Biography

Salih Ali Mahmud was born in 1929 in the village of Khirzok in the Shirwan Mazn district of Mergasor, Erbil Governorate. In 1983, he was Anfalized by the Ba'ath regime in the Qushtapa complex.

Struggle History

On May 23, 1947, he accompanied General Mustafa Barzani towards the Soviet Union and participated in the Battle of Kotol (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-air compound surrounded by barbed wire in the city of Nakhchivan in the Republic of Azerbaijan for forty days, 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, under the supervision of the 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 Jafar Bagirov's mistreatment of Barzani's companions, 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 to the collective villages of the Soviet Union and worked in 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 Vrevitsk, so Salih Ali Mahmud went to the city of Vrevitsk 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, according to both the third and seventh articles and paragraph (a) of the tenth article, and by implementing 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 Grozia via the port of Basra in the south of the Republic of Iraq.

In 1983, after the start of the Anfal campaign against the Barzanis by the Ba'ath regime, Salih Ali was caught in the Anfal campaign and, like thousands of other Anfalized people, was martyred.

Sources:

- Hamid Gardi, Summary of History, First Edition, (Erbil - Aras Printing and Publishing House - Ministry of Education Press - 2004).

2- Shaban Ali Shaban, Some Political and Historical Information, Third Edition, (Erbil - Rojhalat Press - 2013).

3- Shawkat Sheikh Yazdin, The Golden Jubilee of the Peshmerga, First Edition, (Pirman - Khabat Press - 1996).

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