ABSTRACT
Ali Hassan Majid immediately added a new twist to classic antiguerrilla doctrine by using chemical weapons to kill and terrorize the rural population of northern Iraq. To Kurds he became known as Ali Chemical. Western governments finally were obliged to react when in August 1988 sixty thousand Iraqi Kurds crossed in panic into Turkey, fleeing these repeated chemical-weapons attacks. Aside from the terror and illness that chemical weapons bestowed upon the Kurds, they were also cheap and efficient. Confronted with their testimony, a shamefaced international community wrung its hands and organized a conference on chemical weapons to reaffirm the need to honor the Geneva Protocol's principles—in the future. In midafternoon Iraqi planes returned to drop chemical weapons. The Partei Karkaren Kurd naively had figured that its grassroots support in Iraqi Kurdistan was so great that the pesh merga leaders would not dare fight back for fear of being associated with Turkish oppression of fellow Kurds.
