My scorched land: the story of Sardasht’s unhealed wounds
One of the many survivors still suffering from the lack of medical attention from the government. Picture courtesy of Awat Rostamyani. All rights reserved. Over
the past few decades, Sardasht – a Kurdish city located in the
western Azerbaijan province of Iran – has endured too much pain and
neglect. The
city can best illustrate the dynamics and mechanics of ethnic
discrimination and suppression by the Iranian regime against the
Kurds.
As
a small city, however, Sardasht once had a long and glorious history,
one with several episodes of success. For instance, it played a
decisive role in the emergence and expansion of Kurdish nationalism
during both the Pahlavi and Islamic regimes. Hence, what this city
has gone through under the Iranian regime is by no means accidental.
Sardasht was the first city that was brutally gassed by Saddam on Jun
28, 1987, during the Iran–Iraq war, a barbarous attack without any
military and political justification.
Sardasht
is also called the “second Hiroshima” because it was the first
city to witness a massacre of unarmed innocent civilians since the
atomic bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Its
small population – which hardly amounted to 20,000 people in the
1980s – makes Sardasht’s case unique in a horrifying way.
A
total of four chemical bombs were dropped over the city during a
single day. In just a few hours, hundreds of people, including women
and children, were killed, while thousands of injured had to grapple
with the long-lasting mental and physical effects of the attack,
which persist to the present day. This barbaric carnage was not
condemned by the International community at that time nor did the
Islamic regime recognize it in the official calendar until many years
later.
At
that time, I was a fifth-grade student, so I can remember those dark
days fairly well. My oldest brother found our uncle’s deceased body
lying in a hospital in Isfahan, about 15 hours away from our city.
Because his body was burnt like charcoal, it could only be identified
by the watch that he used to wear. I remember that our aunt, years
after the bombing, still insisted that my uncle “Qader is alive, he
might come back someday; how do we know for sure that it was Qader
whom we buried?”
When
he died, he left his seven little daughters for
my aunt to raise alone – a burden much heavier than she could
carry. The depth and scope of the tragedy in Sardasht would be
impossible to describe in a small essay. As a child, I found myself
asking, why did it have to happen in this small city? Why not in a
bigger one?
Our
generation witnessed the war in its cruelest, ugliest and most
inhumane form.
In this war, we – Iranian Kurds – were a nameless, defenseless
people living in the unmarked territory; we were like an open
laboratory in which the Iranian regime could run their dreadful
experiments.
I was telling myself that both the Iraqi and Iranian warplanes drop
their last bombs on Sardasht to return to their bases with less
weight and entirely unloaded.
Both
the Iraqi and Iranian warplanes drop their last bombs on Sardasht
We
had to pay the price for our ethnicity, religion, language, and
identity; this was a toll we were required to pay every day. It
reminds me of the Roman legal notion of Homo Sacer, a person who is
banned from society and may be killed by anybody. This was
almost true for us as we were excluded both from the protection of
the law and the domain of the sovereign.
During
part of my elementary years, as a student, I lived under bridges,
hiding in natural shelters, constantly running from the airstrikes.
Agriculture and ranching had collapsed due to continuous bombardment.
A lot of farms were turned into militarist garrisons or minefields,
which were never cleared.
Two
decades after the end of the war, it is estimated that there are
still some sixteen million landmines laying hidden throughout the
four Kurdish provinces of Iran. More than 4,000 people, mostly women
and children have lost their lives due to mine explosions. As soon as
the war ended, the regime began to establish military, political, and
ideological institutions in Sardasht; thousands of people were forced
to join the newly formed local militia run by the government. The
increasing militarization of the region served as an excuse for the
regime to refuse to invest
in infrastructure,
as well as in social and economic development programs.
By
the end of the 1990s, Sardasht had become entirely dominated
by military
institutions such as the “Selection Department” (Haste
Gozinesh
in Farsi) whose
goal was to determine who is qualified for government jobs or
university admissions. The regime was specifically concerned about
Sardasht. The regime commanders who “served” in Sardasht enjoyed
a quick promotion, taking the highest military and political offices.
