Iran's Chemical Ali survivors still bear scars

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

NOWDESHEH, Iran (Reuters) - High in remote Kurdish mountains, Iranian villagers still nurse ravaged eyes and lungs, 20 years after Iraqi poison gas attacks that went mostly ignored by world powers then siding with Saddam Hussein against Iran.

That perceived hypocrisy continues to rankle in the Islamic Republic, now accused by the West of seeking nuclear weapons.

It was 4 p.m. on March 17, 1988 when Iraqi planes dropped eight mustard gas bombs over the wood-beamed stone houses of Nowdesheh, nestled in a green horseshoe valley near the border.

"I saw the gas and smelled peaches," said Dara Meshkati, who was 10 years old at the time. "Then my eyes closed and I couldn't see anything. I was blind for two months."

U.N. investigators said 13 people were killed and over 100 injured in the attack -- an event eclipsed by Iraq's chemical assault the day before that killed about 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in Halabja, 25 km (15 miles) across the frontier to the west.

At that time, no asphalt road linked Nowdesheh with the nearest small town of Paveh, so the victims faced a jolting five-hour evacuation over a dirt track through the mountains.

Meshkati, a pale-faced man with listless eyes, recovered his eyesight and is well enough to work in an accountant's office, but still suffers from asthma -- and psychological scars.

"Nobody drinks water from my glasses. People here think I have a problem," he complained.

He is just one of scores of survivors in Nowdesheh, which suffered three gas attacks in the same month of 1988, the final year of Iran's ruinous eight-year war with Saddam's Iraq.

"We went to help the wounded," recalled Rahim Maghrouzi, 52, a surgical mask over his mouth. "We didn't realize it was chemical weapons. My skin turned red. We tried to wash our eyes with water. I still can't breathe properly and I can't work."

DEATH ROW

Maghrouzi, like many in this village of 5,000, is awaiting the day when Iraqi authorities execute the death sentence passed last year on Ali Hassan al-Majeed, a senior Saddam henchman, for his role in a bloody campaign against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

"Chemical Ali is responsible for what happened to me," said Maghrouzi, using Majeed's nickname. "I hope he is hanged."

Majeed sits on death row in a U.S. jail in Iraq, his fate tangled in a row between the Iraqi government and presidential council over signing off on the execution orders of his cohorts.

Saddam himself was hanged in 2006 on a narrow charge unrelated to his government's actions against Iraqi Kurds and Iran -- something many Iranians view as a missed opportunity.