now a cease-fire.
Note:
Why Saddam allied with KDP? , Why PUK allied with Iran?, who was the first there Iran or Iraq? Iran was there In Kosunjanq 400 Km from Iran border Saddam came there to protect him self from Iran not to protect KDP.
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Publication of secret papers could doom Kurd informers By Hanan Hammad Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer September 27, 1998 http://insidedenver.com/news/0927pap1.shtml
The Iraqi secret police documents in the University of Colorado archives present librarians with a decision that could be deadly.
Publication of all the papers on the Internet will tell Kurdish people the names of informants, perhaps even the specific person who betrayed a brother.
"It is possible that after the publication of these documents, the informers among every Kurdish group will be killed," said Asad Gozeh, one of the Kurdish fighters who captured the Iraqi files and helped bring them to the United States.
The documents include reports with the names of informants and the information they provided. Some detail the deadly response, such as assassination, to informant information.
Gozeh said he knows of at least three informants who were killed shortly after the Kurds captured the documents in 1991. But he still wants them published to show the world that Saddam Hussein committed acts of genocide and mass murder against the Kurds.
CU archivist Bruce Montgomery is worried, too.
"Certainly we don't want to be responsible for killing anyone. If we put it on the Internet, these are questions we're going to have to deal with."
But Montgomery said no decision has been made on whether to keep some documents private.
Gozeh is willing to exclude certain reports.
"The point of publishing the documents is not to cause strife, but to help people understand what happened. The important thing is to publish the names of the victims," Gozeh said.
"Wives are still waiting for their husbands and parents are waiting for their kids. I think publishing these papers will enable families to know the fate of their relatives who were thought to be imprisoned. People have to know their relatives were executed and how they were killed."
He gave the example of 130 people detained in his hometown on Nov. 16, 1987. The fate of 22 was unknown until their bodies were discovered in a mass grave on Sept. 15, 1991. They were identified through their clothing.
The Kurds wanted the documents transported to the United States so Americans would know what happened to them in Iraq.
"To translate and publish these documents on the Internet is more than what I had imagined," Gozeh said.
