Sulaymaniyah

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Kurdish Girls


As-Sulaimaniyah Region, Iraq

Variations on Name
English: Sulaimaniyah, Sulamaniya, Sulaimaniya, Sulaimanieh, Sulaimania
Kurdish: سلێمانی, Silêmanî, Silémaní
Arabic: السليمانية‎ as-sulaymānīyä
Historic: Sharezûr

Geography
Sulaymaniyah is a city in the east of Iraqi Kurdistan. It is situated in the northeast of Iraq, and is the capital of Sulaymaniyah Governorate, part of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region (Kurdistan Region in the new Iraqi Constitution).
Download: Google Earth placemarks for Sulaymaniyah, Halabjah, Qashqa
Population: Approximately 500,000- 750,000 inhabitants
Coordinates: 35.55°N, 45.45°E


Landscape around Sulaymaniyah


View over the City of Sulaymaniyah


Map of City of Sulaymaniyah

Summary
Founded in 1784 by a Kurdish prince known as Ibrahim Pasha Baban who named it for his father Sulaiman Pasha (Sulaiman is the Islamic version of the name Solomon). Since being founded as the capital of a powerful Kurdish principality it has grown to about 800,000 people. It is the cultural centre of the Sorani-speaking Kurds and an important economic centre for Iraqi Kurdistan; it is also known for its strong economic ties with Iran.

Since liberation in 1991, it has been administered by Kurdistan authorities and serves as one of the regional capitals of the Kurdistan Regional government (KRG). The city is a tourist attraction for Iraqis and other middle Easterners due to its relative prosperity, security and undeniable natural beauty. Qadir Hamajan Aziz (known as Hakim Qadir) is the current mayor of Sulaimani and the president of Sulaimani Municipality Council after winning the 2000 election as the candidate of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of which he is a senior member. Sulaimani has a Sister City Programme with several cities around the world such as Tucson, Arizona in the USA, Amman in Jordan, and soon Munakata, Fukuoka in Japan.



Political
Many buildings have been destroyed by warfare, and some of the larger ones are occupied by refugees who live in squalor. Al-Sulaymaniyah is the capitol of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)-controlled Iraqi Kurdistan. Northern Iraq has been independent of Saddam (and guarded by U.S. and British patrols) since the Kurdish uprising that followed the Gulf war in 1991. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) administers Sulaymaniyah, and its rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), controls Irbil and Dohuk.

In late August 1996, backed by Iraq, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) launched an offensive in northern Iraq that led to the takeover of the regional capital of Irbil and placed most of the region under Massoud Barzani's control.

On 08 September 1996 Saddam Hussein offered a blanket amnesty for all Iraqi Kurds involved in factional fighting in northern Iraq. The previous day the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), allied with Saddam Hussein, had seized the city of Sulaymaniyah, the last stronghold of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Many Kurds fled after the KDP rolled into Sulaymaniyah, some of them heading for Iran. As many as 5,000 Iraqi Kurds entered Iran, a far smaller number than the 300,000 people United Nations officials estimated fled Sulaymaniyah for the rugged hills of the border.

On 12 October 1996 Kurdish rebels recaptured a northern Iraqi city seized the previous month by a rival faction backed by Saddam Hussein. Sulaymaniyah, was under the control of Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) forces following a citizens' revolt that ousted Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) troops. Thereafter, Sulaymaniyah remained under the control of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Extended Kurdistan political summary here.


Evening rush hour


Night over Sulaymaniyah

Life in Sulaimaniyah, September 2006
Extract from article by Borzou Daragahi

The night is young. The women are pretty. Danyar Farok, wearing a sparkly gray shirt and skin-tight acid-washed jeans, and a buddy are strutting along this Kurdish city's main drag. Maybe they will wind up at one of the outdoor bars in the riverside Sarchinar district. Or maybe they will sit at a teahouse shooting the breeze. Faruk, a 25-year-old high school computer teacher, complains that he and his girlfriend, Medea, can't put together enough money to live together. His artist pal Shakwan Siddik, a 23-year-old with black hair down to his shoulders and sunglasses dangling from an open-collar shirt, is searching for a sunny studio to do his oil paintings. As for the kidnappings, car bombings, drive-by killings and economic misery unfolding in the rest of Iraq, Faruk is blunt. "I don't care," he says. "The Arabs never cried for us when we were suffering. I'm going to a teahouse with my friend to have some fun."

