Sulaimani acts to preserve historic buildings – but lacks restoration funds

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – Sulaimani’s cultural committee is taking action to protect the city’s historic neighborhoods from demolition by developers. However, local authorities lack the funds needed to restore the traditional mudbrick houses to their former glory.

So much architectural heritage has already been lost to make way for new commercial and residential developments. Now city authorities have imposed a ban on further demolitions. 

Although a young city by Iraqi standards, founded just 250 years ago, the mudbrick homes are a lasting legacy of Sulaimani’s early development and social history.

The neighborhoods may well have been granted a reprieve from the developers’ jackhammer, but the cultural committee says it lacks the funds to fix up the crumbling and dilapidated homes. 

“There is currently no budget to repair them. The walls of these old houses are usually made of mud. Naturally, their rooves rot and collapse due to rain and the walls collapse too. People destroy the houses under this pretext,” Rebaz Mahmood, head of the Sulaimani Cultural Protection Committee, told Rudaw.

Because of the protected status, residents are not permitted to structurally alter the houses without government consent.

Now the residents are requesting compensation so they can leave.

“Let them compensate us with a good parcel of land. We want to be compensated like those from Chwarchra neighborhood who got land. We will not leave our houses without any compensation. Many of us live in these neighborhoods,” said Ask Qadir, a resident of Sulaimani’s Sheikhan neighborhood.

“We are just an elderly man and woman living in this house. Where should we go? God willing, we hope they will do something for us,” said Saeed Rashid, another local resident. 

Since 2005, the government has designated 107 locations in Sulaimani as heritage sites. To date, officials have purchased 14 of them. Since then, just seven have been repaired.

“I have asked the Council of Ministers plenty of times to implement the Iraqi heritage law, which is very good for preserving our heritage sites,” said Abdulraqib Yousif, a local heritage and culture expert.

“I submitted proposals to the Council of Ministers to preserve these historical heritage sites. But it is something they do not endorse on the grounds that they do not follow the Iraqi law.”

Sulaimani has invested heavily in preserving its local heritage, boasting a popular archeological museum and the Amna Suraka – a Saddam-era prison which now documents the dictator’s crimes against the Kurds.