(A series brought to you by Feminist Global Resistance)
The Series:
Patriarchy ensures that male (almost exclusively white colonizer) history is remembered though a few women shine through or are given a twisted footnote.
More often, women are relegated to lost tomes and forgotten lore. Some shine through in song and tales while others, more recently, are beginning to have their stories told (progress?)
Throughout history, women around the world have stood to fight patriarchy, some winning, some losing, but they often brought revolution and change, their lives given for the just causes of freedom, liberty and justice.
This series will focus on the stories of some of those women who have stood up to patriarchy fighting oppression and colonization; confronting violence and abuse; And sacrificing everything in a fight for freedom, justice, and human rights. There have been many. I have chosen just a few of those who inspire me by their bravery and resolve.
Learn their names, learn from them, let them inspire you to do great things.
Part 6: Leyla Qasim, “The Bride of Kurdistan”
Leyla Qasim, (1952 – 12 May 1974)
“No Friends But The Mountains” (“Ji çiyan pê ve heval nînin”, Kurdish proverb)
The history of the Kurdish people is long but what we actually know about them, before the Islamic expansion, is limited. There is much speculation about the peoples, now known as “Kurds”, but little proven.
I am certain, through stories, legends and writings in those areas of Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran in which they live, the history is much more alive and detailed.
The Kurdish region has suffered invasions from all directions for centuries – The ancient Persians, Alexander the Great, the Islamic Arabs, the Seljuk Turks, the Mongols, the medieval Persians, the Ottoman Turks, the Ba’athists of Iraq, the Ayatollahs in Iran, the British, the US & its allies (2003), the Turks under Erdogan, IS…
It took until the Islamic expansion (starting in the 7th century) for the Kurdish peoples to gain more prominence in Western and European history. That expansion included incursions into areas of European strongholds in the old Roman and Greek empires throughout Northern Africa and the Middle East.
It was after the arrival of the Seljuk Turk Dynasty in the 11th century, that the Kurdish tribes were absorbed into the Turkish states; their warriors integrated into the Turkish armies; And where many rose to power.
Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb (“Righteousness of the Faith, Joseph, Son of Job”), aka, al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf I, Saladin Ayyubi (born 1137/1138, Died March 4, 1193) and founder of the Kurdish Ayyubi Dynasty may be the first, most famous, person of Kurdish descent known to the Western world. Born in Tikrit and rising in the ranks to lead Kurds in battle to beat King Richard the Lion-Heart, retaking Palestine from the Crusaders and beating them in battles across the Levant. He and his army went on to take all of Syria and unite Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Northern Mesopotamia through diplomacy and military action.
The Ayyubi Dynasty was to be known as the peak of Kurdish power in the Middle East but was short-lived (1174 to 1250).
20th Century and the Rise of Kurdish Nationalism
Throughout their history, the Kurds have always been able to retreat to the mountains for sanctuary from invaders and those mountains have been a problem for invaders to conquer and hold. The mountains served as protection that ultimately assisted the Kurds, allowing them to survive as a distinct ethnic group. Their nomadic style of life and the mountains were a natural way to avoid marauding invader armies throughout the centuries.
With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, in WWI, the nationalist movements began to gain traction in the Middle East. The Turks, Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Armenians and Azeris all began fighting for national homelands after being subjugated by the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years.
What was unknown to those indigenous peoples, now freed of the Ottoman Empire, was that the British and French formed a secret agreement called the Sykes-Picot Agreement. That agreement consisted of plans to carve up the Near and Middle East into nation-states and spheres of control to support their own colonial interests. The plan was to divide the former Syrian and Mesopotamian provinces, that had been absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, into five nation-states: Lebanon and Syria which would be under French control and Palestine, Jordan and Iraq including Mosul Province which would be under British control.
At the end of the War, the Treaty of Sevres (as a part of the Versailles Peace Settlement) was drafted, between the Allied forces and the Ottomans, to deal with the dissolution and partition of the Ottoman Empire. Originally, the Treaty bolstered Kurdish nationalists’ aspirations by providing for a referendum to decide the issue of the Kurdistan homeland.
