Latest news with #Iraqi-Kurdish
Mint
3 days ago
- General
- Mint
Baking in a prison, and a recipe for Tres Leches cake
Tres leches ('three milks') cake for Mahin Boland Karami Mahin Boland Karami works full-time in prison. The mop is broken and she has to spend hours bent double cleaning the toilets, the corridors, and everywhere else with a broken implement. When the working day is done, she twists her hips and shows off her Kurdish dancing. No wonder her blood sugar levels have dropped. 'I want a very, very sweet cake. I don't have enough money for a cream puff. Give me something else this time.' 'OK. It'll be ready in about two hours.' This was probably the last conversation Mahin and another prisoner had about pastries. Not long afterwards, the kitchen was shut down, and Mahin froze to death. Also read: Make sweet and savoury snacks like a top pastry chef This is a treat of Spanish origin, and easy to prepare.* If you invite someone to enjoy it with you, don't forget to tell them that, at the first hearing of her trial, Mahin defended herself in Kurdish. Then emphasise that she was a real 'Leyla Zana' – a Kurdish member of the Turkish parliament who was jailed for fifteen years for doing the same thing. And don't forget to follow this up with this poem by the Iraqi-Kurdish poet Sherko Bekas: In the land of the gallows and ashes and spoilsyou are the sister of the motherland's evergreens,and when you were being devoured by the whales and monsters,from the sun of today's women,from the infernal orators of today,there were none who had not tied their tongues out of fear,there were none who had not hidden their voices under the pillowand their courage in the is the shining day of your glowing is the eighth of year on this day,that beautiful dove from Kirkuktakes to the skyand lands on the windowsill of Leyla Zana's prison. This cake is indeed very sweet. But don't let that worry you; it is delicious. Arabs are probably responsible for the high sugar content of Spanish cakes. Cake ingredients 190g flour 1 tsp baking powder 115g butter 190g sugar 5 eggs 1⁄2 tsp vanilla essence Milk mixture ingredients 200ml milk 200ml condensed milk 200ml clotted cream Directions Mix the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs one by one, followed by the vanilla essence, flour and baking powder. Pour the mixture into greased tins. Place in a preheated oven for 30–40 minutes at 180°C. When completely cool, use a toothpick to poke little holes all over the top of the cake. Whip the double cream and mix thoroughly with the milk and condensed milk. Pour the whole lot over the top of the cake. Leave in the refrigerator for a day or so for the milk mixture to penetrate. Decorate your cake with whipped cream, fruit, or cinnamon. * The origins of tres leches cake lie in Latin America, although there is debate about whether its genesis was in Mexico, where soaked desserts were popular in the mid-nineteenth century, or Nicaragua. When Nestlé opened up factories in Mexico in the 1930s, it printed a recipe for tres leches on the back of its cans of condensed and evaporated milk. Excerpted with permission from The Evin Prison Bakers' Club by Sepideh Gholian, published by Oneworld Publications. Also read: How to add fizz to tender coconut water
The National
28-03-2025
- Politics
- The National
'Caught between two fires': How Hassan Blasim's four-year odyssey from Iraq to Finland haunts his new book
When Helsinki-based writer Hassan Blasim follows the heated debated around migration, he is reminded of a journey he would rather forget. For more than four years, he trekked across the Iraqi-Kurdish mountains into Iran, then Turkey, working the black markets so that he could pay smugglers to make it across the next border and into Europe. "I've seen the road, how terrible it is and how savage it is. I see all the double standards in the West," Blasim told The National. He lost a finger on the way, and remembers the brutality of the border police when he reached Europe. 'You don't see how the Eastern European armies behave with people across the border,' he said. The treatment he received there, Blasim said, amounted to torture. He did not go into the details. Today, the policies to crack down on smuggling gangs and tighten Europe's borders revives memories of those perilous crossings he made 20 years ago. And growing hostility towards migrants in Helsinki, Finland – mirroring developments across Europe – is making the city in which he sought refuge feel less safe. 'The discrimination has always been there, it rises and falls depending on the politics,' Blasim said. These are themes the award-winning author addresses in his latest collection of short stories, Sololand, which will be published in English translation by Comma Press this month. The Law of Sololand tells the story of a refugee and his encounters with a Neo-Nazi ring in a remote Scandinavian town, while Elias in the Land of ISIS is told from the perspective of an ISIS prisoner in Mosul. The collection's last story, Bulbul, which means nightingale in Arabic, addresses the Tishreen movement in Iraq, where young people took to the streets demanding better job opportunities and services. The demonstrations also called for an end to the sectarian power-sharing arrangement that emerged in the post-Saddam era. 'Before ISIS I wrote about violence in Iraq, I wrote about violence from the dictator. I want to stop writing about violence, but the violence does not stop in Iraq,' Blasim said. He has not been back to Baghdad since leaving in 1998, but when the protests broke out in 2019, he travelled to Sulaymaniya in Iraqi-Kurdistan to join a group of people who were supporting the movement happening in the capital and Iraq's southern cities. 