Biography

Taha Iskandar Hassan was born in 1932 in the village of Reshe in the Barzan sub-district of Mergasor district in Erbil province. Before going to the Soviet Union, he was married to Nusrat Faqi Hassan Hassan, and they had a son named Ali Taha who was born in 1946. On July 31, 1983, during the Anfal operation of the Barzanis, he and two sons named Ali Taha (1946-1983) and Sanan Taha (1962-1983) were disappeared by the Iraqi government in the Qushtapa complex.

Struggle Record

On May 23, 1947, he accompanied General Mustafa Barzani to the Soviet Union and participated in the Battle of Qatur and the Battle of 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. 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, under the supervision of the officers of the Republic of Azerbaijan, were given eight hours of military training daily. At the same time, they were taught Kurdish language lessons daily for four hours by some of their companions who were literate.

After Jafar Bagirov's mistreatment of the 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 on the Kolkhoz farms (lands that people rented from the government and later gave back the government's share).

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. 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 via the port of Basra in the south of the Republic of Iraq on the ship Grozia. He participated in the Aylul Revolution.

Sources:

  1. Archive of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Encyclopedia Board

  2. Hamid Gardi, Summary of History, First Edition, (Erbil - Aras Printing and Publishing House - Ministry of Education Press - 2004).
  3. Rikari Mizuri, Women, Displacement, Anfal and Genocide, First Edition, (Erbil - Minara Press - 2010).
  4. Shaban Ali Shaban, Some Political and Historical Information, Third Edition, (Erbil - Rojhalat Press - 2013).
  5. Abdulrahman Mullah Habib Abu Bakr, The Barzan Tribe between 1931-1991, First Edition, (Erbil - Ministry of Culture Press - 2001).
  6. Omar Hamza Salih, Genocide and Crimes of the Ba'ath Regime against the Barzanis 1975-1991 from the perspective of witnesses and documents, First Edition, (Erbil - Rojhalat Press - 2017).
  7. Karwan Muhammad Majid, The Barzanis from Mahabad to the Soviet Union, First Edition, (Sulaymaniyah - Paywand Press - 2011).
  8. Laith Abdul-Muhsin Jawad Al-Zubaidi, The 14 July 1958 Revolution in Iraq, (Baghdad - Dar Al-Rashid for Publishing - 1979).
  9. Masoud Barzani, Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement 1931-1958, (Duhok - Khabat Press - 1998).
  10. Najaf Quli Pesyan, From Bloody Mahabad to the Shores of the Aras, trans. Shawkat Sheikh Yazdin, First Edition, (Pirmam - Golden Jubilee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party - 1996).