Halabja on the cusp of ascension to province on 35th anniversary of chemical attack

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The General Secretariat of the Iraqi Council of Ministers on Tuesday sent the bill of ascending Halabja into a province to the parliament, with Kurdish lawmakers optimistic about the bill being passed, despite a similar attempt failing to take effect in 2013.

The Iraqi cabinet on Monday approved a bill to make Halabja a province, in recognition of the 35th anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s brutal chemical attack against the city. In order for the decision to be finalized, the Iraqi legislature needs to pass the bill through a vote.

During the tenure of former PM Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Council of Ministers approved a bill to make Halabja the country’s 19th province on December 31, 2013. Nonetheless, the deterioration of Erbil-Baghdad relations soon after, as well as disagreements between the Sunni and Shiite blocs of the parliament, prevented the legislature from officially passing the bill.

Amanj Rahim, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) cabinet secretary, believed that a legislation was necessary to recognize Halabja as an Iraqi province, in order to prevent the decision from being overturned in the future, considering that the city would become a province for its “special characteristics” and not based on population or area.

“I believe it is best to issue a legislation recognizing Halabja as a province. I do not want this matter to be treated in a way that makes it vulnerable to an appeal in the [Iraqi] Federal Supreme Court in the future,” Rahim told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Tuesday.

Halabja consists of four districts, and has an estimated population of over 120 thousand people.

The date of the parliamentary session to vote on the bill has not yet been announced, but Kurdish MPs in the Iraqi parliament believed that it was unlikely the 2013 scenario would repeat itself.

“The subject has political power and is special to all parties because of the chemical attack. That is why I believe that, not only the Kurdish blocs, but the Shiites will also vote in favor of the bill” Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) MP in the Iraqi parliament Karwan Yarwais told Rudaw’s Soran Hussein on Wednesday.

One of the factors that resulted in the 2013 bill not coming into force was Shiite blocs of the Iraqi parliament requesting that several historically Shiite-populated districts be turned into provinces as well.

“The atmospheres is favorable and I do not think anyone would be against Halabja becoming a province,” said Muthana Amin, Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) MP, stressing the need for the Kurdish blocs in the Iraqi parliament to unify their efforts towards passing the bill as soon as possible.

Similar thoughts were echoed by Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) MP Shwan Mohammed, who said he believed the bill will be passed by a consensus.

The Kurdistan Region’s Council of Ministers issued a decision in March 2014 to turn Halabja into a province, making it the fourth province in the Region.

-People of Halabja to boycott the anniversary-

At a time when both governments in Erbil and Baghdad are making efforts to establish Halabja as Iraq’s 19th province, the people of the city have held multiple demonstrations in recent days, decrying the lack of basic services.

Civil society organizations in the city have announced that they will be boycotting all events relating to the 35th anniversary of the chemical attack.

“We are asking for ending the marginalization of Halabja. The Baath regime destroyed Halabja and then the KRG ignored Halabja. They [KRG] named us a ‘province’ but it was nothing more than that: a name,” A’ssi Fayaq, head of the Halabja Organizations Network, told Rudaw English on Wednesday.

Fayaq said he was not optimistic about the prospect of Halabja becoming a province, considering the failure of previous attempts.

“The previous bill was discussed and worked on for years. This new bill means everything goes back to square one,” he noted.

On the last days of the eight-year-long war between Iran and Iraq, warplanes of the former regime of Saddam Hussein rained down a lethal cocktail of chemical weapons on the city Halabja on March 16, 1988, killing at least 5,000 people, mostly women and children, and injuring hundreds of others.

The attack was part of a longer genocidal campaign against Iraq’s Kurds by the Baathist regime that continues to resonate in the mind of Kurds to this day.