The Treaty of Sevres was rejected by the new Turkish Republic. A new treaty (The Treaty of Lausanne) was negotiated and was signed in 1923. The new treaty annulled the original Treaty of Sevres, giving control of the entire Anatolian peninsula to the new Turkish Republic. The rest of the area was divided up among France, Britain and Italy, That area included the Kurdistan homeland in Turkey. As a result, there was no longer a provision in that new treaty for a referendum for Kurdish independence or autonomy.
Kurdistan’s hopes for an autonomous region and independent state were dashed. Their imagined homeland now divided among Turkey, Persia, Syria and Iraq.
From the end of WWI through today, the Kurds have fought for autonomy in guerilla campaigns across the Kurdish region. Most of those campaigns were put down, many with the assistance of the British, and after each campaign, the Kurdish peoples suffered increased repression by the new governments.
IRAQ:
In Iraq, the British installed a puppet government in the form of the Hashemite monarchy who rule for 37 years. The monarchy continued to oppress the people of Kurdish Iraq. Whenever there is an uprising, the British Royal Air Force is used to destroy tribal villages and homes of the Kurds.
The Iraqi government openly discriminated against the Kurds: 1) The Kurds are limited in their access to jobs as Arab workers are recruited to the region instead of hiring the local Kurds – Those Kurds allowed to work were paid considerably less, though they were more highly skilled than the recruited Arab workers; 2) The Kurds were continually being displaced from their lands to create irrigation projects and to relocate Arab migrants there.
The Kurdish Genocide and the al-Anfal Campaign:
After the first Ba’athist (Pan-Arabist political party advocating the formation of a single Arab socialist nation known for its authoritarianism) coup d’etat in Iraq, in 1963, “Arabisation” begins: 1) The new Ba’athist National Guard hunts down 3,000 members of the ICP (Iraqi Communist party) allied with the toppled Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qasim. Rising stars, Saddam Hussein and Nadhim Kazzar reportedly torture and murder hundreds of members at Qasr al-Nihayya in Badhdad; 2) After multiple attempts by Mullah Mustafa Barzani, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), to negotiate peace with the newly appointed President. Talks founder and Iraqi military operations commence against the Kurds. Curfew is imposed on all Kurdish towns; KDP members are assassinated; 3) The government demolishes villages and neighborhoods of the Kurds, dismisses all Kurds who have jobs in the oil industry replacing them with Arabs, confiscates land and exiles inhabitants. 3) The regime strips the identity of Kirkuk of all its Kurdish and Turkmen identity, renaming streets, buildings, schools and areas in Arabic.
In the 1970’s, the deportation and disappearance of Faylee Kurds; In the 1980’s, the murder of 8,000 Barazani Kurds (1983) and the Halabja massacre – the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, by Saddam Hussein, killing between 3200 and 5,500 people, injuring an additional 7,000 to 10,000 with long-lasting effects of birth defects and high rates of cancer (1988).
During the al-Anfal period (under Saddam Hussein) of the late 1970’s and 1980’s, tens of thousands of innocent Kurdish people were killed, families were torn apart, many still live with severe health problems after chemical attacks; 4,500 villages were razed to the ground between 1976 and 1988; Gendercide – men and boys of “battle age: (15-20 years of age) rounded up and taken to mass graves then shot; Thousands of women and children taken to internment camps where they were either executed or died from deprivation.
TURKEY:
The repression was not just in Iraq. In 1937/1938, the Kurds of the Dersim region of Eastern Turkey resisted the authority of the Turkish government. The government responded by sending troops into the region. An estimated 30,000 Kurdish men, women and children were slaughtered by the troops (suffocated, beheaded, bayonetted, thrown from cliffs and drown), thousands of Kurds were deported to Anatolia and the town of Dersim renamed. It was all part of the government’s plan to “Turkify” the region.
