Biography

Born in 1921 in the village of Muka, affiliated with the Shirwan Mazin sub-district in the Mergasor district of Erbil province. He studied in the agricultural department of the Agricultural Institute in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, he married Aisha Ibrahim Said-Hamad, and they had a son and a daughter named Sabri, born in 1952, and Gulnar, born in 1954. After returning from the Soviet Union, Khamo Shamdin was appointed as an employee in the Erbil Agriculture Department in 1959. In 1975, after the collapse of the Aylul Revolution, he remained in the village of Muka. In 1978, he was relocated by the government of Iraq to the Qushtapa complex, and in the same year, he was appointed as an employee in the Qushtapa Agriculture Department. He knew both the Kurdish and Russian languages.

Struggle Record

In 1943, 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, 1945, after the collapse of the Second Barzan Revolution, he headed to Eastern Kurdistan. On March 31, 1946, he became a Peshmerga in the Barzan force affiliated with the army of the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad. On April 29, 1946, he participated in the Battle of Qarawa in the Saqqez region of Eastern Kurdistan.

 After the collapse of the Republic of Kurdistan, on March 19, 1947, he participated in the Battle of Naghadeh and Oshnavieh. He was among the Peshmerga who returned to the Shirwan and Mizuri region through Northern Kurdistan via (Khwakurk and the Bazargar plain) on April 19, 1947.

After their return, General Mustafa Barzani held a meeting with his companions in the village of Argosh on May 6, 1947, and gave them the choice to stay or go 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 Battle of Qotur and the Battle of the Maku Bridge. After much hardship and fatigue, on June 18, 1947, he crossed the Aras River, which is located 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 an open complex surrounded by barbed wire in the city of Nakhchivan in the Republic of Azerbaijan for forty days. They were guarded by a group of soldiers and were treated like prisoners of war in terms of food, clothing, and movement. Later, by the 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 moved 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 were trained for eight hours of military exercise daily under the supervision of the officers of the Republic of Azerbaijan. At the same time, they were taught the Kurdish language daily for four hours 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 from the Republic of Azerbaijan on August 29, 1948, 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 to the collective villages of the Soviet Union and worked on the collective farms (Kolkhozes) (the 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 decided to form 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 Abd al-Karim Qasim. On April 16, 1959, he and his companions returned to Kurdistan by the ship Georgia via the port of Basra in the south of the Republic of Iraq. 

 In 1961, he participated in the Aylul Revolution and participated in the battles of Katina, Khusti, Rekaniyan, Nawbarwariyan, Pirs, Bijil, Garu-i Omar Agha, Gali-i Bekhma, and Zozk, and was slightly wounded in the battle of  Pirs  . On July 31, 1983, during the Anfal operation of the Barzanis, he was disappeared by the Iraqi government in the Qushtapa complex along with his son named Sabri Khamo (1952-1983).

Sources:
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