A picture of one of the Baath commanders during the massacre of Kurds known as “Anfal”.
This photo was taken after the killing of the child’s family. The massacre was carried out by the same person who took a “souvenir” picture with the child. No one knows whether the use-by date of this child only lasted until the end of the recording of the picture and then he was buried alive like thousands of other children, or whether the executioner assumed an eternal role in the “liberation” of this child. Executioner and release!
The child is stunned, as if he understands that crying disrupts the order of the frame and reduces its historical validity, as if he knows that his only chance of survival is to look after taking this souvenir photo. It’s as if he knows that this is his first and last appearance in front of the public, this is his only possibility to live, living as much as recording the image of the subject, in this situation he must become “something” to complete the frame; What other parts are two armed soldiers and a helicopter.
After 25 years, it seems as if the child’s shocked and fragile gaze still contains the clearest and most naked narrative of the massacre of a generation. The massacre that is still going on, if at that time Kurdish children were killed by a brutal regime headed by Saddam and accompanied by Rajavi’s gang, but for years some parties claimed that Kurdistan separated children from their shelters in different ways and Kurds are being killed somewhere in the so-called Kurdistan Region, and this is known by everyone, but the deathly silence has enveloped their entire being.
The child you see in this picture had the opportunity to take a souvenir photo next to the executioner after the killing of his family, but unfortunately, some of the claimant parties in Kurdistan are hesitating to this extent for hired children in their party.
No one has anything to do with the eyes of this child and child soldiers trapped in Kurdish parties, from the intellectuals living on this side of the border to the other side of the border in the Kurdistan Region. Barzani’s and Talabani’s photos have taken so much space, they have become so popular that there is no more room left for the pictures of these children.
The room of “intellectuals” is filled with pictures of Mam Jalal, Kak Massoud and others, and there is no place left for this look and to hang this picture in front of our eyes.
The intellectual discourse in Kurdistan has been so captured by party illusions and self-created paradigms that if you object to one of these parties, why are you raising children in the middle of your war and conflict, they will be attacked and insulted so much that you leave the stage, but you are unaware. Because history cannot be erased!
A friend asked, now that there is talk of the genocide of the Kurds by Saddam and the Baathists with the support of Rajavi’s organization, how can the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran go and sit at the same table with Rajavi’s gang?! But the answer was so short and concise that it replaced any other discussion.
“When Ghasemlou, the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, in the middle of Iran’s war with Saddam Hussein, goes to Saddam’s side and Rajavi’s ally, is it any wonder that they don’t repeat the same thing now?!”
There are bitter realities going on;
The Iranian government system generally has a peripheral view of the Kurds, that is, if a child from Tehran is kidnapped, the entire police system comes into action, and the media, elites, and celebrities work day and night to find this child from Tehran and arrest the kidnappers. They should be punished for their actions, but in a similar incident, a Kurdish child, who happens to be a girl, was abducted by a group of militiamen from inside her home in front of her parents, as if nothing had happened and it doesn’t matter to anyone that such an incident happened to a family. It has fallen and the voice of this family is not going anywhere, the Kurdish parties with high claims are not even ready to see the girl’s parents once, but Mr. Massoud Barzani is not helping this family, but doing whatever these parties want to achieve their goals.