From 2018 through 2020, the Turkish military (under Erdogan) launched multiple military campaigns against the Kurds in Northern Iraq and Northern Syria attacking refugee camps, Peshmerga forces, activists and civilian innocents. This was part of the internal “extermination” policy that included purging Kurdish politicians, journalists and activists in Turkey. Turkish forces continue to violate the sovereignty of its neighbors, ignores UN resolutions and recruits, trains and uses Arab mercenaries in Syria, Iraq and Libya to terrorize, displace and kill the Kurdish and other indigenous natives.
SYRIA:
In Syria, the government, under President Nazim al-Kudsi, conducts a “census” in the northeastern Kurdish al-Hasaka province. No warning was given and the census was completed in a 24-hour period. Those who objected or who could not, immediately, produce documentation of their residency before 1945 were stripped of their citizenship and were deprived of all civil rights – they could not get passports; could not own land, property of any kind, or own a business; could not receive any state subsidies; nor could they use Syrian hospitals. They could attend school but could not get jobs in the public sector and were barred from public office.
Over 120,000 Kurds were now declared “stateless”. Any lands they owned were redistributed to Arabs.
From 1965 through 1976, the Syrian government enacted more policies that ultimately stripped 1.4 million acres of land from the Kurds through establishment of an “Arab Belt” or buffer zone along the border of Iraq to the breakup of Kurdish estates to create “model farming villages” for the Arab population.
Centuries of battles, betrayals, forced relocations, forced “assimilations”, massacres and oppression by occupiers are the history of Kurdistan as are the continued strength and resolve of the Kurdish people that have led them to periods of power and the beginnings of the Kurdish Nationalist movement. That strength continues to this day.
Betrayals by the international community continue as well. From the Ottomans to the British to the US, the Kurds have been used as bargaining chips and pawns in order to steal land and minerals; they have been used to fight wars then left to fend for themselves by “allies” in the international community. They are cheered for their bravery then left, without support, to perish (The U.S. has gotten very good at betrayal. At least eight times since the end of WWI. The most recent betrayal was, 2019 by Donald Trump).
Kurdish activism and revolutionary spirit, in later years, as a part of the “Young Turks”, in the late 19th century and into the 20th century, “Kurdish Hope Society”, just prior to WWI, and the “Kurdistan Democratic Party” and the nationalist movements through today, have brought their story to the world stage. The Kurdish people will continue to fight until they attain full autonomy, full statehood, and freedom for its people.
HER story…
Leyla Qasim was born in 1952, in the City of Khanaqin (Xaneqin), in the Khanaqin District, Diyala Governorate, Iraq, near the Iranian border. The third of five children to Feylī Kurdish farmers in the region, she was educated until age 6, in Arabic and agriculture by her mother. In 1958, she entered Elementary school and later finished Secondary school in the city of Khanaqin, in Diyala Governorate, Iraq. In 1971, she moved to Baghdad City and started her studies in Sociology at the University of Baghdad.
From an early age, Leyla was exposed to Kurdish Nationalism and activism.
Leyla was 11 when the Ba’ath Party ousted the Prime Minister of Iraq, Abdul Karim Qasim, and installed Abdul Salam Mohammed Arif as President and when he announced a resumption of military operations against the Kurds (to include operations against the Feyli Kurds) She was still 11 when the US, under John F Kennedy, provided military assistance in the form of tanks, tank transporters, combat helicopters, trucks, and napalm to use against the Kurds (all the while, the US State Dept, publicly, voiced support for a “negotiated settlement to the Kurdish issue”) The Kurds rebelled against continued oppression renewing their guerilla war against the regime. She was still 11 when the British government decided to supply jets, rockets and tanks to the Arif regime to use against the Kurds.
