Shanidar (pity they both can't lose

 Shanidar Cave  

 

https://youtu.be/VFqhJyvly1g?si=_wxT0xyXKM74MzdC

(Kurdish: ئەشکەوتی شانەدەر, romanized: Eşkewtî Şaneder, 

Arabic: كَهَف شانِدَر[3])   

https://youtu.be/Lh1UXPrf_84?si=ckvAPbt9ExGyc-hP

is an archaeological site on Bradost Mountain, within the Zagros Mountains in the Erbil Governorate of Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. 

 Neanderthal remains were discovered here in 1953, including 

 Shanidar 1, who survived several injuries, possibly due to care from others in his group,  

and Shanidar 4, the famed 'flower burial'. 

Until this discovery, Cro-Magnons, the earliest known H. sapiens in Europe, were 

the only individuals known for purposeful, ritualistic burials.  

"The site, 1⁄2 mile (800 m) from the Great Zab river and near Rowanduz,  

lies at 2,100 feet (640 m) above sea level. 

The cave entrance is triangular, 82 feet (25 m) wide by 26 feet (7.9 m) high.

 Its dimensions are, at maximum, 175 feet (53 m) wide, 45 feet (14 m) wide, and 130 feet (40 m) deep." 

"Overall these excavations found the remains of 

 seven adult and two infants Neanderthals, dating from around 65,000–35,000 years ago" 

"The ten Neanderthals at the site were found within a Mousterian layer which also contained hundreds of stone tools including points, side-scrapers, and flakes and bones from animals including wild goats and spur-thighed tortoises. 

The first nine (Shanidar 1–9) were unearthed between 1957 and 1961 by Ralph Solecki and a team from Columbia University 

The skeleton of Shanidar 3 is held at the Smithsonian Institution.  

The others (Shanidar 1, 2, and 4–8) were kept in Iraq and may have been lost during the 2003 invasion, although casts remain at the Smithsonian. 

"2006, while sorting a collection of faunal bones from the site at the Smithsonian, Melinda Zeder discovered leg and foot bones from a tenth Neanderthal, now known as.         Shanidar 10."  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanidar_Cave

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*Based on the healing of his injuries, Shanidar 1 lived with them for a substantial time before his death.  

Assuming that Neanderthals did perform surgery on Shanidar 1, his recovery demonstrates that their methods were successful in sustaining life.  

The prolonged survival of an individual with significant disabilities has also provided the basis for conjecture about Neanderthal social behavior. 

According to paleoanthropologist Erik Trinkaus, Shanidar 1 must have been aided by others in order to survive his injuries." 

*Shanidar 4, the "flower burial" 

"study of the particular flower types suggested that the flowers may have been chosen for their specific medicinal properties. 

 Yarrow, cornflower, bachelor's button, St Barnaby's thistle, ragwort, grape hyacinth, horsetail and hollyhock were represented in the pollen samples, all of which have been traditionally used, as diuretics, stimulants, and astringents and anti-inflammatories

 This led to the idea that the man could possibly have had shamanic powers, perhaps acting as medicine man to the Shanidar Neanderthals.

However, recent work has suggested that the pollen was perhaps introduced to the burial by animal action,  

as several burrows of a gerbil-like rodent known as the Persian jird were found nearby.  

The jird is known to store large numbers of seeds and flowers at certain points in their burrows and this argument was used in conjunction with the lack of ritual treatment of the rest of the skeletons in the cave to suggest that the Shanidar 4 burial had

 natural, not cultural, origins. " 

____ 

Kirkuk

Population (2023 est.)

 • Total.      1,075,000

Time zone GMT +3 

"It is described by the Kurdish leader and former Iraqi president Jalal Talabani as “the Jerusalem of Kurdistan”   

By the Treaty of Angora of 1926, Kirkuk became a part of the Kingdom of Iraq. "

"1970 the Iraqi government reached an agreement with Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani called the March Agreement of 1970, but the question of whether 

 the oil-rich province of Kirkuk  

would be included within the Kurdish autonomous region remained unresolved"

"Between 1968, when the Ba'ath Party 

 first rose to power in Iraq, and 2003 between 200,000 and 300,000 persons were forcibly relocated out of Kirkuk." 

1991, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was quickly routed by the United States in the First Gulf War (also called Operation Desert Storm).  