Although much of Iraq is engulfed in insurgent, sectarian, political and tribal violence, the Switzerland-sized Kurdish autonomous region in the north of the country, established after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, is an oasis of safety and tranquillity where young and old concern themselves with mundane matters of life such as work, dating and home furnishings.

In Sulaymaniya, an opera house is being built. New hotels abound. New international airports in Sulaymaniya and Irbil offer direct flights to cities such as Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Istanbul, Turkey; Amman, Jordan; and Tehran. Visitors to Kurdistan can now bypass Baghdad altogether.

Kurds, the world's largest ethnic group without a nation, have a language and culture distinct from Iraq's 80% Arab majority. Successive Sunni Arab governments in Baghdad brutally repressed the Kurds, whose region is home to much of Iraq's water and energy resources. Hussein's forces destroyed hundreds of Kurdish villages and allegedly used chemical weapons during the 1988 Anfal campaign, now the subject of a genocide trial in Baghdad.


Blinded victim and daughter, Halabjah, As-Sulaimaniyah

Genocide Trial
Excerpts regarding As-Sulaimaniyah Region
from BBC Monitoring of Broadcast of Saddam Hussein Trial
on Al-Iraqiyah TV, 27 September 2006

At 1143 gmt, the TV is observed to resume its coverage of the trial.

A Kurdish plaintiff is shown making her statement in Kurdish, with sentence-by-sentence translation into Arabic. The plaintiff says: "I come from Qashqa village, Al-Sulaymaniyah. In spring 1988 our village was repeatedly bombarded by Iraqi helicopters, killing many people." The plaintiff adds: "Our village again came under air strikes. We heard that the Iraqi army would demolish the town. Therefore, all the women, children and elderly fled the village for Qadialkarm town. There were around 105 young men who refused to leave. Two days later our village was destroyed. I saw for myself Iraqi troops destroying the village. At a later time we heard of Saddam's amnesty. A number of old people headed to the place where the young men were hiding. The elderly turned the young people over to the Iraqi authorities." After describing how all her family members were arrested and after "complaining against Saddam Husayn, Ali al-Majid and their aides", the plaintiff is interrogated by the appointed defence lawyers. Asked if her village hosted any Peshmerga camps, the plaintiff says: "Our village only had schools and hospitals. There were no Peshmerga camps there."

At 1015 gmt, a second plaintiff is summoned to make her statement.

The plaintiff says: "I am from Qadialkarm village. In 1988, I cannot remember when exactly, we were targeted by the Iraqi artillery on daily basis. At first, we were exposed to artillery shelling and two days later we came under air strikes. I was hiding. But the strike killed three villagers. We were surrounded by the Iraqi troops. They asked the men to stand away from the women before forcibly and violently taking them to military vehicles. The men were driven to an unknown destination. Three days later we were sent to Chamchamal by buses and lorries before we were sent to Tubzawah area." The plaintiff describes the "difficult" conditions the detainees went through. "In the third night they took our children away from us. They also took my son, Shahu Salih. They beat him up until he fainted for around an hour and a half. He was three years old at that time. We then started to cry and wail, asking them to bring our children back to us," she adds. After a brief discussion by the defence lawyer on the plaintiff's statement, the judge, at 1050 gmt, summons a third plaintiff to make his statement. Asked to explain his complaint, the plaintiff says: "In 1988, we had to leave our village and move to Qadialkarm after the Iraqi army attacked our village. In Qadialkarm the soldiers separated the young men from the elderly and the women. The men were then taken to Kirkuk. I forgot to say that before we left our village, some Iraqi troops killed my brother Mahdi Karim while they were raiding the area. I also lost a nephew, Shakhwan Uthman, in an air strike." The plaintiff makes a complaint against Saddam Husayn and Ali al-Majid.

At 1136 gmt, the judge summons another plaintiff to make her statement.

The plaintiff says: "We were in our village when the Iraqi army raided the area and arrested all of us. This was on 11 April 1988. After that we were sent to Sangaw before we were transferred to Tikrit. We spent 11 days in that jail, where we suffered from hunger, cold and thirst." After claiming that her two brothers, her husband had been missing since then, the plaintiff makes a complaint against Saddam Husayn and Ali al-Majid.

At 1153 gmt, the judge adjourns the session till 9 October.

