Halabja struggles to preserve ancient Jewish neighborhood

HALABJA, Kurdistan Region - Locals in Halabja are struggling to preserve the ancient Jewish neighborhood that was once full of life.

Built in the late 17th century, the neighborhood was home to some of the Kurdistan Region’s Jewish families.

It is now crumbling from lack of maintenance.

“These houses belonged to the Jews excluding those two houses there that belonged to two Muslim citizens. One of them was the house of Haji Ahmed and the other one was the house of Mahmoud Arab. I wanted these houses to stay like this,” Ahmed Fatah, a local from Halabja told Rudaw’s Peshawa Bakhtyar last week. 

Jews in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region fled following the Israeli state in 1948.

By 1951, 96 percent of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region’s Jews were gone.

There are efforts to protect and preserve the site.

“It needs a higher budget. We have allocated a budget for a few stages [of the project]. We have not been able to determine a precise budget that resolves all the issues of Halabja’s houses, hence why the budget we have is requested is based upon stages,” head of Halabja Archaeology Department Karwan Ismael said.

“We can use the houses either as a museum or a guesthouse because they are big and suitable to be used as a guesthouse.”