Aswar Celal

Šaswar Celal ( Sorani : شاسوار جەلال سەعید, born 1946 ; died 1978 , code name: Kak Aram ) was the first secretary of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan .

Life

Celal was born into a Berzincî Sheikh family . He began his political activity in the student organization of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and was one of the founders of the Komala , a group of left-wing critics of Mustafa Barzani's leadership style . After Barzani's defeat by the Iraqi Baathists in 1975, this led to the Kurdistan Patriotic Union (PUK), whose first secretary was Celal. After the Iraqi secret service discovered the organizational structure of the PUK in 1976, its activists had to flee to the countryside and into the mountains. There, in the Qaradagh area, the originally intellectual city dweller established contact with the rural population and in 1977 tackled an irrigation project. At the beginning of 1978 he was murdered by armed Kurds.

Celal advocated a multiethnic "Marxist-Leninist combat union in Iraq" that was not restricted to the Kurds. For supporters of this orientation, the term 'îraqçî was used , whereas the Kurdistançî tended to focus on a Kurdish nationalist line. In order to avoid the mistakes of one-party dogma, competition and authoritarian leadership style, he wanted to preserve the character of the PUK as a front and an amalgamation of various organizations. He founded the newspaper Aļa – î Šoŗš (Flag of the Revolution), which was discontinued after his assassination. Later critics of Talabanis and Mustafa's leadership style founded a parliamentary group of the same name in the PUK in the 1980s, but the leadership crushed it.

Fonts

• Halbejârdinêk le nûsînekan-î šehîd Aram . (Sorani: Selected Writings of the Martyr Šaswar Celal), Nauzeng, PUK 1980

literature

• Andrea Fischer-Tahir: "We gave many martyrs". Resistance and collective identity building in Iraqi Kurdistan. Münster 2003, ISBN 978-3-89771-015-3 , pp. 71, 318