Years on, Halabja still waiting for full province status

Rebin Yar Ahmed

HALABJA, Kurdistan Region – Though Halabja was designated a province by the Iraqi government in December 2013, many ministries and bodies, including the electoral body, have not taken practical steps to deal with the city as a province.

 

On this year’s anniversary of the chemical attack on Halabja, March 16, the Council of Ministers called on the Interior Ministry to resolve obstacles standing in the way of Halabja being fully recognized as a province, said Ali Osman, acting governor of Halabja. “Unfortunately, I dare say a long time has passed since then and preparations have not been done well yet. They must speed it up.”

 

Osman added that only the planning, oil, and finance ministries consider Halabja a province, not others.

 

According to the voting registration system, only 70,000 voters are entitled to cast a ballot in elections in Halabja. Under Iraqi election law, each province is an independent entity. If dealt with as a province, Halabja could have a larger number of seats in the parliament than what it possesses now.

 

"The commission data are all contingent upon Food Distribution Forms," Sarbast Amedi, head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), told Rudaw, noting that the Halabja voters list has not yet been put under Halabja administration or separated from Sulaimani province.

 

"Unfortunately, the Kurdistan High Electoral Commission has no expertise on this matter,” he noted. “It is very easy. It is just the work of half an hour.”

 

A Kurdish MP from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) faction in the Iraqi parliament blamed the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Iraqi government for neglecting to resolve the issue.

 

"The shortcoming is from both governments, particularly the Kurdistan Region, because we have to knock on their doors," said Bakhtyar Shaways.

 

Shaways added, however, in the last three years the Iraqi parliament has treated Halabja as a province when passing budget bills.

 

In a special Kurdistan Region parliamentary session convened on February 5, 2015 in Halabja, the Kurdish parliament approved a bill to change Halabja to a province, the fourth in the Kurdistan Region and the 19th in Iraq.

 

Halabja, 110 kilometers south of Sulaimani, became an international icon for Saddam Hussein’s murderous campaign against Iraq’s Kurds when his forces attacked the city with chemical bombs in March 1988, killing an estimated 5,000, many of them women and children.

 

Halabja, with a total population of 337,000, had been a district of Sulaimani, where it had had two representatives on the provincial council.

 

The Kurdish parliament named Halabja the capital of peace in September 2014 for its sacrifices for the Kurdish cause.

 

The first decision to turn Halabja into a province by the Kurdish parliament was in 1999, but practical steps started to emerge only in December 2013 after the Iraqi Council of Ministers approved a bill – proposed by the KRG – to put the matter before the Iraqi parliament for approval. The Iraqi parliament seemed reluctant, but then House Speaker Osama Nujaifi instructed that it was within the power of the KRG to name the city a province.