San Francisco State Professor Nicole Watts recently came out with an excellent book about the life of a Kurdish family. Called Republic of Dreams, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Struggles, and the Future of Iraqi Kurdistan, the book follows Peshawa and his family from Halabja from the 1988 chemical attack upon the town during the Iran-Iraq War up to the present. Here is an interview with Professor Watts about her book and work on Iraqi Kurdistan.
1. First off, how did you meet the main character in your book – Peshawa, who had such an amazing story?
I met Peshawa in December 2009 in the hallway at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani. I was in Iraqi Kurdistan to do some research on a protest that happened in Halabja (Iraqi Kurdistan) a few years earlier, and some friends had introduced me to the provost of the university, who in turn introduced me to Peshawa, who was then an undergraduate there. When he learned of my research, Peshawa said that he’d been at that protest, as had some of his friends. He asked if I wanted to talk about it and meet some of them, and also offered to show me around Halabja, which was his hometown. That was the beginning of it all. After that he became my research assistant, my friend, and – eventually—the protagonist of this book.
2. Can you tell us a little about the background of Peshawa’s family from Halabja?
Peshawa’s family is a working-class family from Halabja. Like many people in Halabja, they are practicing Muslims, and their faith is an important pillar in their lives. His parents and older sisters are among the survivors of the March 16 1988 chemical gassing of Halabja that killed anywhere from 3,200-5,000 civilians; they fled the town when the Iraqi military bombed it with chemical weapons, and Peshawa himself was born in an Iranian refugee camp about four months later.
They all ended up as refugees a second time in 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War. But they always made it home. His parents are illiterate, and, growing up, they were quite poor, and it wasn’t always easy to figure out how to support Peshawa, his siblings, and various other family members. His father worked for many years on construction sites around Iraq, but by the time Peshawa was about 10, they had opened a little corner shop that helped them stay afloat, along with work his dad did as a janitor, and other odd jobs here and there. But his family is very close, and very supportive. There’s a lot of laughter in their home.
3. The book begins with Peshawa’s parents surviving the 1988 attack upon Halabja and then a protest Peshawa took part in against Kurdish authorities who were celebrating the anniversary of the incident in 2006. What problems did Peshawa and his friends have with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) at the time and how did the authorities react?
The chemical gassing of Halabja constituted a collective trauma not just for the community of Halabja but for the Iraqi Kurds more generally. People were very concerned that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi Ba’th Party regime might do something like this again. Especially in the run-up to the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, Halabja became emblematic of Iraqi human rights violations and, for the Kurds, of the need for Kurdish self-rule. For Iraqi Kurds, it became known as “martyred Halabja,” and Kurdish leaders were constantly referencing it in their efforts to advance the cause of Kurdish autonomy and self rule. However, by the time we get to 2006 -- a few years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein -- local people in Halabja had become very frustrated by what they saw as Kurdish politicians’ neglect of “living Halabja.” Halabja didn’t have running water or paved streets, and there weren’t enough health clinics or schools. There was a widespread sense that the ruling Kurdish parties were exploiting Halabja’s suffering for political gain, and weren’t actually doing much to help the city rebuild. So, in March of 2006, some university students from Halabja decided to issue a series of demands to Iraqi Kurdish politicians, insisting they actually deliver on their promises to the city or stay away. By that point, Kurdish politicians and international leaders were coming to Halabja every March 16 to commemorate the anniversary of the gassing. People felt like it was mostly for show, and that they were being sidelined in these sorts of events. So, they held a protest to try and keep them away. The demonstration got out of hand, and things got violent. However, later, after a lot of media attention and work by civil society groups, the government did fulfill most of the demands the students made.
4. Kurdistan launched an advertising campaign called “The Other Iraq” promoting the region as being a place of stability and democracy and where Western businesses could invest. How did young people like Peshawa feel alienated from this vision?
