Who Gassed Halabja?

On 16 March 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq became the site of one of the most horrific chemical-weapons attacks of the twentieth century. Thousands of civilians—many of them women, children, and elderly people—were killed after toxic chemicals were released over the town during the closing stages of the Iran-Iraq War. The images of families lying dead in their homes and streets shocked the world and became a defining symbol of Saddam Hussein's brutality.

Yet the question of responsibility has sometimes been presented as controversial: Who actually gassed Halabja—Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Iran, or both?

The controversy is not entirely invented. During the war, both Iraq and Iran used chemical weapons, and an early U.S. intelligence assessment reported that Iranian as well as Iraqi chemical attacks had occurred around Halabja. But the broader documentary, forensic, and historical record provides a much stronger answer concerning the massacre of Halabja's civilian population: the Iraqi government was responsible for the chemical attack on Halabja.

That conclusion is supported particularly strongly by Iraqi government documents captured after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime and examined by Human Rights Watch.

The setting: Halabja in March 1988

Halabja was a predominantly Kurdish town in northeastern Iraq, close to the Iranian border. In March 1988, the Iran-Iraq War had entered its eighth year. Iranian forces and Kurdish fighters belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had launched an offensive and captured Halabja from Iraqi forces.

The military situation is important because it explains why some accounts subsequently confused the chemical attacks of the two sides.

Iranian forces were present in and around Halabja, while Iraqi aircraft and artillery were operating against the area. Iran itself had a documented history of chemical-weapons use during the Iran-Iraq War, just as Iraq did. Consequently, an assessment produced by U.S. intelligence in 1990 concluded that both sides had carried out chemical bombardments during the fighting around Halabja.

But establishing that Iran also possessed and used chemical weapons does not establish that Iran carried out the massacre of Halabja's civilians.

The distinction is crucial.

What happened on 16 March?

According to Human Rights Watch's reconstruction, Iraqi forces launched the major chemical attack against Halabja after Iranian and Kurdish forces had taken control of the town. The attack was part of a much larger Iraqi campaign against the Kurdish population.

The scale of the attack was enormous. Human Rights Watch estimates that between approximately 3,200 and 5,000 people died at Halabja. Other contemporary estimates likewise placed the death toll in the thousands.

The victims were overwhelmingly civilians.

The chemical attack was not an isolated incident. Iraqi forces had already been employing chemical weapons against Kurdish targets in northern Iraq. Human Rights Watch documented numerous chemical attacks during 1987 and 1988, including attacks against villages containing large numbers of civilians. The organization identified the Halabja massacre as the largest of these attacks.

This wider context matters because Halabja occurred during what became known as the Anfal campaign, an Iraqi military and security campaign directed against Iraqi Kurds.

Human Rights Watch subsequently characterized Anfal as genocide, concluding that Iraqi forces deliberately killed and disappeared tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians and destroyed thousands of villages.

The "Iran did it too" argument

The argument that Iran was responsible for Halabja gained attention partly because of a 1990 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment reported by The Washington Post. That assessment concluded that repeated chemical bombardments from both Iraqi and Iranian forces had occurred during the final stages of the fighting around Halabja.

This is an important historical fact and should not simply be ignored.

However, it is frequently transformed into a stronger claim than the evidence supports: that Iran was responsible for the deaths of the civilians at Halabja or that the attack was essentially a joint Iraqi-Iranian operation.

The evidence subsequently examined by Human Rights Watch points in a different direction.

After the 1991 Kurdish uprising in northern Iraq, Kurdish forces obtained large quantities of Iraqi government documents. Human Rights Watch researchers examined approximately 14 tons of captured Iraqi records, alongside survivor testimony and forensic evidence. The resulting investigation produced an extensive documentary history of the Anfal campaign.

Those Iraqi records are particularly significant because they document what the Iraqi government itself believed had happened.

What did Iraqi documents say?

Human Rights Watch reported that Iraqi intelligence documents were remarkably clear about the responsibility for the Halabja attack.

The documents described the occupation of Halabja by Iranian troops and Kurdish forces allied with Iran. They then referred to an Iraqi chemical attack against Halabja. Human Rights Watch found no corresponding Iraqi government documentation describing an Iranian chemical attack on the town's civilians.

One Iraqi intelligence document described bombing by "our planes and our artillery" in the Halabja and Khurmal area. Human Rights Watch regarded such records, when compared with survivor testimony and other evidence, as powerful evidence establishing Iraqi responsibility.

This documentary evidence is considerably more persuasive than simply asking which side possessed chemical weapons.

The relevant question is not whether Iran could have used chemical weapons. It is whether the evidence demonstrates that Iranian forces carried out the chemical massacre of Halabja.

The Iraqi state's own records point to Iraq.

Saddam Hussein and "Chemical Ali"

Responsibility also extends beyond anonymous military units.

