By Deniz Serinci

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Musician Eli Singali’s affable smile hides a hair-raising story of a former Kurdish fighter who risked life to fight against Saddam Hussein.

With his saz (tembur) – a stringed Middle Eastern instrument resembling a guitar -- over one shoulder and a Kalashnikov rifle over the other, the 53-year old now lives in the Danish city of Odense and performs frequently at Kurdish events and celebrations.

He has lived a varied life, trying a little bit of everything.

Already at the age of 11 in 1972, music-happy Eli joined the bloody war between the Kurdish Peshmarga guerrillas and the oppressive Iraqi regime. That war became increasingly brutal and dangerous for Eli and his family, after the former Iraqi dictator’s chemical attacks on the Peshmargas starting in the mid-1980s. Eli eventually had to flee Kurdistan for Denmark, where he has lived ever since.

But what motivated him to become a partisan, a Peshmarga?

“When you are oppressed, to defend your country, people and honor there is no other option but to fight,” Eli says. “If we did not figh, we would lose all our lands.”

Eli's father was a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. They were Peshmargas in the mountains, and the fathers had sons in the battlefield. Each Peshmarga unit consisted of several partisans. In Eli's groups they had the advantage of being able to enjoy Kurdish music when they rested.

Eli had a great passion for music since he was very little. He had met his idol, the Kurds’ "Bave Felek,” or Father of Destiny, Mihemed Sexo, who himself had fled persecution in Syrian Kurdistan.

“Mihemed Sexo asked me to play the saz for him. I did and he was impressed and inspired me to become a musician,” says Eli, who performs at concerts and weddings and has released several albums in Kurdistan and Denmark.

Soon it occurred to Eli that he had two weapons in his fight: His Kalashnikov and his saz.

“In the mountains I had the saz over one shoulder and a Kalashnikov over the other,” he recalls with an ever-ready smile.

The Kurds have a long history of revolutionary music. Already in the 1920s, singers followed the partisans of Sheikh Mehmud Berzenci’s insurgency in Iraqi Kurdistan, in order to encourage the partisans against British forces and "destroy the enemy's morale."

“Music is our weapon, which we use to answer the enemy and give Peshmargas morale and encouragement in their difficult days,” Eli says.

Morale was what Eli and his companions needed, as the Kurdish guerrillas experienced tough losses in their battles with the better-equipped and better-trained Iraqi forces.

“Two of my cousins were killed and my father was badly injured. My older brother was wounded in the arm,” he recalls. One day an Iraqi bullet scraped Eli's Kurdish headgear. He escaped unharmed.

But beside his roles as a musician and partisan, Eli had other responsibilities: A wife, three daughters and a son.

“Life worked in such a way in Kurdistan that my family was not affected by the fighting because we hid them in the mountains. We are used to fighting and supporting the family at the same time.”

Despite the Kurds’ steadfastness, they had to realize that they could not win the battle against Saddam’s militarily superior army. The Iraqi dictator began in 1985 to attack Kurdish guerrillas with chemical weapons. Eli's cousin was hit in Duhok, near the border with Turkey, and suffered burns on his face.

Worried about his family's safety, Eli chose to escape from Kurdistan and out of Iraq. His family arrived in Odense 1986, where they have lived since.

He remembers encountering massive differences between Denmark and Kurdistan.

“It's a completely different culture, language and lifestyle. We did not fear war or bombs. On the contrary, we got help from the state.”

Unlike most Kurds, Eli is not a Muslim. He is a Yezidi, a religious minority found only among the Kurds and persecuted throughout history for some of their controversial beliefs.

Eli, himself, has experienced some of the prejudice against Yezidis, who are mistakenly believed to be “devil worshippers” and considered “impure” and “unclean” by the most orthodox Muslims.

Eli remembers one day serving a meat dish to a friend, and being surprised that the friend would not eat because the meat had been slaughtered by a non-Muslim, a Yezidi.

They are friends no longer, but he insists that was an isolated incident and that there are many Muslims in his social and musical circles.

In Denmark the former Peshmarga continues his career -- without weapons but with the saz. He performs at weddings, concerts, the Kurdish national festival Newroz and so on.

“There is a huge difference in the European way of using music and ours,” Eli notes. “Whereas Kurdish music is very much about war and sorrow, Europeans are not used to that to the same extent. The Europeans have not experienced war on their own soil in recent times, so that's why.”

Although he lives in peace in Denmark and there is no war in Iraqi Kurdistan, from where he escaped, the past is still impossible to forget for Eli.

Eli recalls the news in 2006 of Ali Hassan al-Majid, otherwise known as “Chemical Ali” for carrying out Saddam’s poison gas attacks against the Kurds in the 1980s, being hanged.

Then, in 2010 Saddam, whose so-called “Anfal Campaign” against the Kurds resulted in the deaths of an estimated 180,000 people and the razing of 4,500 Kurdish villages, was also hanged after a lengthy trial.

“They deserved it. If it had been me, I would have hanged them every day for an entire year for all that they did to the Kurds,” Eli says.

He was particularly pleased when on TV in April 2003 he saw Saddam's statue being toppled in Kirkuk, the city Kurds consider to be their capital, following the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled the dictator.

But the battle is not yet over for the former fighter. He also hopes that the millions of Kurds in Turkey and Iran – known to Kurds as Northern and Southern Kurdistan -- will enjoy the same rights as Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan, and now in the newly autonomous regions of Syria.

“Today South and West, tomorrow North and East,” he vows.


Rudaw