Halapja, 14 Years Later

60 Minutes (CBS News)

Ed Bradley, co-host

May 12, 2002

(Transcript)

To convince the world that Saddam Hussein wouldn't think twice about attacking us with chemical and biological weapons, President Bush continually points out that the Iraqi dictator has already done just that to his own people, some of the four million Kurds who live in northern Iraq and, who in the 1980s, sided with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. The place where the worst attack took pace was Halabja, where the people continue to suffer 14 years after Saddam unleashed a mixture of poison gases on the town. We visited Halabja through the eyes of a British medical geneticist who, four years ago, was the first Western medical expert to go there. A warning: Some of the scenes you are about to see may be disturbing.

(Footage of cars traveling on remote mountain passes; of vehicles passing checkpoint; of man sitting in car with rifle; of Gosden looking out window of car)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) The only way for a Westerner to go to Halabja is through these remote mountain passes in northern Iraq. Four years ago, with an armed Kurdish escort and accompanied by a British TV crew, Dr. Christine Gosden, head of medical genetics at Liverpool University, made this journey. Were you surprised by what you found there?

Dr. CHRISTINE GOSDEN: Oh, I was devastated by what I found there. I just hadn't expected it to be on that scale and of that degree of horror.

(Footage of the towns of Halabja; of bomb casings; of bombing and clouds of poison gas; of dead people, including children, lining the streets)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) When Dr. Gosden reached Halabja, it looked as if the Iraqi bombing had just happened yesterday. The bomb casings that delivered that poison gas were still there, a constant reminder of what had happened 10 years earlier during three days of March 1988. The clouds of poison gas that rained on this town of 70,000 Kurds were captured by an Iranian cameraman. Five thousand people died in Saddam Hussein's chemical attack, many struck down where they stood. Like the dead of Pompeii, their corpses were frozen in a moment in time. The bodies of dead children littered the streets like discarded dolls.

What were the nerve gases, the agents that were used by Saddam Hussein there?

Dr. GOSDEN: He used a mixture, a sort of cocktail of chemicals. So he used mustard gas, and then he used the nerve agents sarin, tabun and VX. These are horrible agents.

(Footage of bombing survivor walking among the dead; of a man trying to walk and falling down; of two men walk over to help him; man's feet as he attempts to walk)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) As Dr. Gosden soon found out, those three days of bombing were just the beginning of Halabja's suffering. Those agents were still having a terrible effect on the population. This young man named Nizar inhaled the poison gas and was unconscious for two days.

Dr. GOSDEN: (Voiceover) These agents were--were developed to cause specific nerve problems so that soldiers couldn't fight. This is an example of somebody 10 years later who not only can't fight, but can't really move properly.

NIZAR: (Through Translator) I have no strength. Please help me. I'm terrified of ending up in bed for the rest of my life.

Unidentified Man #1: And this is another part of his body. Unfortunately, this has really been deformed. I mean...

(Footage of Gosden with Halabja doctor; of Iraqi woman; of woman whose breathing is labored and congested; close-up of medical chart; footage of Shaho; of men lifting Shaho; photograph of Shaho before the chemical attack; footage of Shaho lying down)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Dr. Gosden was helped in Halabja by a British-trained local doctor.

Dr. GOSDEN: (Voiceover) This is one of the worst cases of skin disease I have ever seen. It has caused major genetic changes in his skin cells. So the chemicals layered on the skin have caused these profound changes--battalions of warts to--to build up in his skin. It can't be solved by a simple shot of antibiotics, or even by topical steroid creams, or anything like that. It's--it's major, and it's virtually untreatable.

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) As was this woman's respiratory disease. Dr. Gosden estimated that half the population have respiratory complaints caused by mustard gas.

Dr. GOSDEN: (Voiceover) Those with the most severe damage have got things like pulmonary fibrosis, and the pulmonary fibrosis can be so severe that the only possible treatment for these people is to have a lung transplant.

(Footage of Gosden examining Shaho; of Gosden examining X-rays)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) According to Dr. Gosden, nerve gas affects people in different ways.

Dr. GOSDEN: (Voiceover) It isn't the same effect on each person. Everybody's got their own susceptibility. They've got their own genetic background. They're able to detoxify some things.

