Abd ar-Razzaq Said al-Naif was an Iraqi military officer and general and was briefly Prime Minister of Iraq during 1968 until he was deposed. He was assassinated on orders of Saddam Hussein.
Leyla Qasim was a Feyli Kurdish activist against the Iraqi Ba'ath regime who was executed in Baghdad. She is known as a national martyr among the Kurds.
Rauf Rashid Abd al-Rahman is the replacement chief judge of the Al-Dujail trial of Saddam Hussein in 2006, when he sentenced Saddam and some of his top aides to death by hanging.
Kurdistan Region is an autonomous administrative entity within the Republic of Iraq. It comprises four Kurdish-majority divisions of Arab-majority Iraq: the Erbil Governorate, the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, the Duhok Governorate, and Halabja Governorate. The KRI is bordered by Iran to the east, by Turkey to the north, and by Syria to the west. It does not govern all of Iraqi Kurdistan, and lays claim to the disputed territories of northern Iraq; these territories have a predominantly non-Arab population and were subject to the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns throughout the late 20th century. Though the KRI's autonomy was realized in 1992, one year after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, these northern territories remain contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Government of Iraq to the present day. In light of the dispute, the KRI's constitution declares the city of Kirkuk as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. However, the KRI does not control Kirkuk, and the Kurdistan Region Parliament is based in Erbil. In 2014, when the Syria-based Islamic State began their Northern Iraq offensive and invaded the country, the Iraqi Armed Forces retreated from most of the disputed territories. The KRI's Peshmerga then entered and took control of them for the duration of the War in Iraq (2013–2017). In October 2017, following the defeat of the Islamic State, the Iraqi Armed Forces attacked the Peshmerga and reasserted control over the disputed territories.
Kurdification is a cultural change in which people, territory, or language become Kurdish. This can happen both naturally or as a deliberate government policy.
The 1991 Iraqi uprisings were ethnic and religious uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq which were led by Shi'ites and Kurds. The uprisings lasted from March to April 1991 after a ceasefire following the end of the Gulf War. The mostly uncoordinated insurgency was fueled by the perception that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had become vulnerable to regime change. This perception of weakness was largely the result of the outcome of the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, both of which occurred within a single decade and devastated the population and economy of Iraq.
Qubad Talabani is an Iraqi Kurdish politician who has been the Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region since 2014. Formerly serving as the representative of Kurdistan to the United States, Qubad is the second son of former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.
The Parliament of Kurdistan, also called the Kurdish Parliament (IKP), is the parliament of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. It is made up of representatives from the various parties, lists or slates that are elected every four years by the inhabitants of the provinces of Kurdistan Region currently governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. In 2009 an amendment was applied to the Kurdistan Election Law of the year 1992, and since then the body was referred to as Kurdish Parliament instead of its previous name the Kurdish National Assembly.
The Christians of Iraq are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world.
Sami Abdulrahman Park is a park in Erbil, Kurdistan Region in Iraq.
Masrour Barzani is a Kurdish politician and serving as prime minister of the Kurdistan Region, an autonomous region of Iraq, since June 2019. He is also the chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council and a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. He was sworn in as prime minister of the KRG’s ninth cabinet on 10 June 2019, after receiving 87 votes out of 97 legislators in the Kurdistan parliament.
Jawhar Namiq Salm, was a political leader and first president of the Kurdistan National Assembly.
Erbil, also called Hawler, is the capital and most populated city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The city is in the Erbil Governorate.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, usually abbreviated as KDP or PDK, is the largest party in Iraqi Kurdistan and the senior partner in the Kurdistan Regional Government. It was founded in 1946 in Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan. The party states that it combines "democratic values and social justice to form a system whereby everyone in Kurdistan can live on an equal basis with great emphasis given to rights of individuals and freedom of expression."
Ali Askari (1936–1978) was a Kurdish politician, military leader, and revolutionary. He was a prominent leader in Iraqi Kurdistan and his political party was the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
The Iraqi–Kurdish conflict consists of a series of wars and rebellions by the Kurds against the central authority of Iraq during the 20th century, which began shortly after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and lasting until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some put the marking point of the conflict beginning to the attempt by Mahmud Barzanji to establish an independent Kingdom of Kurdistan, while others relate to the conflict as only the post-1961 insurrection by the Barzanis. The conflict lasted until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, though tensions between the Kurdish autonomy and the central Iraqi government have continued.
Zakia Ismael Hakki was an Iraqi Feyli Kurdish lawyer. She and Sabiha al-Shaykh Da'ud became the first female judges in Iraq respectively in 1956-1959. Hakki fled Iraq in 1996 after her husband was killed and was granted asylum in the United States. She returned to Iraq in 2003 and was elected to the National Assembly of Iraq and was an advisor in the drafting of the constitution.
Noreldin Waisy,, is an Kurdish political analyst and journalist. He helped found the Kurdish media broadcasting outlets Rudaw and Kurdistan 24. He served as the general manager of Kurdistan 24, based in the Kurdistan's capital Erbil, from 2015 to 2019. Waisy currently serves as the press secretary to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani.
The Makhmur refugee camp was founded in 1998, and is located in the Makhmur District, some 60 Km southwest to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRG). About 12,000 Kurdish refugees, who fled the civil war between Kurds and the Turkish army in the 1990s, live in this refugee camp. The refugees and their descendants stem from the depopulated Kurdish villages in Turkey. The Turkish authorities claim they had to depopulate the villages as they have been infiltrated by militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The Kurdistan Region–PKK conflict is a series of battles and clashes in Iraqi Kurdistan between the ruling Kurdistan Regional Government against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its allied groups. It started in 1983 and is still ongoing in the form of an insurgency. The PKK's primary method is using guerrilla warfare against the Peshmerga.
