Biography

Salim Saeed Faqi Abdulrahman was born in the year 1906 in the village of Barzan, affiliated with the Barzan district in the Mergasor district of Erbil Governorate. He began his married life in the Soviet Union with Aziza Khairullah Saifullah, and they had two daughters: Zuleikha Salim (1958) and Zainab Salim (1958).

Struggle Pages

He headed to East Kurdistan after the setback of the Second Revolution of Barzan, and on March 31, 1946, he joined the Barzani forces belonging to the army of the Democratic Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad. He participated in the battles of the Saqqez front in the Democratic Republic of Kurdistan, and was among his Peshmerga comrades, as he returned on 19/4/1947 to the Shirwan and Mazuri regions via (Khwakurk and the Barazgara plain).

After their return, General Mustafa Barzani held a meeting with his comrades in the village of Arkush on 15/5/1947 and gave them the choice to stay or go to the Soviet Union. There, all his comrades decided to continue and head to the Soviet Union. On May 23, 1947, he accompanied General Mustafa Barzani to the Soviet Union, and participated in the battles of Qotur and Maku Bridge. After great hardship and severe exhaustion, he crossed the Aras River on June 18, 1947, which is located on the border between Iran and the Soviet Union.

After their arrival in the Soviet Union, on June 19, 1947, he and all his comrades were detained in Nakhchivan in the Republic of Azerbaijan for forty days in an open compound surrounded by barbed wire guarded by soldiers. They were treated as prisoners of war in terms of food, clothing, and transportation. By a decision of the Soviet government, they were later distributed to the regions of Aghdam, Lachin, Ayolakh, and Kalbajar in the Republic of Azerbaijan. On December 10, 1947, they were moved to a camp on the Caspian Sea in the capital of the Azerbaijani Republic, Baku, and on the 23rd of the same month, they received military uniforms. They were receiving military training for eight hours daily under the supervision of officers from the Republic of Azerbaijan, and at the same time, they were receiving lessons in the Kurd language for four hours daily by some of their educated comrades.

After Jafar Baghirov's mistreatment of his comrades, Barzani decided to move his military gathering from the Republic of Azerbaijan on August 29, 1948, to the Jarjuk complex near the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, where they continued their military training.

In March 1949, he and his comrades were distributed in groups by train to collective villages in the Soviet Union and worked on Kolkhoz farms (land that people would rent from the government and then pay a share to the government from it).

After great efforts and sending several letters from General Barzani to Stalin, Stalin finally received a letter in which Barzani spoke about the suffering of his comrades, and he immediately decided to form a committee to investigate the situation of Barzani's comrades. The committee's final decision was that they should be gathered in the city of Frivsky, so he headed in November 1951 to the Soviet city of Frivsky.

After the July 14, 1958 revolution in Iraq and the return of General Mustafa Barzani on February 25, 1959, a general amnesty included Barzani and his comrades according to Articles (3 and 7) and Paragraph (A) of Article (10) and the implementation of Article (11) based on Law No. (19) as amended in the year 1959. 

The Republic of Iraq was established in the year 1958 under the leadership of Abd al-Karim Qasim, and on April 16, 1959, he returned with his comrades to Kurdistan on the ship Gruzia via the port of Basra in the south of the Republic of Iraq.

After his return, he lived for a period in Shaqlawa, then headed to the village of Barzan. He participated in the year 1964 in the Aylul Revolution. After the setback of the Aylul Revolution in the year 1975, he was deported by the Iraqi government to southern Iraq and was settled in Diwaniyah Governorate. In the year 1980, he was moved to the Qushtapa complex, and on July 31, 1983, he was forcibly disappeared with his son Khairullah Salim (1967-1983) by the Iraqi government in the Anfal operation of the Barzanis in the Qushtapa complex. 

Sources

1. Hamid Gardi, Summary of Historical Pages, First Edition, (Erbil - Aras Institution for Printing and Publishing - Ministry of Education Press - 2004 AD).

2. Rikari Mazuri, The Tragic Events of the Barzanis, First Edition, Erbil - Haj Hashim Press - 2013 AD).

3. Rikari Mazuri, Russian Women, Deportation, Anfal, and Genocide, (Erbil - Al-Manara Press - 2010 AD).

4. Shaban Ali Shaban, Some Political Information and History, Third Edition, (Erbil – Rojhalat Press – 2013 AD). 

5. Omar Faruqi, Sardar Dana: Life and Struggles of the Late Mullah Mustafa Barzani, Second Edition, (Erbil - Ministry of Education Press - 2002 AD).

6. Abdulrahman Mullah Habib Abu Bakr, Barzan Tribe between 1931 - 1991, First Edition, (Erbil - Ministry of Culture Press – 2001 AD).

7. Omar Hamza Salih, Genocide and Crimes of the Ba'athist Regime against the Barzanis, 1975-1991, According to Witnesses and Documents, First Edition - Rojhalat Press – 2017 AD). 

8. Karwan Muhammad Majid, The Barzanis from Mahabad to the Soviets, First Edition, (Sulaymaniyah – Beyond Press - 2011 AD). 

9- Hataw Magazine, Issue 154, Sixth Year, Erbil, Kurdistan Press, Friday, April 15, 1959.

10. From the memoirs of the Martyr Commander Hasso Mirxan Zazuki, 62 Days with Barzani, The Barzanis' Departure to the Soviet Union, First Edition (Erbil – Culture Press – 1997 AD).

11. Laith Abdul-Muhsin Jawad Al-Zubaidi, The July 14, 1958 Revolution in Iraq, (Baghdad - Dar Al-Rashid for Publishing - 1979 AD).

 12. Masoud Barzani, Barzani and the Kurd Liberation Movement 1931-1958, (Duhok, Khabat Press, 1998 AD).

13. Najaf Quli Pesyan, From Bloody Mahabad to the Banks of the Aras, Trans. Shawkat Sheikh Yazdin, First Edition (Pirmam - Golden Jubilee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party 1996 AD).

14. Archive of the Encyclopedia Committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party