Kurdish/Jewish Bonds
There is some evidence of very old bonds between Jewish People and Kurds. Tradition holds that Jews first arrived in the area of modern Kurdistan after being captured by the Assyrian empire in Judah and relocated back to the capital of Assyria. The illustrious royal house of Adiabene, with Arbil (Arbala in Aramaic, Hewlêr in Kurdish) as its capital, was converted to Judaism in the course of the 1st century BC, along with, it appears, a large number of Kurdish citizens in the kingdom. The Jews of Kurdistan lived—until their immigration to Israel in the early 1950s—as a closed ethnic isolate, mostly in northern Iraq and Iran and in eastern Turkey. According to an old tradition, the Jews of Kurdistan are descendants of the Ten Tribes from the time of the Assyrian exile in 723 B.C.


Ketubah (Jewish marriage agreement) archived in Sulaimaniyah

A Jewish Seder (Passover) in Sulaymaniyah
From an essay by Jessie Graham

I had not planned to tell anyone in Iraq that I was Jewish, but my cover was blown when my boss slaughtered the lamb. I don't know whether he cut the animal's throat with his own hands, but that's how I remember it: An Iraqi Kurd sacrificing a paschal lamb for the first Jewish Seder in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq in decades. He roasted the meat with rosemary, garlic, and olive oil.

On my second day in Iraq, my translator took me out for a tour of the Kurdish city where I would make my home for the next year. He pointed out the park built atop a field where Saddam's forces once performed executions. He took me to the market where village women with tattooed faces sold small bunches of narcissus to signal the arrival of spring. On the outskirts of town, past the endless maze of cement-block houses built by the nouveaux riche, was a neighborhood of mud-walled houses and small, winding allies. "We call this Jewlakan—the Jews," he told me. "This is where the Jews once lived."

Iraq's Jewish community was one of the oldest in the world. Abraham was born near Babylon. Jews were an important part of Iraqi society up until the 1930s, when anti-Jewish sentiment began to build. My translator said the last of the Kurdish Jews left Sulaymaniyah by 1970.

Al-Jazeera opens page about Kurds

The Arabian news channel Al-Jazeera opened a Kurdish page on their webiste about Kurdish folklore, history, culture and future. On the website historical photo’s can be seen of Kurdish leaders in the past. On this way the Arabic world also gets more information about the Kurdish issue. Most Kurds don’t have a positive image of the Arabic TV-channel. Despite of this, the channel made a professional page about Kurds and their struggle for their homeland Kurdistan.Several writers wrote articles about for instance the PKK and Turkey, Barzani, Qazi Mohammed and off course the relations between Kurdistan and Israel. Relations between Kurds and Israel are seen in a negative perspective, despite the good relations of a lot of Arabic countries with Israel.


Children playing on tank, As-Sulaimaniyah

Israelis train Kurdish troops

The BBC's Newsnight programme reports that former Israeli commandos secretly trained Kurdish soldiers in Northern Iraq to protect a new international airport and in counter-terrorism operations. Former Israeli special forces soldiers entered Iraq from Turkey in 2004 to train two groups of Kurdish troops, one of the former Israeli trainers told the BBC's Newsnight program.

"My part of the contract was to train the Kurdish security people for a big airport project and for training, as well as the Peshmerga, and the actual soldiers, the army," the former Israeli soldier told Newsnight. "You know, day by day it's a bit tense because you know where you are and you know who you are. And there's always a chance that you'll get revealed," he said. Iraqi newspapers have reported that Israeli soldiers trained Kurdish troops, but the Kurdish authorities deny allowing any Israelis into Iraq.

The Kurds' political enemies have long accused them of an alliance with Israel while Israel's critics suspect it wants to use the Kurdish region as a strategic base to get closer to its arch-enemy Iran. Iraqi Kurdistan lies between Iran to the east and Turkey to the north-west. Both countries have significant Kurdish minorities and are worried about the prospect of a Kurdish state emerging in northern Iraq.



Chronology of Key Events for Kurdish people in Iraq

1918 - After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, British forces occupy the oil-rich Ottoman vilayet (province) of Mosul, bringing extensive Kurdish-populated areas under British rule.

1919 - Mosul area is added to the new Iraqi state, which comes under a British mandate.

1920 - Treaty of Sevres, signed by the defeated Ottoman government, provides for a Kurdish state, subject to the agreement of the League of Nations. Article 64 of the Treaty gives Kurds living in the Mosul vilayet the option of joining a future independent Kurdistan.

1921 - Emir Faysal crowned king of Iraq, including Mosul.

1923 - Shaykh Mahmud Barzinji rebels against British rule and declares a Kurdish kingdom in northern Iraq.

1923 - Kemal Ataturk's newly founded Turkish Republic gains international recognition with the Treaty of Lausanne. The Treaty of Sevres is not ratified by the Turkish parliament.