She was 16 when Abdul Rahman Arif (the brother of Abdul Salam Mohammed Arif who was killed in a helicopter crash in 1966), 3rd President of Iraq, was overthrown by Ba’ath party leader, General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, in the 17 July Revolution of 1968. Saddam Hussein was chosen as al-Bakr’s 2nd in command and chief interlocutor with the Kurds. “Arabisation” began again (originally started in 1963) to ethnically cleanse the Kirkuk area of the Kurdish held lands.
At 16, Leyla and her brother, Chiyako, began writing and handing out pamphlets supporting the defense of Kurdistan and about the horrors of the Ba’ath Party and its leader, Saddam Hussain.
Leyla was 17 when the Ba’ath government ordered massacres in Kurdish villages along the border near Turkey as a continuation of the “Arabisation” policies.
Leyla was 18, in 1970 when the Kurdish revolutionary leadership, headed by General Mustafa Barzani, was finally able to negotiate a peace accord with the Iraqi government that recognized Kurdish basic political and cultural rights. The agreement granted the Kurds political autonomy as well as the right to practice their culture and study the Kurdish language.
Leyla was 19 when she began studies at Baghdad University. She was concerned for the future of the Kurds under the Ba’athists and, by 1971, she had joined the Kurdistan Student Union (aka, Yekiti Qotabi yen Kurdistane, formed in 1953, the student movement was part of the revolutionary KDP or Kurdistan Democratic Party, founded by Kurdish revolutionary leader, General Mustafa Barzani).
Leyla was 22 when the peace accord negotiated between the KDP (General Mustafa Barzani) and the Iraqi government ended in 1974; Four years of relative peace between the government and the Kurdish people until the Ba’athists again took control of Iraq and withdrew from the accord. This led to more clashes between Kurdish and Iraqi forces now known as the Second Iraqi-Kurdish War.
Leyla at 22 was young, determined and motivated to actively work with the KSU and the KDP for the freedom of Kurdistan and the right to autonomy.
On April 28th of her 22nd year of life, Leyla Qasim, along with 4 other Pro-Kurdish activists, with the KSU, Hesen Hama Reshid, Neriman Fuad, Azad Sileman Miranand, Cewad Hemewendi, were arrested and tortured by Iraqi authorities on charges of “sabotage and terrorism”. (various accounts include accusations of planning an airplane hijacking to planning the assassination of Saddam Hussein but there is no record of any confession no matter how harsh the torture).
In a show trial on television, Leyla and her comrades were tried and convicted. During the trial, Leyla is said to have shown tremendous courage, never wavering when questioned in front of the Ba’athist judge. At one point in the trial, she raised her voice to yell:
In the face of death, Leyla, fearlessly, took the strength of her 22 years of resistance and defiantly stood for her people. Her voice a clarion call for freedom.
After her conviction and before her execution, her mother was allowed to visit her in prison. Leyla’s only request was for the traditional clothing of her tribe to be delivered to her so she could wear it one last time.
At the age of 22, on the 12th of May,1974, Leyla, along with her four comrades, was executed. She became the first woman executed in Iraq and only the fourth woman political prisoner in history to be executed.
On her way to the gallows, she sang, “Ey Reqîb”, the Kurdish national anthem:
Oh, enemy! The Kurdish people live on,
They have not been crushed by the weapons of any time
Let no one say Kurds are dead, they are living
They live and never shall we lower our flag
We are descendants of the red banner of the revolution
Look at our past, how bloody it is
Let no one say Kurds are dead, they are living
They live and never shall we lower our flag
We are the descendants of the Medes and Cyaxares
Kurdistan is our religion, our credo,
Let no one say Kurds are dead, they are living
They live and never shall we lower our flag
The Kurdish youth rise bravely,
With their blood they colored the crown of life
Let no one say Kurds are dead, they are living
They live and never shall we lower our flag
The Kurdish youth are ready and prepared,
To give their life as the supreme sacrifice
Let no one say Kurds are dead, they are living
They live and never shall we lower our flag
Leyla wore the traditional clothing of Kurdistan to her execution. She is now and will be forever known as the Bride of Kurdistan.