ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Candidates for the Kurdistan Region's parliament from Halabja debated the challenges surrounding the city’s status and recognition as a province during a Rudaw program, criticizing the government for the city’s lack of essential services and infrastructure. Participants of Rudaw’s Chwar Bazna (Four Constituencies) expressed dissatisfaction with the administration of Halabja, citing neglected projects, including an uncompleted hospital project for the chemical attack survivors, and blaming the ruling parties for poor governance. “We have been officially recognized as a province by the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] since 2014. But [the city’s] needs have not been met necessarily. There has been some work done here and there, but they have neither met our expectations nor been at the level of the sacrifices of the city,” Shahin Hamaraza, a candidate for the Change Movement (Gorran), told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Tuesday's show. The Iraqi cabinet in March 2023 approved a bill to make Halabja a province in recognition of the 35th anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s brutal chemical attack against the city. For the decision to be finalized, the Iraqi legislature needs to pass the bill through a vote, but a vote continues to be postponed. “What has happened in the past few years and is happening now is the price that Halabja pays for being a district,” said Kawa Ali, a candidate for the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), adding, “The Kurdistan Regional Government has had an abysmal governance in Halabja province, marginalizing [the province] in the past nine years and four months.” Halabja used to be a city within Sulaimani province. Some residents have complained that not much has changed since its status has been changed to province by the KRG. “We have 186 [service] projects worth 254 billion dinars [approximately 190 million US dollars]; I can say most of these projects have been halted,” Ali added. “It's only during election times, and only four or five months before elections, that they start considering Halabja and propose few projects.” Abbas Mohammed, the Kurdistan Justice Group’s (Komal) candidate, echoed the KIU’s candidate, stating, “The Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] has definitively failed to prioritize Halabja in reconstruction and providing essential services. Similar to the [local] administration of Halabja.” There are allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement in Halabja, with calls for more transparency and fair resource distribution. “We do not say that Halabja’s rights have been taken away, but they may not allocate to us the same amount of funds they are allocating to other [provinces],” said Shahin Hamaraza, a candidate for the Change Movement (Goran). A candidate for Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Sangar Hewrami, shifted the blame to the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), saying the KRG is “sending 43 percent of the Kurdistan Region's budget and revenue to Sulaimani, go and ask the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They are treating Halabja like a Dukan [a small] district.” On March 16, 1988, in the final days of the eight-year-long war between Iran and Iraq, warplanes of the former regime of dictator Saddam Hussein rained down a lethal cocktail of chemical weapons on the city of Halabja, killing at least 5,000 people, mostly women, and children, and injuring hundreds of others. The Halabja chemical attack- recognized as an act of genocide by Iraq's High Court in 2010 - has left a permanent scar in the collective memory of the Kurdish people. It was part of the Baathist regime’s Anfal campaign against the Kurds that killed over 182,000 people. A few years later, the international community imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect the Kurdish population. This gave Kurds the space they needed to establish their own parliament, and their autonomy was formally recognized by Iraq in 2005. In recent years, rulings by the Iraq's federal supreme court have been criticized by Kurdish officials as detrimental to the KRG as a political entity, sparking concerns over the Kurdistan Region's semi-autonomous status in Iraq.
