HALABJA....

"HALABJA....The road from Sulaimania to Halabja passes through a region called the Shahrizur, which was once one of the great agricultural centers of Iraq. It makes for pleasant scenery, with broad grassy plains ringed by foothills and tall mountains in the distance. The towns along the road — Arbat, Say Sayach, and Sirwan — appear mere reservoirs of poverty, but to my Kurdish hosts each is a metropolis filled with acquaintances and family history.

PUK peshmerga (Kurdish fighters) operating in the Shahrizur were the chief target of Saddam Hussein's Baath regime during the Anfal Campaign of 1988. The campaign against them included multiple chemical weapons attacks, of which Halabja is only the most notorious. In part this is because the peshmerga and the Iranian Army occupied the town and allowed observers to record the atrocity. Victims in other towns were simply swept away by the Iraqi Army."
The Washington Monthly