Biography

 

Khidir Khalkani was born in 1922 in the village of Khalkani, affiliated with the Rawandiz district in Erbil province. He studied in the Soviet Union and received an institute diploma in the department of agriculture-surveying. He married Nadia in the Soviet Union. After returning from exile in Iran, he returned to Galala in 1978 and was employed at the Choman Agricultural Department. In 1981, he was transferred to Soran. He knew Kurdish, Arabic, and Russian. He passed away in 1987 in Soran and was buried in the Soran cemetery.

Struggle Record

In 1944, before joining the revolution, he was a soldier in the Iraqi government at the Rawandiz outpost and deserted from the military. That same year, he joined the ranks of the Second Barzan Revolution and participated in the battles.

 On August 19, 1945, by order of the Iraqi military tribunal, all his movable and immovable property was seized. On October 11, after the defeat of the Second Barzan Revolution, he headed with his family to Eastern Kurdistan. On March 31, 1946, he was a Peshmerga in the Barzan force affiliated with the army of the Republic of Kurdistan. On April 29 of the same year, he participated in the Battle of Qarawa in the Saqqez region.

 After the defeat of the Republic of Kurdistan, on March 3, 1947, he participated in the Battle of Nalos, and on March 19, he participated in the battles of Oshnavieh and Naqadeh. He was among the Peshmerga who returned to the Shirwan and Mazuri region through (Khwakurk and the Barazgir plain) via the territory of Northern Kurdistan on April 19, 1947.

After their return, General Mustafa Barzani held a meeting with his companions on May 6, 1947, in the village of Argush and gave them the choice of staying or going to the Soviet Union. There, all his companions decided to continue and go to the Soviet Union. On May 23, 1947, he accompanied General Mustafa Barzani towards the Soviet Union and participated in the Mangur battle and the battles of the Qotur valley and the Maku bridge. After much hardship and fatigue, on June 18, 1947, he crossed the Aras River, which lies on the border between Iran and the Soviet Union, into the Soviet Union.

After arriving in the Soviet Union, on June 19, 1947, he and all his companions were placed in the city of Nakhchivan in the Republic of Azerbaijan for forty days in an open-air complex surrounded by barbed wire. They were guarded by a group of soldiers and were treated as prisoners of war in terms of food, clothing, and movement. Later, by decision of the Soviet government, they were distributed among the regions of Aghdam, Lachin, Ayulakh, and Kalbajar in the Republic of Azerbaijan. On December 10, 1947, they were transferred to a military camp on the Caspian Sea in Baku, the capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and on the 23rd of the same month, they were given military uniforms and, under the supervision of officers of the Republic of Azerbaijan, were given eight hours of military training daily. At the same time, for four hours a day, they were taught Kurdish language lessons by some of their companions who were literate.

 

After the mistreatment of his companions by Jafar Baghirov, it was decided to move the military camp on August 29, 1948, from the Republic of Azerbaijan to the Charchuk complex near Tashkent, the capital of the Republic of Uzbekistan, where they continued their military training.

In March 1949, he and his companions were distributed in groups and squads by train among the collective farms of the Soviet Union and worked on the kolkhoz fields (lands that people rented from the government and later gave the government's share back).

After much effort and sending several letters by General Barzani to Stalin, a letter finally reached Stalin in which Barzani described the hardships of his companions, and he immediately ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the situation of Barzani's companions. Eventually, the committee's decision was that they should all be gathered in the city of Vrevsky, so he went to the city of Vrevsky in the Soviet Union in November 1951.

After the July 14, 1958 revolution in Iraq and the return of General Mustafa Barzani, on February 25, 1959, and according to both the third and seventh articles and paragraph (a) of the tenth article and the implementation of article (11) based on the amended Law No. 19 of 1959, he and his companions were granted a general amnesty.

In 1958, the Republic of Iraq was established under the presidency of Abdul Karim Qasim. On April 16, 1959, he and his companions returned to Kurdistan by the ship Gruzia via the port of Basra in the south of the Republic of Iraq. 

 In 1961, he participated in the Aylul Revolution and was a Sergeant. He participated in the battles of Hassan Beg, Sartiz, Handren, and the Beshe gorge, and in the Aylul Revolution he was in charge of the Barziwa checkpoint. In 1975, after the defeat of the Aylul Revolution, he fled to Iran as a refugee. After a year of displacement, he returned to Kurdistan and was forcibly relocated by the Iraqi government to southern Iraq and settled in the village of Saguri in the Garma Bani Sa'id sub-district, affiliated with the Suq al-Shuyukh district in Nasiriyah province.

Sources:
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