Yes, in 2006 the Kurdistan Regional Government partnered with an American PR firm to launch a campaign they called “The Other Iraq.” It was intended both to attract tourists and investment to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and to offset some of the more critical international media coverage on post-invasion Iraq, which at the time was engulfed in sectarian violence. The ad campaign touted Iraqi Kurdistan as “spectacular, peaceful, and joyful” and a place where “Arabs, Kurds, and westerners vacationed together.” Hyperbole aside, none of this was completely false (Iraqi Kurdistan is spectacular!), but it ignored or sidestepped at least several glaring issues: the fact that Iraqi Kurdistan only managed to be largely (though not completely) free of political violence through the constant efforts of the Kurdish security forces; that the Kurds themselves were complicit in the American invasion that had so devastated the rest of Iraq; and – especially relevant for people such as Peshawa and his community – that the fruits of this alliance were not benefiting all Iraqi Kurds to the same degree. Put another way, some people were getting rapidly very rich, and a lot of others were barely scraping by. Also, though Iraqi Kurdistan was in fact more stable and in many ways more democratic than the rest of Iraq at that time, the two historically dominant Iraqi Kurdish parties still maintained a strong grip on power. There was little if no budgetary transparency or accountability, and there were real limits on freedom of expression and institutional autonomy. By the time Peshawa and his friends graduated high school and went to college, around 2008 and 2009, a younger generation was growing increasingly impatient with what they perceived of as this old-style, old-time cronyism and top-down rule. The creation of the Change Party (Gorran) in 2009 and, two years later, the 2011 pro-democracy protests in Iraqi Kurdistan represented a watershed moment in the societal push for socio-economic and political change within Iraqi Kurdistan itself.
5. The KRG followed its own oil policy thinking that it could possibly lead to independence. That failed and now the regional government finds itself in debt and with a faltering economy. Can you explain how that affected people like Peshawa?
The Kurdistan Regional Government’s falling out with Baghdad has been very difficult for ordinary people such as Peshawa and, in fact, anyone on the public payroll, which includes a lot of educated and middle class Kurds, as well. Between 2005 and 2014 the Iraqi government in Baghdad transferred about 17 percent of its budget revenue every year to the Kurdistan region, per the 2005 Iraqi Constitution and a formula based on Iraqi Kurdistan’s population relative to the rest of Iraq. Around 80 percent of the KRG’s budget relies on these funds, so they are hugely important in sustaining the government and paying the more than one million people working in the Iraqi Kurdistan public sector. However, after 2014, disputes between Baghdad and the KRG meant Baghdad drastically reduced these revenue transfers, and at times stopped them altogether. These disagreements were not only over Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil policy but also other issues such as control over the city of Kirkuk and its oil fields and, in 2017, the Kurdistan Independence Referendum, which the Iraqi government deemed illegitimate. At the same time, the KRG faced other huge economic challenges: the drop in global oil prices, fighting the war with Islamic State, and sheltering the huge numbers of refugees entering Iraqi Kurdistan from Syria and Iraq. Fast forward to the summer of 2025, and – despite various efforts to resolve this situation-- Iraqi Kurds have been slogging through a massive, decade-long economic crisis. All of this has meant many people – teachers, doctors, civil servants, etc. -- haven’t received paychecks for years (the government owes many of them tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid salaries). Pensioners have also seen their benefits drop substantially. Schools have been shuttered due to the failure to pay teacher salaries. Job opportunities have evaporated. Families have had to sell off possessions to make ends meet, and some have chosen to try and leave the region, even illegally, and when it can be dangerous to do so. At the same time, it’s clear that some of the federal and petroleum-related money that ought to have gone into infrastructure development and services for Iraqi Kurdish citizens in “the boom years” and after has ended up in private accounts and distributed through patronage networks to political elites’ family members, friends, and loyalists. So, despite longstanding frustrations and (sometimes) near daily protests, people are beholden to the ruling parties in order to get employment and contracts.
All that said, I continue to be impressed by how much energy people like Peshawa and many of his friends and colleagues continue to put into trying to make Iraqi Kurdistan a good place to live. Despite all the internal and external challenges, there’s a great deal of initiative, and people are working hard to try to make their home a better place for themselves and future generations. It’s inspiring.
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