Chemical Ali

'Chemical Ali', the all-too jaunty nickname of General Ali Hasan al-Majid was sentenced to death by hanging in Baghdad yesterday for the fourth time. The third occasion came in June 2007, like the previous, for the gruesome extermination of close to six thousand Kurds in the town of Halabja but, unlike the fourth, was met with a knowing shrug by Hasan al-Majid. The failure of the international community to deal with this man lends a sickening and worrying degree of credibility to his premonitions. During a recording of a conversation with the former "King of Spades", he can be heard saying:

I will kill them all with chemical weapons. Who is going to say anything? The international community...fuck them.

In June 2003 Christopher Hitchens wrote that he hoped and believed, like many other Kurds, that Hasan al-Majid was "shredded by a laser-guided missile" in April of that year. Unfortunately, he was wrong. His description of the figure, however, is illuminating, shedding light on why this story surpassed the tales of tragedy from Haiti on its way to the front page.

General Ali Hasan al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam Hussein himself, was placed in charge of the occupation of Kuwait for four of those atrocious months. He had earned his rough promotion with some gusto, having commanded the ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Kurdistan between 1987 and 1988, during which time he boasted openly of his use of chemical techniques to suppress the population. [...] He was on every Human rights "Wanted" list in the world, for murder and torture and rape. And in March 2003 he was appointed to command the southern region of Iraq and to hold it for Saddam. An easy way to get a facial expression to change, in the flyblown streets of Safwan, was to mention the name of either man.