'I thought something might change, now, with a young generation leading, maybe there is going to be free speech,' he said. Among Blasim's roles was to put out statements and announcements, particularly in moments of internet blackouts. But he is bitterly disappointed by the crackdown that ensued, with hundreds of young activists killed by Iranian-backed militias who were given free rein. Blasim became the first Arabic writer to win The Independent's Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014, for his collection of short stories, The Iraqi Christ. His first collection, The Madman of Freedom Square, appeared in English translation in 2009. He continues to write and publish in Arabic but he laments what he sees as the decline in Arabic fiction – for which he blames the states and publishing houses. With writers being constrained by what they can say, fiction was limited and readers were turning elsewhere. 'Most Arabic people will read books in translation because they find more freedom inside the novel, or they watch Netflix,' he said. "There is nothing [political] in Arabic literature. Our language is empty. It's not fighting. It's a literature that has surrendered." Blasim was born in Baghdad in 1973 but moved to Kirkuk during the Iran-Iraq war, where his father worked with the army to protect oilfields. "We lived under the atmosphere of war and the militarisation of society imposed by the dictator's regime," he recalled. War was everywhere, with the perpetual ringing of air raid sirens from Iranian air strikes, and what felt like daily runs to the nearest bomb shelter. "At school, we used to chant songs glorifying Saddam and the war, and we would draw tanks and soldiers in our notebooks," he said. "The regime also carried out public executions of army deserters in front of crowds, and I personally witnessed executions while still in elementary school." Despite the war, living conditions in Iraq were still high from the economic boom of the 1970s, he recalled. His love of writing came from the large library he had at home, and he and his brother's subscriptions to literary magazines. During the summer holidays, he would go to the city's science centre, where he learnt about electronics, physics aviation, and crucially, cinema projectors. Blasim's father passed away at the end of the war in 1988, and the family returned to Baghdad two years later. He enrolled at Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts to study cinema, after a friend of his, a poet, advised it would be a the best way for Blasim to pursue his love of writing. "It would enhance my knowledge and expand my imagination … he was right." While a film student in Baghdad during Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, Blasim was repeatedly harassed by his professors and the Baath regime's sprawling security services. His brother had been detained without charge or trial for political reasons, which made Blasim a natural target for persecution. His student film about the life of a poor man in Baghdad sparked their ire. 'It was just a student film,' he said of it, dismissively. The family spent two years without knowing the brother's whereabouts, and when he was finally released he told them he had been transferred from prison to prison across Iraq, and repeatedly tortured. Like many young men of his generation, he fled to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which had achieved autonomy in the 1990s after Saddam's horrific massacres and chemical attacks on the Kurds. The region was then harbouring Iraqi dissidents from across southern Iraq seeking refuge. He gave himself a Kurdish name, Ouazad Othman, which means 'free man' in Kurdish, concealing his identity to protect his family back in Baghdad from Saddam's informants. His feature film The Wounded Camera was about the Kurdish uprisings against Saddam. It was shot using VHS home video tapes, owing to an embargo on Iraq that had drained resources. Although he speaks with great pride about the film, he has not seen it since it was made, and he believes it is still being held in an archive in Sulaymaniya. When civil war gripped the Kurdistan region, he fled once again, into the mountains to Europe. He arrived in Finland in 2004, where he now lives with his partner and son. Blasim insists he does not want the book to "teach" readers anything. "I don't I write to make people learn. I write to enjoy it [the process of writing]. Literature is a kind of knowledge but literature is not a lesson," he said. He worries that Iraqi refugees today have no good options. 'You are between two fires. You run away from ISIS and you come here to racism,' he said. But he is also shocked by the declining living standards closer to home in Helsinki. In the city's poorest districts, people will have little time for books, theatre or cinema. "When people try to survive day by day, they don't think about books. Even in Finland where you have the best education, in the poor areas, they don't read," Blasim said. The speech from Europe's growing far-right has worrying reminders of life under autocratic rule. "They talk about immigrants, immigrants, immigrants. When you make people scared and worried all the time, it's easy to control them." he said. While he says he still "trusts in European society", the divisive forces of politics are so overwhelming that he is left feeling powerless. "You can't do anything. You just wait," he said.
