Dedewan Tofish

Dedewan Tofish (* April 1969 ) is a Kurdish- Iraqi officer of the Peshmerga of the autonomous Kurdish region under Masud Barzani in northern Iraq.

Life

Dedewan was the first child of Peshmerga Khorshid Tofish and his wife Rana. His father had already joined Mustafa Barzani's fighters at the age of 16 and, at the time of Dadewan's birth, was fighting for the autonomy of the Kurdish populated areas in the mountains of northern Iraq. Dadewan grew up largely without his father.

After Iran and Iraq agreed to settle border conflicts in 1975, the then Shah of Persia withdrew support from the Kurdish militias. As a result, Dedewan Tofish's family had to flee Iraq to Iran, where he grew up in the refugee camps . At the age of 16 he joined the Peshmerga, which Iran was again supporting because of the First Gulf War . In 1988 Dedewan Tofish operated as a guerrilla fighter with a unit near the town of Halabja . He witnessed the massacre of the local population using poison gas. In the early 1990s , the Dedewans family moved together in Erbil . He married as an officer of the Peshmerga and had his son Siriyan, who would later join the Peshmerga at 18.

In 2014, Dedewan Tofish, as Lieutenant General , commanded units on the Khazar front against troops of the Islamic State .

literature

• My grandpa the Peshmerga , Der Spiegel issue 46/2014 of November 10, 2014, pp. 99-102.