Serving in Sardasht allowed unparalleled privileges for those
immersed in the regime apparatus. From the regime’s eyes, Sardasht
looked like a workshop, where the “Soldiers of Islam” had
developed and promoted unique war skills, learning the techniques
necessary to fight the “anti-revolutionary elements”, “separatist
groups”, “Umarist” (a term denoting Sunni Muslims negatively),
“perverts”, “Kurdistan’s outlaws” as well as any other
“inimical and degenerate
group.”
After
the war, the same “Soldiers of Islam” began to defame and vilify
the people of Sardasht. They did so by forging untrue and baseless
stories. Now, the people who were brutally scapegoated and deprived
were being introduced as “beheader”, “traitor” and “killer”
of the “Soldiers of Islam”. As a student who lived in non–Kurdish
regions, I personally suffered from such humiliations over and over.
Sardasht became a scapegoat.
The
regime used to carve its name on the gravestone
of any of its unknown “martyr” in order to further agitate public
opinion against Kurds. Once my university roommate admitted that he
had not slept enough in the weeks preceding the day we first met. He
explained that he was too scared of me and thought that I might
behead him in the middle of the night. Many
of my generation shared similar experiences when interacting with
non-Kurds.
Sardasht,
however, was an exceptional target for the fictions and myths
promoted by the regime. Not only had we to endure the pervasive
harassment by non–Kurds, but we also had to keep silent in face of
the implicit and explicit abuse promoted by the regime’s media.
Some
of these officials would, years later, become the so-called
“reformists.”
Perhaps
many among the youngest generations are not yet aware of the
calamitous policies implemented by the Selection Department between
1989 and 2000, when the regime, with the collaboration of local
officials and mercenaries, planned to take control over university
admissions and government jobs. Some of these officials would, years
later, become the so-called “reformists.”
The
regime, aided by local Basijs (a
semi – military
institution), began to fabricate false political and moral records
for the youth and poor families. Indeed, these years marked a period
of inquisition
and interrogation in almost every Kurdish region, not just Sardasht.
I
finished high school in 1995, when I was preparing for the college
admissions exam (called Conquer in Farsi). I witnessed first-hand
what my friends and then myself went through.
In
such a small city that grappled with an unbearable pain and misery
caused by eight years of war, still suffering from the 1980s chemical
attacks, tens of students were denied university admission despite
having some of the highest exam scores. To show a measure of the
disaster, only 10 to 15 students were allowed to enroll to
universities out of 70 students who had passed the exam.
Sardasht
is a perfect example of the dark days of unbridled hegemony of the
regime’s intelligence services. Thenceforth, hundreds of Sardasht
students were deprived from entering the university. Young students
who were young children or not even born when the Islamic Revolution
took place in 1979 now had to be interrogated by regime officials for
allegedly collaborating with the Kurdish opposition or opposing the
“Islamic Revolution.” They were forced to confess to what they
have never done or to prove that they were “revolutionary” enough
and sided with the government.
Many
of us were denied admission or employment for having a small radio or
attending events such as a wedding. As a result of this harassment,
many students dropped out of school and entered the labor force. Some
fled from Iran or joined the Kurdish political parties. I knew some
who, suffering from permeant psychological breakdown, ended up
committing suicide.
The
Iranian regime took different turns in the last four decades. For the
Kurds, new policies represented both changes and continuities. The
discourse of securitization and militarization of the region
(especially Sardasht) remained almost intact. The regime’s
insistence on the de-indigenization of local administrative bodies,
combined with placing non-Kurds in key political and economic
positions, has resulted in the increasing underdevelopment of the
region.
Each
year, tens of households are relegated to work in brick factories in
non–Kurdish areas – mostly, in central Iran – which in turn has
caused numerous problems. Besides, a large number of people (known as
Kolber
in Farsi) are currently engaging in the dangerous cross-border
trade across the Iran and Iraq
border because of absolute poverty and lack of other opportunities.
These traders are often ambushed and brutally killed by Iran’s
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Over the past years, around 200
Kolbers
– Kurdish tradespeople – were reportedly shot and killed.
Despite
all that has happened, Sardasht has survived the regime’s brutal
policies; its people are still on their feet, standing and resisting
the regime by every means. Sardasht is illustrative of the 1980s and
1990s Iran, and perhaps the Middle East at large: a unique case that
illustrates the emergence, expansion, and destructiveness of
totalitarian sovereignty, with its ruthless and tyrannical apparatus,
in this case the Iranian regime.