HALABJA, Kurdistan Region – Hoshyar Ali, who lost both legs in separate mine accidents, has dedicated his life to making sure no one else suffers his fate. But this 51-year-old is no armchair anti-mine advocate. With his own hands, prosthetic legs and without specialized equipment, he has been pulling out landmines around his hometown of Halabja for the past 26 years.
In this city, whose name has become internationally known since Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on March 16, 1988 killed 5,000 innocent Kurds, he has earned the nickname “Hoshyar Mine.” The local hero has had a hospital, mosque and school named after him.
“I want to remove the mines to save innocent lives,” Ali told Rudaw.
The fearless man also lost two brothers in the Iraqi-Kurdish conflict. One of his brothers was only nine when he stepped on a mine and died. “That was when I decided to make this my life’s work," Ali said.
He lost one leg during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, when Kurds in both countries found themselves in the frontlines of Saddam Hussein’s war with Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. He lost the other leg in another mine explosion during the Kurdish popular uprising against Saddam in 1991.
During the war, Ali became a Peshmarga partisan, fighting the Iraqi government and its so-called “Anfal Campaign” of exterminating tens of thousands of Kurds.
When he was younger, Ali wished he could be a football player, or to run a marathon. But both dreams were cut short because of his handicap.
After he stepped on a mine during the war, when both Iran and Iraq planted hundreds of thousands of mines across their borders, a Japanese NGO named Peace Winds Japan came to his rescue. He was flown to Tokyo for surgery, and returned with two electronic prosthetic legs.
“In Japan people were really friendly. I was given artificial legs. After that, I gave my daughter a Japanese name,” he said.
Ali is now a retired major-general in the Kurdish Peshmerga army. But he continues to clear landmines and said he waits for farmers or others to call him whenever they spot a landmine. A bumper sticker on his car is a declaration of war against landmines: “For the sake of God and my country, I am ready to destroy you wherever you are,” the sticker declares.
At his home there is a whole collection of mines and explosives, including the mine that took off his own leg. He said he wants to write history by displaying all the mines he has collected in a future museum.
“I am doing this for the future generations, because they won’t believe something they have not seen with their own eyes,” Ali said.
Ali’s city, Halabja, became the symbol of the Anfal Campaign after the poison gas attack. Photographs of the dead, which included women, children and even dead infants clutched to the chests of lifeless mothers and fathers, outraged public opinion worldwide.
In 2012, Sweden became the first country in the world to recognize Saddam’s massacres against Kurds as genocide. Last year, the British Parliament also formally recognized Anfal as genocide. Since then, more and more MPs have been pushing for all of Europe and the West to follow suit.
"The European countries' recognition really means a lot to us,” Ali said. “All countries should recognize it. They should not forget what we Kurds have suffered."
Meanwhile, the popular man from Halabja is still looking for mines to eradicate.
“As long as I have these hands I will not stop clearing mines. I won’t stop for a moment,” he vowed.