In the aftermath of the Iraqi army's defeat, rebellions broke out in Iraq; first in southern Iraq on March 1, and in the northern Kurdish region a few days later. By March 24, Kurdish Peshmerga forces had seized control of Kirkuk, but they were only able to hold it until March 28 when it was reclaimed by Hussein's forces. 

The US and UK began to enforce a no-fly zone in Northern Iraq and a de facto Kurdish Autonomous region emerged in the North.   " 

____ .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre

The Halabja massacre   

(Kurdish: کیمیابارانی ھەڵەبجە Kêmyabarana Helebce) took place in Iraqi Kurdistan on 16 March 1988, 

 when thousands of Kurds were killed by a large-scale Iraqi chemical attack. 

A targeted attack in Halabja, it was carried out during the Anfal campaign, which was led by Iraqi military officer Ali Hassan al-Majid. Two days before the attack, the city had been captured by Iran as part of Operation Zafar 7 of the Iran–Iraq War. 

 Following the incident, the United Nations launched an investigation and concluded  

that mustard gas as well as unidentified nerve agents had been used against Kurdish civilians. 

The United States Defense Intelligence Agency initially blamed Iran for the attack, 

 though the majority of evidence later revealed that  

Iraq  

had used the chemical weapons

 to bolster an ongoing military offensive  

against Iran, pro-Iranian Kurdish fighters, 

 and ordinary Halabja residents"    

"The discovery of vast quantities of oil  

in the region after World War I provided the impetus for the annexation of the former Ottoman Vilayet of Mosul (of which the Kirkuk region was a part), to the Iraqi Kingdom, established in 1921. 

 Since then and particularly from 1963 onwards, there have been continuous 

attempts to transform the ethnic make-up of the region. 

 Pipelines from Kirkuk 

run through Turkey to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea and were  

one of the two main routes for the export of Iraqi oil under the  

Oil-for-Food Programme 

 following the Gulf War of 1991"  

****

Halabja massacre remains the largest chemical weapons attack  

directed against a civilian-populated region in human history, 

 killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people  

and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more. 

 Preliminary results from surveys of the affected areas showed increased rates of cancer and birth defects in the years since the attack took place." 

"2010, the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal officially defined the Halabja chemical attack as

 a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people during the time of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein 

That same year, it was also formally condemned by the Parliament of Canada, which classified it as a crime against humanity." 

Northern Iraq was an area of general unrest during the early stage of 

 the Iran–Iraq War, with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) militias joining forces,

 with Iranian support, in 1982 and 1983, respectively.  

From 1985, the Iraqi Ba'athist government under Saddam Hussein 

decided to eradicate pockets of Kurdish insurgents in the north and strike down the peshmerga rebels 

by all means possible, including large-scale punishment of civilians  

and the use of chemical weapons." 

Survivors said the gas at first smelled of sweet apples 

and reported that people "died in a number of ways, suggesting a combination of toxic chemicals." 

Citing an interview with a university student who survived the attack, the international NGO, Human Rights Watch, reported that "some [victims] 'just dropped dead'. Others 'died of laughing.' Others took a few minutes to die, first 'burning and blistering' or 'coughing up green vomit'". 

 "generally accepted that "a lethal cocktail of mustard gas and the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX" was used, as reported by the BBC."  

____ 

"The dual-use exports from U.S. companies to Iraq was enabled by 

a Reagan administration policy that removed Iraq  

from the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. 

Alcolac was named as a defendant in the Aziz v. Iraq case, but the case was eventually dismissed (Case No. 1:09-cv-00869-MJG). 

 Both companies have since undergone reorganization.  

Phillips, once a subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum is now part of ConocoPhillips, .

an American oil and discount fossil fuel company. " 

"The 2002 International Crisis Group (ICG) no. 136 "Arming Saddam: The Yugoslav Connection" concludes it was "tacit approval" 

by many world governments 

led to the Iraqi regime being armed with weapons of mass destruction,  

despite sanctions, because of the ongoing Iranian conflict. .

Among the dual-use exports provided to Iraq from American companies such as Alcolac International and Phillips was 

 thiodiglycol, a substance which can also be used to manufacture mustard gas,  

according to leaked portions of Iraq's "full, final and complete" disclosure of the sources for its weapons programs"

___ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War 

"During the Iran–Iraq War, which began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran on 22 September 1980, the United States adopted a policy of providing support to Iraq 

in the form of several billion dollars' worth of economic aid, dual-use technology, intelligence sharing (e.g., IMINT), and special operations training. 

