Leyla Qasim: The Student Who Died for Kurdistan (1952–1974)
- Rezan Babakir
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
On 12 May 1974, in a prison courtyard in Baghdad, a twenty-two-year-old Kurdish woman from the small town of Kalar was hanged by the Ba'athist regime of Iraq. Her name was Leyla Qasim. She had been a university student — studying Kurdish literature and language at Baghdad University — who had become involved in Kurdish nationalist activity. She was arrested, tried by a revolutionary court, convicted of crimes against the state, and executed. She was the first Kurdish woman to be executed for political activism in Iraq. She was twenty-two years old. In the decades since her death, she has become one of the most celebrated martyrs in Kurdish history — a figure whose image appears on murals across the Kurdistan Region, whose name is given to schools and streets, and whose story is told as the embodiment of Kurdish female courage and sacrifice.
Table of Contents
Part 1: Kalar — A Kurdish Town in the Mountains
Leyla Qasim was born in 1952 in Kalar, a Kurdish town in what is now the Sulaymaniyah Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. She grew up in the conditions that shaped the generation of Kurdish youth who came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s: awareness of the September Revolution that Mustafa Barzani was leading in the mountains, exposure to the nationalist politics that animated Kurdish intellectual and student life, and the direct experience of the Ba'athist state's increasingly aggressive policies toward the Kurdish population. The Ba'ath Party had taken power in Iraq in 1968 and was pursuing a policy of Arabisation in the Kurdish regions while attempting to co-opt Kurdish political figures and suppress the armed resistance.
Part 2: A Student in Baghdad — Kurdish Identity in the Ba'athist Capital
Leyla Qasim was admitted to Baghdad University, where she studied Kurdish language and literature — a remarkable choice that was itself a political act in the context of Ba'athist Iraq. The decision to study her own people's language and culture in the capital of the state that was attempting to suppress them reflected both personal conviction and political commitment. Baghdad in the early 1970s was a city of intense political surveillance and control. The Ba'ath Party's security apparatus monitored student political activity, and Kurdish students at Baghdad University were operating in an environment where political activity was genuinely dangerous — where arrest could mean torture, disappearance, or execution.
Part 3: The Kurdish Student Movement — Organising Under Surveillance
Leyla Qasim became involved in Kurdish student political activity in Baghdad. The nature of her specific involvement is a matter on which the historical record is incomplete and contested. The Ba'athist charges against her alleged involvement with the KDP and in activities supporting the armed Kurdish resistance. What is clear is that she was identified by Ba'athist security as a Kurdish political activist, that she was arrested in the context of the broader Ba'athist crackdown on Kurdish political activity in 1974, and that the charges brought against her were serious enough to result in a death sentence.
Part 4: The March Manifesto and the Hope That Wasn't
The political context of Leyla Qasim's arrest and execution was shaped by the March Manifesto of 1970 — the agreement between the Ba'ath government and Mustafa Barzani that had promised Kurdish autonomy within four years. By 1974, it was clear that the Ba'ath government was not going to honour the autonomy agreement. In March 1974, the government announced its own autonomy law — a version of Kurdish self-governance that fell far short of what had been agreed and that was not accepted by the KDP. Armed conflict resumed. The Ba'athist crackdown on Kurdish political activity intensified throughout the country, and it was in this context that Leyla Qasim was arrested and tried.
Part 5: Arrest — The Ba'athist Security State Strikes
Leyla Qasim was arrested by Ba'athist security forces in 1974. The specific circumstances of her arrest are not fully established in the historical record. What is established is that she was arrested, held, and subjected to the interrogation methods that the Ba'athist security apparatus routinely applied to political prisoners, which included systematic torture. Her arrest was part of a broader wave of arrests targeting Kurdish political activists in Baghdad in 1974. The pattern was characteristic of authoritarian security states facing active armed opposition: the security apparatus cast a wide net, arresting not just those with direct connections to the armed movement but anyone in the social networks associated with Kurdish political activity.
Part 6: Trial and Sentence — A Revolutionary Court
Leyla Qasim was tried before one of the Ba'ath regime's revolutionary courts — special military tribunals established to deal with political offences, with virtually no procedural safeguards: defendants had no right to legal counsel of their choosing, evidence obtained under torture was admissible, and the judges were party loyalists whose independence was nil. She was convicted of crimes against the Iraqi state — involvement in KDP activities and actions connected to the armed Kurdish resistance — and sentenced to death. There are accounts that suggest she was offered the possibility of commuting her sentence in exchange for renouncing her Kurdish nationalism. Kurdish nationalist accounts maintain that she refused, accepting death rather than betrayal of her cause.