1924 - Sulaymaniyah falls to British forces.

1932 - Uprising in the Barzan region to protest at Iraq's admittance to the League of Nations, while Kurdish demands for autonomy are ignored.

1943 - Mullah Mustafa Barzani leads another uprising, and wins control of large areas of Irbil and Badinan.

1946 August - British RAF bombing forces Kurdish rebels over border into Iran where they join Iranian Kurds led by Qazi Mohamed, who founds an independent Kurdish state in Mahabad.

1946 - Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) holds its first congress in Mahabad. Within a few months, the "Mahabad Republic" collapses under attack from Iranian forces, and Mustafa Barzani flees to the Soviet Union.

1951 - A new generation of Kurdish nationalists revives the KDP. Mullah Mustafa Barzani is nominated president while in exile in the Soviet Union, but the real leader of the KDP is Ibrahim Ahmad, who favours close ties with the Iraqi Communist Party.

1958 - Overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy allows Kurdish nationalists to organise openly after many years in hiding. A new Iraqi constitution recognises Kurdish "national rights" and Mullah Mustafa Barzani returns from exile.

1960 - Relations between the Iraqi government and Kurdish groups become strained. The KDP complains of increasing repression.

1961 - KDP is dissolved by the Iraqi government after Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq.
Autonomy granted

1970 March - Iraqi government and the Kurdish parties agree a peace accord, which grants the Kurds autonomy. The accord recognises Kurdish as an official language and amends the constitution to state that: "the Iraqi people is made up of two nationalities, the Arab nationality and the Kurdish nationality."

1971 August - Relations between the Kurds and the Iraqi government deteriorate. Mullah Mustafa Barzani appeals to the US for aid.

1974 March - Iraqi government imposes a draft of the autonomy agreement and gives the KDP two weeks to respond. Mullah Mustafa Barzani rejects the agreement, which would have left the oilfields of Kirkuk under Iraqi government control, and calls for a new rebellion.

1975 March - Algiers Accord between Iran and Iraq ends Iranian support for the Kurdish uprising, which collapses. Barzani withdraws from political life.

1975 June - Jalal Talabani, a former leading member of the KDP, announces the establishment of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) from Damascus.

1978 - Clashes between KDP and PUK forces leave many dead.

1979 - Mullah Mustafa dies, his son Massoud Barzani takes over the leadership of the KDP.
Iranian involvement

1980 - Outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq. KDP forces work closely with Iran, but the PUK remains hostile to cooperation with Tehran.

1983 - An Iranian counterattack opens a northern front in Kurdish northern Iraq. With support from KDP fighters, Iranian troops take the key town of Hajj Umran. Human rights organisations say Iraqi troops killed around 8,000 men from the KDP leader's home area of Barzan in revenge.

1983 - PUK agrees to a ceasefire with Iraq and begins negotiations on Kurdish autonomy.

1985 - Under increasing Iraqi government repression, the ceasefire begins to break down. Pro-Iraqi government militia men kill Jalal Talabani's brother and two nieces.

1986 - Iranian government sponsors a meeting reconciling the KDP and PUK. Now both major Kurdish parties are receiving support from Tehran.

1987 - Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani join forces with a number of smaller Kurdish factions to create the Kurdistan Front.

1988 - As the Iran-Iraq war draws to a close, Iraqi forces launch the "Anfal Campaign" against the Kurds. Tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians and fighters are killed, and hundreds of thousands forced into exile, in a systematic attempt to break the Kurdish resistance movement.
HALABJA

1988 16 March - Thousands of Kurdish civilians die in a poison gas attack on the town of Halabjah near the Iranian border. Human rights watchdogs and Kurdish groups hold the Iraqi regime responsible.

1991 March - After the expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait in March 1991, members of the pro-government Kurdish militia, the Jash, defect to the KDP and PUK, but the uprising grinds to a halt and US-led forces refuse to intervene to support the rebels. Around 1.5 millions Kurds flee before the Iraqi onslaught, but Turkey closes the border forcing hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in the mountains.
Safe haven

1991 April - Coalition forces announce the creation of a "safe haven" on the Iraqi side of the border. International aid agencies launch a massive aid operation to help the refugees. Meanwhile, Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani open negotiations with Saddam Hussein on autonomy for Kurdistan.

1991 July - Talks continue in Baghdad, but Kurdish peshmerga forces take control of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, in defiance of Iraqi government orders.

1991 October - Fighting between Kurdish and Iraqi government forces breaks out in earnest. Saddam Hussein fortifies the border of Kurdish-held northern Iraq and imposes a blockade.

