Biography

Salim Shikhomar Ahmed was born in 1888 in the village of Bidod, affiliated with the Biran sub-district in the Mergasor district of Erbil Governorate. He married after going to the Soviet Union and had a daughter named Ludmila. He was fluent in both Kurdish and Russian and died in 1954 in Uzbekistan, where he was laid to rest.

Struggle Pages

In 1931, he joined the ranks of the first Barzan revolution, and on April 3, 1932, he participated in the field battle of Dolafazi. On June 21, 1932, he took refuge with his family in the Republic of Turkey. In 1943, he joined the ranks of the second Barzan revolution and participated in the battles. On August 19, 1945, all his movable and immovable property was confiscated by order of the Iraqi Military Court. On October 11, 1945, after the setback of the second Barzan revolution, he moved to East Kurdistan.

On March 31, 1946, he joined Barzani's forces and served as a Peshmerga in the army of the Democratic Republic of Kurdistan, and participated in the battles of Salih Awa, Siro, and Margawar in East Kurdistan. On May 3, 1946, he participated in the battle of Malqarni. After the collapse of the Democratic Republic of Kurdistan, on March 25, 1947, he participated in the battle of Hafras and Halji.

He was among his Peshmerga comrades as he returned on 19/4/1947 via (Khwakurk and the Barazkara plain) through the lands of North Kurdistan to the Shirwan and Mazuri regions. 

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 of staying or going 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, participated in the battles of Qotur and the Maku Bridge, and after great hardship and extreme 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, Azerbaijan, for forty days in an open compound surrounded by barbed wire and 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, Yevlakh, 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 a day under the supervision of officers from the Republic of Azerbaijan, and at the same time, they were receiving lessons in the Kurdish language for four hours a day from some of their educated comrades.

After Jafar Bagirov's mistreatment of his comrades, Barzani decided to move his military gathering from Azerbaijan on August 29, 1948, to the Jarjuk compound 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 the cooperative villages in the Soviet Union and worked on collective farms (the land that people rented from the government and then paid a share of it to the government).

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 decision was finally that they should be gathered in the city of Frivsky, so he headed in November 1951 to the Soviet city of Frivsky.

Sources

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2. Safar Yusuf Mirkan, Mam Khadr Mulla Usman: If it were not for the immortal Barzani, we would not be able to speak the Kurdish language now, mouthpiece of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Khabat Newspaper, Issue 3456, Erbil, April 27, 2010.

3. Sabri Jawashin Khano, Bidod in History, (Erbil – Rozhalat Press - 2018).

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

10. Masoud Barzani, Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement 1931-1958, (Duhok, Khabat Press, 1998).

11. 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).

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