Part 7: The Execution — 12 May 1974
Leyla Qasim was executed on 12 May 1974. She was hanged in a Baghdad prison. She was twenty-two years old. She was the first Kurdish woman to be executed for political activism in Iraqi history. The accounts of her execution emphasise her composure. Kurdish oral and written tradition records that she approached her execution with courage, that she maintained her defiance of the regime to the end, and that she died calling for Kurdish freedom. Other Kurdish activists were executed alongside her in this period — four men executed on the same day. Their names are less remembered than hers, partly because the figure of the Kurdish female martyr carries particular symbolic weight in a society where women's political participation has historically been constrained.
Part 8: The Response — International Protest and Kurdish Mourning
News of Leyla Qasim's execution spread through Kurdish exile communities and prompted protests across Europe and the Middle East. Kurdish diaspora communities demonstrated outside Iraqi embassies. The Kurdish press in exile published accounts of her trial and execution that framed her as a martyr for the Kurdish cause. Her story was taken up by international human rights organisations as an example of the Ba'ath regime's systematic violation of political and civil rights. Within the Kurdistan Region, her memory was preserved through oral tradition and through poetry written in her honour. After the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government in 1992, her commemoration became more public and institutional: streets, schools, and public spaces in Sulaymaniyah and elsewhere were named for her.
Part 9: The Myth and the Woman — Separating Legend from History
The historical Leyla Qasim is partially obscured by the martyrdom narrative that has formed around her in the fifty years since her execution. Figures who become martyrs in nationalist movements are typically transformed, through the processes of commemoration and mythologisation, into symbols that carry meanings beyond the individual person. What the historical record supports: she was a Kurdish student, she was involved in Kurdish political activity, she was arrested in 1974, tried by a revolutionary court, convicted of political crimes, and executed on 12 May 1974 at the age of twenty-two. The distinction between the historical woman and the martyr figure matters, but it does not undermine her significance. The legend has grown around a real core of courage and sacrifice, and the symbol that has formed around her reflects genuine truths about the experience of Kurdish women who chose political engagement over safety.
Part 10: Legacy — The Eternal Flower of Kurdistan
Leyla Qasim is known in Kurdish as the 'Eternal Flower of Kurdistan' — a title that reflects both the youth at which she died and the beauty attributed to her memory in Kurdish oral tradition. Her significance goes beyond the political: she is a figure who embodies the possibility of female heroism in a tradition that has not always made space for women's political agency. She died at twenty-two, before she could build institutions or lead movements. Her power is entirely the power of the gesture — of the refusal, of the death chosen over capitulation. In the fifty years since her execution, Kurdish women have built on this tradition: the female fighters of the PKK and the YPJ, the women politicians of the Kurdish parties, the women intellectuals and civil society leaders who have pushed Kurdish society toward greater gender equality — all of them operate in a political culture shaped in part by the memory of Leyla Qasim.
Key Events Timeline
1952 — Born in Kalar, Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Iraq.
Late 1960s–early 1970s — Studies Kurdish language and literature at Baghdad University; becomes involved in Kurdish student political activity.
March 1970 — The March Manifesto: Ba'ath government and KDP agree to Kurdish autonomy within four years — a promise never fulfilled.
1974 — Ba'ath government announces its own limited autonomy law; KDP rejects it; armed conflict resumes; Leyla Qasim arrested.
Early 1974 — Tried before a Ba'athist revolutionary court; convicted of crimes against the state; sentenced to death.
12 May 1974 — Executed by hanging in Baghdad. Age: 22. First Kurdish woman executed for political activism in Iraq.
1974–present — Memory preserved in Kurdish oral tradition; streets, schools, and public spaces named for her across the Kurdistan Region.
References
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Leyla Qasim?
Leyla Qasim (1952–1974) was a Kurdish student at Baghdad University who studied Kurdish language and literature and became involved in Kurdish nationalist political activity. Arrested by the Ba'athist regime in 1974, she was tried by a revolutionary court and executed by hanging on 12 May 1974 at the age of twenty-two. She was the first Kurdish woman to be executed for political activism in Iraq and is revered as a martyr in Kurdish culture.
Why was Leyla Qasim executed?
She was convicted by a Ba'athist revolutionary court of crimes against the Iraqi state, specifically involvement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party and activities connected to the armed Kurdish resistance. Her execution occurred during the period of renewed conflict following the Ba'ath government's failure to honour the 1970 March Manifesto's promises of Kurdish autonomy, when the regime was conducting a broad crackdown on Kurdish political activists across Iraq.
Why is Leyla Qasim so significant in Kurdish memory?
She represents the particular sacrifice of Kurdish women in the national struggle — the demonstration that women, too, paid with their lives for Kurdish political commitment. Known as the 'Eternal Flower of Kurdistan,' she died at twenty-two, choosing death over renunciation of her cause. In Kurdish culture she is both a political martyr and a symbol of female courage, and her memory has inspired generations of Kurdish women in political and civic life.
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