'CHEMICAL ALI' GOES TO WAR:

Hundreds flee as Saddam acts to prevent uprising (Times of London, 3/15/2003)

HUNDREDS of Kurds were fleeing to northern Iraq yesterday as President Saddam Hussein’s special forces began a crackdown in the key city of Kirkuk to prevent an uprising in the event of war....

“They were looking for anyone that they suspected might be planning an uprising,” Haval Ravel, Mr Rafiq’s cousin, said. “When they found he had a friend staying from Kurdistan, they arrested both of them and took them away.”

At least ten young Kurdish men from the immediate neighbourhood were arrested that night. By morning the entire Kurdish quarter had been sealed off with roadblocks and the special guards were continuing their searches from house to house, arresting scores more men as they went.

Mr Ravel decided not to stick around to see what would happen when the guards reached his neighbourhood. Taking only the clothes he stood in, he left his house and found a taxi heading out of the city towards the relative safety of the Kurdish-controlled enclave in the north, out of reach of the Iraqi authorities....

All yesterday morning, battered taxis and buses streamed steadily through the Qushatapa checkpoint separating “Saddam Iraq” from the Kurdish north ...

Those fleeing have good reason to be afraid. They said the man leading the crackdown was Ali Hassan Majid, Saddam’s cousin.

To Kurds he is known simply as “Chemical Ali” for his part in the deaths of more than 100,000 Kurds between 1987 and 1989, including the gassing of 5,000 villagers in Halabja.

Saddam is like a whirlwind of war; wherever he is, violence and death are there also. This is why the anti-war folks are not pro-peace. There will be no peace until Saddam is delenda. Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 15, 2003 10:44 PM