Zakho

Overview

Zakho is a major town in Duhok Province, in the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq. It lies within Kurdistan, near Mosul. The town has been a center of Kurdish political history, a home to an Aramaic-speaking Jewish community, and a destination for people displaced from nearby areas. Its name became closely associated with the Kurdish safe haven established after the Gulf War. Events in Zakho and its district have since reflected wider pressures on the Kurdistan Region: violence against religious minorities, displacement, restrictions on journalists and protesters, cross-border shelling, and attacks on energy facilities.

Geography

Zakho’s place in Duhok Province gave the town particular importance during the creation of the northern safe haven in 1991. The protected area initially centered on Zakho and covered 36 square miles. It later expanded to include Duhok, increasing its area to approximately 3,600 square miles. Kurdish-controlled territory subsequently extended far beyond both towns. That difference between the original haven and the wider area under Kurdish control became a practical security concern: Kurdish residents could not be certain how much of the expanded territory the United States would defend against an Iraqi attack.

The Zakho district has also served as a destination for villagers fleeing violence elsewhere in northern Iraq. Residents of 25 villages in Zummar fled toward Zakho after Popular Mobilization Forces actions around Kirkuk and their entry into Zummar. The forces burned offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Zummar. Zakho’s role as a place of refuge was therefore connected both to its location and to the Kurdish institutions that developed after 1991.

Jewish history

Zakho had an Aramaic-speaking Jewish community whose tradition of Hebrew pronunciation was unusually distinctive. Its speakers differentiated the plosive, or hard, and fricative, or soft, forms of all six Hebrew letters בגדכפ״ת. Among the Hebrew pronunciations documented in modern communities, this full distinction was shared with the Yemenite tradition. The feature preserves differences between consonants that many other Jewish reading traditions retained only in part.

In the Zakho tradition, soft ד was pronounced as an interdental consonant, distinct from the hard ד pronounced [d]; [z] also occurred as a variant of the soft form. Soft ת was pronounced as a voiceless interdental consonant. These details distinguish Zakho’s Hebrew reading tradition from a generic description of Iraqi Jewish pronunciation, because the Aramaic-speaking community maintained sound contrasts that Arabic-speaking Iraqi Jewish communities did not consistently preserve. Zakho’s Jewish heritage forms part of the wider history of Jews in Kurdistan.

Modern history

After the Gulf War, Zakho stood at the center of the initial Kurdish safe haven. Its expansion to Duhok enlarged the protected area substantially, but Kurdish authority soon spread still further. In October 1991, Saddam Hussein withdrew his administration from extensive Kurdish-held territory. He imposed a food and fuel blockade intended to force Kurdish submission. The blockade failed to achieve that goal. Kurdish authorities filled the administrative vacuum, and the area under their control expanded to nearly 15,500 square miles, far beyond the Zakho-centered haven.

The expansion left an unresolved question about protection. Kurdish control on the ground extended beyond the area first designated as a safe haven, while American commitments concerning territory outside Zakho and Duhok remained unclear. In August 1996, Iraqi helicopters moved north of the thirty-sixth parallel. Washington declined to respond under its interpretation that the no-fly zone applied to fixed-wing aircraft. For Kurdish residents, the distinction mattered little to the danger posed by armed Iraqi aircraft. The episode sharpened concern that the United States might also decline to defend areas beyond the original safe haven.

Zakho’s more recent history includes both displacement and new opportunities for its residents. Villagers from Zummar moved toward the town after Popular Mobilization Forces entered their area and burned Kurdistan Democratic Party offices. In 2016, 127 Yazidi Kurdish women completed 45 days of basic training at a Peshmerga Tiger base in the Zakho district. At Zakho University, student Ayman Sabri won a Rwanga Award in 2020 for his work with computers. He subsequently received eight job offers in his field, including one from the Kurdistan Regional Government’s information technology department.

Security

On December 2, 2011, between 300 and 1,000 rioters attacked Chaldean, Syriac, and Yazidi-owned businesses in Zakho. The riot followed midday prayers at the Rasheed Mosque. The attackers burned or destroyed 26 licensed liquor stores, four hotels that served alcohol, a massage parlor, and a casino. A subsequent counter-riot destroyed offices of an Islamic political party suspected of encouraging the initial attacks. During the violence in Zakho and Duhok, Muslim business owners refused to identify Christian establishments to the rioters. Neighbors also pulled Christian and Yazidi residents from burning buildings and tried to extinguish fires.

Security forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government detained at least 50 protesters, activists, and journalists in Duhok and Zakho in late August 2020. On July 20, 2022, Turkish shelling struck the Zakho area, killing eight Iraqi vacationers and injuring 23 other civilians. The attack brought the danger of military action near a civilian destination into sharp focus.

In July 2023, a car explosion in Zakho killed Mohammed Mirza Sinda, a former senior intelligence official linked to the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The Kurdistan Region Security Council held the Kurdistan Workers’ Party responsible. Representatives of the party’s armed wing denied involvement; responsibility for the killing was not established in the accounts presented. The following month, Kurdistan Regional Government intelligence agents arrested journalist Islam Kashani in Zakho after he criticized alleged corruption and mismanagement of public salaries. He was released two days later. Local media reported that authorities presented no arrest warrant, even though they searched his home after detaining him.

Present day

Zakho remains an administrative and economic center within the Kurdistan Region. Its district includes energy facilities exposed to attacks affecting the wider region. On July 16, 2025, two explosive-laden drones targeted a DNO oil field at Peshkhabur, within the Zakho Independent Administration. Another drone struck the DNO oil field at Tawke near Zakho. The strikes caused material damage to the oil fields but no casualties.

The town’s recent history brings together several roles: the center of the first post-Gulf War Kurdish safe haven, a refuge for displaced villagers, and a place where minority communities and their neighbors faced violence together. Zakho’s Jewish Hebrew pronunciation records an older layer of its history, while the events of 2011, 2022, 2023, and 2025 show how regional conflict and questions of public security continue to affect the town and its surrounding district.