 This U.S. support, along with support from most of the Arab world, proved vital in helping Iraq sustain military operations against Iran. 

The documented sale of dual-use technology, with one notable example being Iraq's acquisition of 45 Bell helicopters in 1985, 

was effectively a workaround for a ban on direct arms transfers; 

U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East dictated that Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism because of the Iraqi government's historical ties with groups like the Palestinian Liberation Front and the Abu Nidal Organization, among others.

 However, this designation was removed in 1982 to facilitate broader support for the Iraqis as the conflict dragged on in Iran's favour. 

 Of particular interest for contemporary Iran–United States relations is a conspiracy theory alleging that 

the U.S. government actively encouraged Iraqi president Saddam Hussein

 to invade Iran following the Islamic Revolution.  "  

U.S. support for Iraq was not covert, especially during the Reagan administration, and was frequently the subject of open sessions in the Senate and the House of Representatives.  

On June 9, 1992, British-American journalist Ted Koppel reported on ABC News Nightline that the 

"Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq."

The decision by the U.S. and the Western Bloc to openly oppose Iran

 was made less complicated by the fact that the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc had also adopted the same position, 

with both sides seeking to contain the Iranian policy of exporting the Islamic Revolution;

 Iran's new government, led by Ruhollah Khomeini, had antagonized the Americans and the Soviets (the "Great Satan" and the "Lesser Satan")

 as part of an effort to mobilize Shia Islamism throughout the Muslim world. 

 According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, more than 

 90% of Iraqi arms imports during the Iran–Iraq War came from

 the Soviet Union, France, and China." 

"as encapsulated in a remark by American diplomat Henry Kissinger that  

"It's a pity they both can't lose." 

___& 

"Following the Iranian Revolution, the Carter administration continued to see Iran 

as a bulwark against Iraq and the Soviet Union, 

 and therefore attempted to forge a strategic partnership with the new Interim Government of Iran 

 under Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan. " 

Iranian leaders, including Khomeini and his successor Ali Khamenei, have long espoused a belief that the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein a "green-light" to launch the invasion of Iran.

 U.S. officials have strongly denied this charge.Joost Hiltermann observes that a U.S. green-light is also "the conventional wisdom in the Arab world." 

In fact, Iranian suspicions that the U.S. would use Iraq to retaliate for the hostage-taking predated the invasion, as Carter noted in his diary on April 10, 1980: 

"The Iranian terrorists are making all kinds of crazy threats to kill the American hostages if they are invaded by Iraq—whom they identify as an American puppet." 

"Saddam made a trip to Saudi Arabia in which King Khalid is reported to have pledged Saudi support for an invasion of Iran, which Bryan R. Gibson commented was "a very significant gesture, especially in light of the closeness of American–Saudi relations."  

Regardless of whether the U.S. provided any express green-light to Saddam, 

Iranians continue to view the failure of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to condemn Iraq's invasion—

or to recognize Iraq as the aggressor

 until after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait nearly a decade later— 

as a form of a form of  tacit complicity 

 in Iraq's aggression against Iran—not just on the part of the U.S.,

 but the entire world."  

*The United States government supported the construction of a new oil pipeline that would run westward from Iraq across the land to the Jordanian port city of Aqaba, permitting access from the Red Sea.

 The Bechtel Corporation was the prime contractor for this project. Donald Rumsfeld discussed the advantages of the pipeline personally with Saddam Hussein in 1983."

"On April 14, 1988, the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts was badly damaged by an Iranian mine. U.S. forces responded with Operation Praying Mantis on April 18,

 the United States Navy's largest engagement of surface warships since World War II.  

Two Iranian ships were destroyed, killing 55 sailors in the process, and an American helicopter was shot down, killing the two pilots.

A number of researchers and former military personnel contend that the United States carried out Black operations against Iranian military targets during the war. 

Lt. Col. Roger Charles, who worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon,

 says the Navy used specially equipped Mark III patrol boats during the night, with the intent of luring Iranian gunboats away from territorial waters, where they could be fired upon and destroyed" 

"An Iraqi jet fighter mistakenly attacked the USS Stark in May 1987, killing 37 servicemen and injuring 21. 

But attention in Washington was on isolating Iran; accepting Saddam's apology for the error, the White House criticized Iran's mining of international waters, and in 

 October 1987, the U.S. attacked Iranian oil platforms "