1992 May - Elections held in areas under Kurdish control give KDP candidates 50.8% of the vote, while the PUK takes 49.2%. The two parties are equally balanced in the new Kurdish government.

1992 September - Newly-established Iraqi National Congress (INC), which brings together a wide-range of Iraqi opposition groups, meets in Salah-al-Din in the Kurdish-held north. KDP and PUK representatives take part.

1994 May - Clashes between KDP and PUK forces spill over into outright civil war. The PUK captures the towns of Shaqlawah and Chamchamal from the KDP.

1996 May - UN agrees "Oil-for-Food" programme with Baghdad; 13% of the proceeds from Iraqi oil exports are earmarked for the three northern governorates, which are largely under Kurdish control.

1996 August - Masoud Barzani appeals to Saddam Hussein for help to defeat the PUK.

1996 September - With the help of Iraqi government troops, KDP forces seize the northern city of Irbil and take the PUK stronghold of Sulaymaniyah. A new KDP-led government is announced at the parliament building in Irbil.

1996 October - PUK forces retake Sulaymaniyah.

1997 January - PUK announces a new government based in Sulaymaniyah. Both the PUK and KDP claim jurisdiction over the whole of the Kurdish-controlled north.

1998 September - Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani sign a peace agreement in Washington, but government of the Kurdish region remains split between the two rival administrations.

2000 November - In a letter to the United Nations secretary-general, the PUK accuses the Iraqi government of expelling Kurdish families from Kirkuk.

2001 September - Fighting breaks out between the PUK and the Islamic fundamentalist group Jund al-Islam, later renamed Ansar al-Islam.

Moves toward unity
2002 June - PUK and KDP officials take part in joint discussions with other Iraqi groups aimed at coordinating the work of the opposition in the event of a US-led military campaign against Iraq.

2002 October - Joint session of the Kurdish parliament convenes in Irbil. KDP and PUK parliamentarians agree to work together during a "transitional session" until new elections can be held.

2003 February - US Secretary of State Colin Powell accuses Iraqi Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam of playing a pivotal role in linking Osama Bin Ladin's al-Qaeda network with the Iraqi regime.

2003 February - Kurdish leaders reject proposals to bring Turkish troops into northern Iraq as part of a US-led military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein. Anti-Turkish demonstrators take to the streets of Kurdish towns.

2003 February - Failure of a parliamentary bill allowing US troops to deploy on Turkish soil hits American plans to open a northern front against Iraq.

2003 3 March - KDP and PUK create a "joint higher leadership" in the Kurdish-held north, under the chairmanship of the two party leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani.
US-led campaign against Iraq

2003 20 March - US-led coalition forces invade Iraq and begin bombardment of Baghdad and other cities. Mosul and Kirkuk near the Kurdish enclaves come under heavy fire.

2003 22 March - Coalition forces launch Cruise missile attack on bases held by Ansar al-Islam in the north. Dozens killed in the headquarters of the Islamic Group, an unrelated radical Islamist faction when a missile hits the Khormal area.

2003 27 March - Hundreds of US paratroopers land near Irbil, signalling the opening of a northern front in the war on Iraq.

2003 9 April - US forces advance into central Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's grip on the city is broken. In the following days Kurdish fighters and US forces take control of the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.

2003 July - Interim governing council (IGC) meets for first time. Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay killed in gun battle in Mosul.

2004 1 February - At least 56 people die and more than 200 people are injured after a double suicide bombing at the offices of the two main political Kurdish parties in the northern city of Irbil. Several senior political figures are among the dead.

2005 January - An alliance of Kurdish parties comes second in Iraq's landmark national election, sending 77 deputies to an interim parliament.

2005 April - PUK leader Jalal Talabani is elected as interim Iraqi president by MPs.

2005 May - At least 50 people are killed in a suicide bomb attack on police recruits in Irbil.

2005 June - First session of Kurdish parliament held in Irbil; KDP's Massoud Barzani is president of autonomous region.

2005 December - News that a foreign firm has begun drilling for oil in the Kurdish north sparks new fears of secession among Iraqi Sunni leaders. Kurdish authorities later report a "major discovery" of oil.

2006 September - Massoud Barzani orders the Iraqi national flag be replaced with the Kurdish one in government buildings. But Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says: "The Iraqi flag is the only flag that should be raised over any square inch of Iraq."

2006 September - Five blasts caused by one suicide truck bomb and four car bombs kill 23 people in Kirkuk.