New Rudaw documentary depicts the sorrows of Halabja lone survivors

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - On the 34th anniversary of the chemical attack on Halabja, a new documentary by Rudaw Media Network takes a different spin on the traditional narrative of the 1988 Kurdish national tragedy, exploring the impact of the horrific events on the survivors, and those who lost everything in the attack.

The documentary, Nothing Like a Kiss from Mom, tells the story of three survivors of the chemical bombardment who lost their parents and siblings in the genocide. They describe what happened on March 16, 1988, and the impact of the events of that day on their lives since.

On the last days of the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war, warplanes of the former regime of Saddam Hussein rained down a lethal cocktail of chemical weapons on the city of Halabja, killing at least 5,000 people, mostly women and children, and injuring thousands of others. The event, which was recognized as an act of genocide by Iraq's High Court in 2010, has left a permanent scar in the historical memory of the Kurdish people.

“I asked them to leave. I told them ‘If I survive. I’ll see you.’ She hugged me once more, and that was the last time I ever saw my mother,” said Aras Abid Akram, a Halabjai survivor who lost 13 family members in the attack, reminiscing on the last encounter he had with his mother and sister on the day of the attack.

Chra Tayib Ali, the sole survivor from her family of nine, recalled how her father had urged her to go outside, telling her that the basement couldn’t help us. “If we die, it’s better to die in the streets so that someone buries us,” she recollected.

"I chose this story to avoid the old narration,” Haidar Omar, the director of the documentary, explained.

“Every work which is done before talks about the five thousand people who have lost their lives. I haven’t seen many works about those survivors who lost their families in the attacks. I tried to depict the sorrows of all the lone survivors through the stories of three characters," he said.

“The only thing that was clear to us was Dilshad, in my uncle’s yard,” said Tayib, describing seeing her brother’s dead body in Halabja after the attack. “A sponge mattress had become his coffin.”

Saddam, who was overthrown in 2003 after the US-led invasion, was hanged in 2006, upon being found guilty for ordering the Dujail massacre, in which 148 Shiite Muslims were killed. During his dictatorship, over 180,000 Kurds were killed; 8,000 Barzani men and boys were murdered; and thousands more were oppressed, abused, and killed by the Baathist regime. 

Though Saddam’s execution was met with celebrations in the streets across Iraq, his death put an end to proceedings against him for the deaths of the almost 200,000 Kurds, including those killed in Halabja, during the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s.

Kurdish officials have for years called on Baghdad to compensate the victims of the genocide, but with no success. In 2005, a Dutch businessman was successfully prosecuted for supplying chemicals to Hussein’s regime knowing that they would be used in the manufacture of chemical weapons. There is a current case in the Kurdistan Region's courts investigating companies that supplied materials that were used as chemical weapons by Iraq.

“Nothing can make up for a mother’s hug. Nothing is like a mother’s kiss,” mourned Abid.

By Chenar Chalak

Nothing Like a Kiss from Mom is available to watch in several languages on Rudaw TV and Rudaw Digital (above).

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