Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed



Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed (born 1954) is an Iraqi-Kurdish politician and current First Lady of Iraq. Her husband is President Abdul Latif Rashid. She is a daughter of the Kurdish judge, writer, and politician Ibrahim Ahmed, and a sister of former First Lady of Iraq, Hero Ibrahim Ahmed.

Shanaz is a member of a prominent, politically active family from Sulaymaniyah and is closely associated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party, which is currently headed by her nephew, Bafel Talabani.

Early Years
She was born on January 2, 1954, in the neighborhood of Sabonkaran in Sulaymaniyah Governorate to Ibrahim Ahmad and Galawezh Salh Fatah. She was the third of eight children. As a child, she and her family relocated regularly due to her father’s activities and political instability, and her education was routinely interrupted.

Following the 1958 military coup in Iraq, her family relocated to Baghdad where she attended the Mamounia Elementary School. In 1962, the family returned to Sulaymaniyah where she continued her studies at Khanzad School. During this period, due to regular political instability, Shanaz and her family were often forced to find refuge in the Zagros Mountains.

In 1964, as a result of Kurdish factional infighting, the family fled to border villages in Iran before moving to Tehran. Two years later, the family moved to Baghdad where Shanaz completed her secondary studies at a Persian school. In September 1972, she began Sciences studies at Baghdad University.

As a result of the Iraqi government’s crackdown on Kurds in 1973, Shanaz fled to Cairo, Egypt with some of her siblings, including Hero and her husband Jalal Talabani. Her parents and younger siblings went into hiding in the mountains.

As she was not permitted to study in Cairo, she left for Beirut, Lebanon to study engineering. In 1974, Shanaz returned to join her parents and the Kurdish resistance in the Zagros Mountains.

In 1975, following the signing of the Algiers agreement between Iran and Iraq, the entire family was once again forced to seek refuge in Urmia, Iran. A few months later, they moved to Tehran where she enrolled in Pahlavi University (later Tehran University) to study medicine.

In 1976, Shanaz was engaged to Abdul Latif Rashid, who was then working as a hydraulic engineer in Saudi Arabia.

A few months later, facing the prospect of house arrest under a new agreement between the Shah of Iran and the Iraqi government, Shanaz and part of her family fled to Damascus, Syria while her parents sought political asylum in the United Kingdom. In Damascus, Shanaz resumed her medical studies.

Personal life
On 29 November 1977, Shanaz married Abdul Latif Rashid in Damascus, Syria. A year later, they moved to London.

They have two sons and one daughter. Her daughter, Sara Rashid, is President of Kurdistan Save the Children (KSC), a non-governmental humanitarian organization founded by Hero Ibrahim Ahmed.

Shanaz speaks Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, and English.

Career
While Shanaz never took part in the armed resistance against Saddam Hussein like her sister Hero and brother-in-law Jalal Talabani, she was integral to the efforts from abroad through fundraising, lobbying, raising international awareness, and organizing political rallies. She also took a lead on humanitarian efforts while her husband, Abdul Latif Rashid, served as one of the leading figures of the Iraqi political opposition in exile.

Following the 1991 Kurdish uprising, the first Gulf War, and the imposition of sanctions on Iraq, Shanaz co-founded Kurdistan Save the Children (KSC), a non-governmental humanitarian organization, with her sister Hero Ibrahim Ahmed. Today, KSC is the primary sponsor of a children’s activity centre at the Arbat Camp on the outskirts of Sulaymaniyah, which shelters nearly 10,000 refugees, half of them children, who fled ongoing violence in neighbouring Syria since 2013.

Shanaz is noted for her commitment to social justice and has championed the cause of families of victims found in mass graves across Iraq. She has led the campaign to excavate the mass graves, identify the remains, and organize burials.

“I am passionate about justice,” she told The New Arab. “No doubt I get that from my father who risked his life for his convictions. If I am now in a position to cast the spotlight on the suffering of these families and make sure their stories are told to a wider regional and international audience, I will do my utmost to help make it happen.”

She is also passionate about heritage preservation and has spearheaded the campaign to restore several Ottoman-era sites, especially in the Kurdish region. “When I returned to Baghdad for the first time after the 2003 war, I was deeply upset by the destruction of so many historical sites,” she told The New Arab. “Later, we witnessed further desecration of Iraq’s ancient heritage by Daesh terrorists. We have a responsibility, a duty, to preserve our history regardless of what political ideology governs this country.”

Along with her husband, she is an avid collector of Iraqi, Kurdish, and traditional artwork. Part of their vast collection is on display at the Zamwa Gallery and the Latif Rashid Gallery in Sulaymaniyah.

Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed is seen to be blazing a trail as First Lady in Iraq where the role has never been formally recognized. She regularly expresses her views in op-eds for CNN Arabic.