Shafaq Bab al-Sheikh is the treasure of the Faily Kurds memories….

It is the place where the community of different nationalities and religions lived happily making a beautiful social mosaic.

To return to the past and stand on the bitter present situation of Bab al-Sheikh we had this dialogue with its mayor (Mukhtar) Saleh Ibrahim Moussa:

* What are the other positions of the Faily Kurds in addition to the heroic stance against the bloody coup in February?
-The confrontation of the Faily Kurds against the eighth of February 1963 black coup was not the only great deed, but they had other positions in the Monarchist era. When the state pressure was intensified against the Faily Kurds, the people of the area attacked the police station and liberated the detainees and then burned it. The neighborhood is known for its inhabitants' courage. They were at the top of the demonstrations and uprisings and the best proof of this is that most of the detainees at the prison after the Ramadan coup were of the Faily Kurds, and I personally was jailed for a year and four months.

* Most of the inhabitants of Bab al-Sheikh are Faily Kurds and many of them have been subjected to the displacement, what can your memories tell us about those black days?

- The Faily Kurds in Bab al-Sheikh have been subjected to the greatest onslaught of barbarism during the period of the (Tasfeerat) (Deportations ) through which families that  held Iraqi citizenship have been displaced, even my family, though my father was born in Baghdad in 1884 but we were accused as being Iranian subjects.

Q: What is the reality of the neighborhood at the present time?
- As for Bab al-Sheikh at the present time, people are

living a real tragedy. Although the number of the families is  more than four thousand families but the area suffers from the lack of schools. The nearest primary school in it is the school of Ibn al-Jawzi while there are no intermediate or secondary schools. The area has no popular clinic in addition of the problem of electricity

which is a big problem .Because of the  constant weakness of the economic situation of most of the people in the area, most citizens are unable to pay the price of power produced by the private local generators   .There is also the problem of the creeping of the  industrial workshops to the residential area causing a major pollution of the environment in addition to throwing debris and waste in the alleys which have caused the spread of many diseases among the people especially among children..
Fereydoun Karim Malak