But these chemicals will affect virtually every system of the body, and we saw this great spectrum of abnormality.

(Footage of Gosden with a crowd of Iraqis; of Kurdistan Islamic Movement member arriving in Halabja)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Dr. Gosden's visit to Halabja did not go unnoticed in Baghdad. Three days after her arrival, a member of the Kurdistan Islamic Movement came to warn her.

Unidentified Man #2: (Through Translator) Through their spy network, the Iraqis know about your project. They don't want the situation in Halabja broadcast to the world. They may try to stop you.

(Footage of convoy of cars protected with armed soldiers)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) The Kurds now provided Dr. Gosden with increased protection. Fourteen soldiers armed with Kalashnikovs and a heavy machine gun accompanied her as she drove each day into Halabja.

Unidentified Man #3: (Through Translator) Many people in Halabja have cancer, many more people than in other towns. And those who have cancer are seldom told about it, because there is no treatment for it here.

(Footage of Gosden looking at medical reports with other doctors; photograph of man with growth between his eyes)

Unidentified Man #2: (Through Translator) So this is a basal-cell carcinoma. Unfortunately, this person had died.

(Footage of surgery; of man with jaw cancer)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) With no radiotherapy or chemotherapy in Halabja, the only possible remedy for cancer patients was the surgeon's knife. They used a local anesthetic to remove a malignant tumor from this patient's back because the hospital couldn't afford anything else. And there were some cases, like this man's cancer of the jaw, that couldn't even be operated on.

The doctors there were recording a high incidence of cancer in children who were not even born at the--the time of the attack in 1988. What does that say to you?

Dr. GOSDEN: That there is genetic damage. What it indicated was that mustard gas, a known carcinogen, a know mutagen since the First World War, had been used to devastating effect in this population.

(Footage of brook; of pond; of dead bodies piled in a car; of livestock crossing stream; of barren land)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) That mustard gas also had a devastating effect on the environment. During the attack, hundreds of people jumped into this pond to wash off the chemicals. They died. Their corpses lay undisturbed for months, and the deadly toxins from their bodies seeped away into the earth. Thousands more were killed by gas as they tried to flee to Iran along this road. Their mass grave is said to have poisoned the water table. This land, once the most fertile in the area, looks like a nuclear wilderness, which, Dr. Gosden says, in a way, it is.

Dr. GOSDEN: Mustard gas is described in the scientific literature as radiomimetic. It means it's like ionizing radiation. And the calculations that I've done of the comparison of the effects of mustard gas compared with ionizing radiation suggests that the effects on these people is if they were about 1.2 kilometers from the hypercenters at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Footage of maternity ward in Halabja; of Gosden examining miscarried baby)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) This was an average day in Halabja's maternity ward. There were no normal births, just miscarriages. Dr. Gosden examined one of the fetuses.

Dr. GOSDEN: A 13-week miscarriage.

(Footage of Gosden examining baby)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Did you find anything significant?

Dr. GOSDEN: (Voiceover) Yes, it--it had major congenital malformations. It had lethal malformations, which was the reason that it had miscarried. In this particular case, it's the--it's the genotoxic effects, the carcinogenic and mutations caused by, particularly, mustard gas that seemed to be affecting this population.

(Footage of children physically and mentally affected by mustard gas)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) But not all babies with congenital malformations miscarry. Many were born with birth defects such as cleft palate and mental retardation. So women in Halabja have a--a higher incident of--of either giving birth to a child with some kind of deformity or miscarrying?

Dr. GOSDEN: Yes. And--and I think they feel devastated about this. This is a--it's a population who've seen the most terrible things happen to them. They've lost lots of relatives. They were normally--before the attack, they were a happy, healthy population. They feel they've been blighted in--in a major way.

(Footage of Gosden explaining her finding to other doctors; close-up of Gosden drawing diagram on board; Gosden and Bradley walking)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Before she left Halabja, Dr. Gosden explained her findings to a group of Kurdish doctors from the region. Together with those doctors, she set up a medical institute that is attempting to treat the victims and to study the long-term effects of these chemical weapons. Today Dr. Gosden cannot go back to Halabja. The Iraqi government has put a price on her head if she does. But a few weeks ago in London, she told us that she's in regular contact with the people there.