The Iraqi campaign against the Kurds was directed through the political and military structures of Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist government. One of the most important figures was Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and the official who became notorious as "Chemical Ali."

Al-Majid was responsible for the Northern Bureau and played a central role in the Anfal campaign. Iraqi government documents examined by Human Rights Watch demonstrated the bureaucratic organization of the campaign, including orders affecting Kurdish villages, populations, military forces, and security services.

The chemical attack on Halabja therefore should not be understood merely as an uncontrolled battlefield incident. It took place within a systematic campaign in which chemical weapons were repeatedly employed against Kurdish areas.

Human Rights Watch documented at least forty chemical attacks against Kurdish targets during the relevant period. The attacks were accompanied by village destruction, mass displacement, executions, disappearances, and the destruction of Kurdish agricultural communities.

Halabja was thus both an atrocity in its own right and part of a broader pattern.

Why did Iraq use chemical weapons?

The immediate military context was the Iraqi struggle against Iranian forces and Kurdish groups cooperating with Iran. But Iraq's campaign against the Kurds went far beyond ordinary military operations.

The Anfal campaign deliberately targeted Kurdish civilian populations. Villages were destroyed, inhabitants were rounded up, and many men and boys disappeared into Iraqi detention facilities. Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds were killed or disappeared during Anfal.

Chemical weapons served several purposes. They could kill large numbers of people, terrorize survivors, drive populations out of contested territory, and make resistance more difficult.

Halabja was especially significant because the town had openly fallen into the hands of Iranian forces and Kurdish fighters. The Iraqi attack therefore had an obvious military context—but the method employed was indiscriminate and devastating to civilians.

The dead included entire families.

Why does the dispute persist?

The persistence of the controversy can partly be explained by the circumstances of the Iran-Iraq War.

Both governments engaged in propaganda. Both accused the other of chemical warfare. Information coming out of a battlefield was often incomplete. Western intelligence agencies initially had limited access to the site. And Iraq immediately denied responsibility, claiming that Iran was responsible for the deaths.

Contemporary reporting therefore contained competing claims.

A March 1988 Washington Post report, for example, recorded Iraq's assertion that the events were Iran's responsibility while also describing substantial evidence of Iraqi military activity around Halabja.

Later intelligence analysis produced the finding that both sides had used chemical weapons during the broader battle. That finding is genuine historical evidence and should be acknowledged.

But historical conclusions should be based on the totality of evidence, not simply on the existence of competing claims.

The subsequent examination of Iraqi government records, combined with survivor testimony and forensic investigation, substantially strengthened the case that Iraq carried out the chemical attack that killed thousands of Halabja's civilians. Human Rights Watch explicitly rejected the claim that the massacre could simply be attributed equally to both sides.

The larger tragedy

Perhaps the greatest danger in the "Who gassed Halabja?" debate is that the argument can reduce a complex historical tragedy to a geopolitical dispute.

Halabja was not merely an episode in the rivalry between Iraq and Iran. It was a human catastrophe experienced by Kurdish civilians.

The attack occurred in the context of a systematic campaign that destroyed Kurdish villages and communities. Human Rights Watch documented the destruction of approximately 2,000 villages and the mass disappearance and killing of civilians during Anfal.

The survivors carried the physical and psychological consequences of chemical exposure for decades. Families were destroyed in minutes. The dead included people who had no meaningful role in the military struggle taking place around their town.

The photographs from Halabja remain among the most recognizable images of chemical warfare in modern history precisely because they exposed the terrible vulnerability of civilians to weapons designed to poison rather than simply defeat an opposing army.

So, who gassed Halabja?

The most defensible answer, based on the strongest available historical evidence, is Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government and its armed forces.

Iran also used chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, and there were chemical attacks by both sides in the broader conflict. An early U.S. assessment specifically concluded that Iranian and Iraqi chemical bombardments occurred in the Halabja area.

But that fact should not be confused with responsibility for the Halabja massacre itself.

The Iraqi government's own captured documents, survivor testimony, forensic evidence, and the wider record of Iraq's chemical attacks against Kurdish civilians establish a compelling case that Iraqi forces carried out the chemical attack on Halabja on 16 March 1988. Human Rights Watch described the documentary evidence concerning Iraqi culpability as exceptionally clear.

The answer, therefore, is not simply a matter of choosing between competing wartime narratives.

Halabja was gassed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The historical record also tells us something larger: the massacre cannot be separated from the systematic persecution of Iraq's Kurdish population. Chemical weapons were one instrument within a campaign of mass killing, disappearance, forced displacement, and destruction that Human Rights Watch concluded amounted to genocide.

Remembering Halabja accurately means acknowledging the complexities of the Iran-Iraq War without allowing those complexities to obscure the central fact: thousands of Kurdish civilians were deliberately exposed to chemical weapons by the Iraqi state, and the evidence for Iraqi responsibility is overwhelming.