Kurds' quest for justice overshadowed by economic discontent

The decision this week to charge Saddam Hussein with genocide for the death of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s has been welcomed by Kurds across northern Iraq who had previously worried that Iraq's Shiite government would try him only for crimes against Arab Shiites.

Kurds "were subjected to forced displacement and illegal detentions of thousands of civilians," said Raid Juhi, an investigative judge at the Iraqi High Tribunal that charged Mr. Hussein and six former members of his regime on Tuesday. "The villages were destroyed and burnt. Homes and houses of worshppers and buildings of civilians were leveled without reason or a military requirement."

Hussein again faced prosecutors in Baghdad this week for charges that he was behind the 1982 massacre in the village of Dujail that killed at least 148 Shiites. While that case has gone on for several months, officials said a second trial based on the charges of genocide in northern Iraq could begin in 45 days.

To many Kurds, however, and particularly young people brought up in the Kurdish autonomous region that existed after the 1991 Gulf War, the thirst for justice is increasingly overshadowed by daily concerns of finding a job, getting educated, and receiving proper medical care.

Every year the [local] government receives $4 to $5 billion [from Iraqi's central government], and no one can see where the money's going," says Mariwan Hama-Saeed, the Kurdish editor of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting's (IWPR) Iraq Crisis Watch. "Every day the government tells us that next year everything will be solved. But each year nothing changes."

Last month Kurdish anger at the slow pace of reconstruction boiled over. Protesters in Halabja destroyed the town's famous memorial to 5,000 civilians killed there in a chemical attack by Hussein's army in 1988.

Sifting through the Halabja museum's ashes the following day, its director, Ibrahim Hawramani, picked through burnt photos, torn children's drawings, and smashed plaques listing the names of the victims. "The people of Halabja shouldn't have done this," he said. "This wasn't a symbol of any political party. This was a symbol of everything in Kurdistan."

The shocking, but calculated, vandalism represents the rising anger and resentment felt by many Kurds over widespread corruption, lack of jobs, and fewer than expected reconstruction projects. Deepening the mistrust between the Kurds and their leaders, now mostly in Baghdad, is the heavy-handed approach of the security services toward the protesters.

The March 16 demonstration at Halabja that began peacefully with demonstrators trying nonviolently to block an official visit to the Halabja monument on the 18th anniversary of the chemical attack ended with troops firing shots into the crowd.

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