The National
20-03-2025
- The National
Kurdish smugglers bringing death to shores of Europe
An investigation by The National has uncovered an Iraqi-Kurdish town which is a hub for people smuggling, where gang leaders make a fortune from the misery of people desperate for a new life in Europe. Deals are carried out in plain sight in Ranya, where the hawala money exchanges are used to grease the criminal enterprise. Our reporters took just a few minutes to track down smugglers willing to arrange for families to be transported across borders, using fake IDs, to reach northern France where they would risk their lives crossing the English Channel in flimsy dinghies. At least 77 people died making the crossing last year alone. Using court records, interviews with experts and speaking to victims, we were able to find the headquarters of a mastermind smuggler called Bakhtiar, known as 'the boss' by his henchmen and those who rely on him to secure a spot on the deathtrap boats. But Bakhtiar has gone into hiding, spooked by a recent crackdown by UK and Iraqi Kurdistan authorities who are belatedly trying to get a grip of the situation which has seen tens of thousands reach the UK illegally. The crackdown has also seen success in Britain, where two Kurds were jailed after they were caught operating a car wash in South Wales that was a front for a people smuggling business. We also heard the plight of a 15-year-old girl from Kurdistan who has spent months trying to reach her cousins in England. She has tried six times to make the crossing, foiled each time by police, violent gangs and even by a panic attack brought on by almost drowning during her journey. She reveals how the people smuggling system works, what life is like for a migrant living in makeshift camps in France, and why she is willing to risk it all to get to Britain. Investigation: Hunting trafficking's big boss inside Kurdistan's smuggling hotspot Underground: Kurdish trafficker sending migrants to Europe in hiding after crackdown Podcast: Are UK crackdowns deterring Iraqi Kurdish smugglers?
The National
19-03-2025
- The National
Exposed: Kurdish smugglers bringing death to shores of Europe
An investigation by The National has uncovered an Iraqi-Kurdish town which is a hub for people smuggling, where gang leaders make a fortune from the misery of people desperate for a new life in Europe. Deals are carried out in plain sight in Ranya, where the hawala money exchanges are used to grease the criminal enterprise. Our reporters took just a few minutes to track down smugglers willing to arrange for families to be transported across borders, using fake IDs, to reach northern France where they would risk their lives crossing the English Channel in flimsy dinghies. At least 77 people died making the crossing last year alone. Using court records, interviews with experts and speaking to victims, we were able to find the headquarters of a mastermind smuggler called Bakhtiar, known as 'the boss' by his henchmen and those who rely on him to secure a spot on the deathtrap boats. But Bahtiar has gone into hiding, spooked by a recent crackdown by UK and Iraqi Kurdistan authorities who are belatedly trying to get a grip of the situation which has seen tens of thousands reach the UK illegally. The crackdown has also seen success in Britain, where two Kurds were jailed after they were caught operating a carwash in South Wales that was actually a front for a people smuggling business. We also heard the plight of a 15-year-old girl who comes from Kurdistan and has spent months trying to reach her cousins in England. She has tried six times to make the crossing, foiled each time by police, violent gangs and even by a panic attack brought on by almost drowning during her journey. She reveals how the system works, what life is like for a migrant living in makeshift camps in France, and why she is willing to risk it all to get to retain. Investigation: Hunting trafficking's big boss inside Kurdistan's smuggling hotspot Underground: Kurdish trafficker sending migrants to Europe in hiding after crackdown Podcast: Are UK crackdowns deterring Iraqi Kurdish smugglers?
Shafaq News
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Shafaq News
March 11, 1970 Agreement: President Barzani asserts Kurdish rights undeniable
Shafaq News/ On Tuesday, Kurdistan Region (KRI) President Nechirvan Barzani affirmed that Iraq is still paying the price for 'failing' to implement the March 11, 1970 Autonomy Agreement, urging political forces to foster peaceful coexistence. In a statement marking the 55th anniversary of the agreement—led by Kurdish nationalist leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani—the president described it as 'a historic turning point' in the Kurdish struggle, calling it the first official document to acknowledge part of the Kurdish people's legitimate rights and the legal foundation for their current achievements. 'No authority in Iraq can deny our rights again.' The March 11 Agreement, he noted, was a model for a fair resolution based on understanding and dialogue. However, Iraq's authorities later withdrew from it, leading to decades of conflict and wars that brought only "tragedy and suffering" to the country. "Even today, Iraq continues to pay the price for failing to uphold this agreement, true partnership, and the constitutional rights of all its components," he added. Barzani further emphasized that stability can only be achieved through democracy, pluralism, joint efforts, and the reinforcement of justice and equality, noting, "Iraq's future depends on enforcing the constitution, strengthening genuine partnership, and building a secure country." 'Unity and cohesion are the true guarantees for protecting constitutional gains and securing future generations," he stressed, urging political forces in the Region and Iraq to act with national responsibility in strengthening federalism, safeguarding the rights of all Iraqi communities, and fostering peaceful coexistence. About The Agreement The Autonomy Agreement, signed on March 11, 1970, between the Iraqi government and Kurdish leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani, followed the first Iraqi-Kurdish war. It aimed to create an autonomous region comprising the three Kurdish provinces (Erbil, Duhok, and Al-Sulaymaniyah) and other nearby areas with a Kurdish majority, as determined by the census. At the time, it was the most significant attempt to resolve the long-standing Iraqi-Kurdish conflict. The agreement recognized Kurdish national rights, ensuring their participation in the Iraqi government and the use of Kurdish in education. However, a final solution to the Kirkuk issue was not reached, awaiting a determination of the province's ethnic composition.