Is it as bad as you thought it was four years ago?

Dr. GOSDEN: It's even worse than I thought it was four years ago, because now we've had chance to examine the scale of the problem throughout the country.

(Footage of attack; Gosden and Bradley)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) It's long been known that the Iraqis used chemical weapons against the Kurds on more than one occasion. Dr. Gosden says that the Kurdish doctors have now carried out a survey to establish just how many attacks there were.

Dr. GOSDEN: There were 280 separate attacks, most of them smaller in scale, Halabja is the largest single attack, but it means that out of a population of four million people, there were a huge number of victims.

(Footage of Hussein; men looking at books; tape recorder; photo of al-Majeed)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) The man that Saddam Hussein appointed to carry out this genocide was his cousin, General Ali Hassan al-Majeed. When the Kurds rose in revolt after the Gulf War, they seized hundreds of documents and tapes from Iraqi government offices in the region. In an audiotape recording of a meeting of Iraqi leaders in 1987, which has been authenticated by Iraqi dissidents, al-Majeed revealed he had no qualms about using chemical weapons against the Kurds.

General ALI HASSAN AL-MAJEED: (Through Translator) I will attack them, attack them with chemicals and kill them all. As for the international community, screw the international community and anyone who takes any notice of them.

(Footage of birthday celebration; people on the street; Bradley and Gosden)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) General al-Majeed was right not to be concerned about the international community. Today he is still one of the most powerful figures in Iraq. Just a few days ago, he led the celebrations for Saddam Hussein's 65th birthday in their hometown of Tikrit. And during all this time, no independent agency has ever been allowed into Iraqi Kurdistan to investigate what happened there.

Dr. GOSDEN: And the people despair deeply. They can't understand why nobody can go in to help them. It's now 14 years since the attacks, and that's a terrible long time for these people to have suffered.

(Footage of doctors entering building; doctor looking at X-ray; woman lying in bed; Nizar walking across lawn; Bradley and Gosden)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Dr. Gosden says that cancer caused by the mustard gas continues to occur at an abnormal rate in Halabja. The people still lack chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and they are dying from those cancers without any pain relief. And what about people like Nizar who were exposed to the nerve agents? How is he today?

Dr. GOSDEN: He's--he's about the same as he was before.

BRADLEY: No better, no worse?

Dr. GOSDEN: I think, sadly, what I'm trying to say is that rarely do these people get better, and our problem is you can't just wave a magic wand. But we're doing our best. We're working as hard as we can. As I say, we're trying to recruit people with expertise worldwide to try and give help on this.

(Footage of Dr. Gosden at microscope; Bradley and Gosden)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) Given the little knowledge we have about the long-term effects of these gases, Dr. Gosden says she can't understand why there's not been more interest in the people of Halabja. By helping them, she says, we would be helping ourselves.

Dr. GOSDEN: One of the important lessons to us all, as--as we're all potential victims of weapons of mass destruction, is that we need to know how to treat the effects of these disorders. These are very powerful substances, and the people in northern Iraq show just how devastating the effects of these weapons can be.

(Footage of children; Bradley and Gosden)

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) In your mind, there's no doubt that genetic damage has been caused by those chemical weapons?

Dr. GOSDEN: (Voiceover) There's no doubt whatsoever.

BRADLEY: (Voiceover) And how long will this continue?

Dr. GOSDEN: (Voiceover) Oh, for--forever almost. It'll go down through the generations because their DNA is permanently and irreversibly changed.

BRADLEY: And these chemicals, the mustard gas, the nerve agents, are they difficult to make?

Dr. GOSDEN: Mustard gas has been made, obviously, since the First World War. It's not difficult if you've got the right components. Some of the nerve gases require more complex synthesis, but the Japanese cult in Tokyo managed to get their hands on--on these weapons.

BRADLEY: So in America, when we're focused, after 9/11, on homeland security, we are, in effect, as vulnerable as the people of Halabja?

Dr. GOSDEN: Yes.

BRADLEY: And just this week, to test the response of emergency teams, there was a simulated chemical weapons attack at the Pentagon. The Office of Domestic Preparedness, which organized the drill, said similar events are planned for cities throughout the country.