The Iraq government was constantly in military operations to impose its authority over all the cities, towns, and villages of Kurdistan, especially those areas where there were reports of the presence of Peshmerga forces. Given that the Ba'ath regime had, about several years earlier, collapsed one of the greatest Kurdish revolutions through an international plan on March 6, 1975, it was under the illusion that it would never again allow a revolution to rise in Kurdistan. The forces and groups of Peshmerga that emerged in every corner of the various regions were met with the Ba'ath government forming forces, organizing operations, and launching military campaigns against them with the intention of destroying them.

      One of the military campaigns that the Iraq army carried out to silence the voice of the revolution with the support of hired gunmen (Jash) was the attack on the Mangesh region north of the city of Duhok, which was a widespread and extensive attack on the border of the Duhok district committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in August 1984 to end that Peshmerga force and remove them from the area. However, the Peshmerga forces resisted them very fiercely to repel the attack and blocked the advances of the government's widespread forces. After a hot battle, the Peshmerga forces were able to inflict great human losses on the army and the hired gunmen, which consisted of the killing and wounding of a large number of gunmen, and a number of them were also taken prisoner. In that battle, which took place between the two villages of Galnaske and Alandke, a number of hired gunmen were killed; Abdullah Zebari, the brother of Latif Zebari, was one of those killed. 

     It is clear that such military campaigns by the Iraq government against areas where revolutionary activity existed resulted in the echo of rising up and continuing the struggle and revolution. On the other hand, the government was unable to achieve the goal that it had been fighting for for decades throughout the successive regimes until the Ba'ath came to power. Despite this, all those battles and military invasions brought great human and material losses to the Ba'ath government. 

Sources:

  1. Masoud Barzani: Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement, Volume Four, 1975-1990 Gulan Revolution, Part Two, First Edition, Roxana Printing House, 2021. 

  2. Wali Zubair Hostani: Several epics, events, and stories from the revolutions and uprisings of Barzan, First Edition, Rojhalat Printing House, Erbil - 2017.