Let Us Be One in Name and Heart

Kosari was born in 1967 in Rania, a district in northern Iraq, now within the territory of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). As a young man, Kosari sang and performed in theaters until he met Ali Bapir, the founder and current leader of the Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG), Kosari’s “beloved leader.” In his own words, Kosari found his life charmed but unfulfilling: “Truly guidance is but God’s. I was a young man, my father’s only son. [My parents] cared for me deeply; they tried to grant my every wish. Everything was at my disposal. I spent money the way I wished. But I found life distasteful.” Under Bapir’s influence, Kosari became an active member, a poet as well as a Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Islamic Movement (KIM) that later gave birth to the KIG, a political party for which Kosari served as Poet Laureate.

In his verses, Kosari manifests his identities as a poet, nationalistic Kurd, and jihadi. Establishing the hierarchy of these identities is complex if not impossible: was he more a poet or jihadi? More nationalist or more Muslim? To some, these identities compete: poetry’s lyricism and jihadist rhetoric, Kurdish nationalism and Jihadism, which usually entails pan-Arabism. Kosari enacts these false binaries.

Throughout Kurdistan and the Islamic world, poetry is and has been a crucial vehicle for political and religious expression, especially for recruitment among jihadist organizations. Kosari’s poems transcend their jihadi readership through lyricism. One of Kurdistan’s most beloved and popular secular poets Sherko Bekas said, on the occasion of Kosari’s death, “A god of poetry died when Kosari died.” Similarly, Kosari’s poetry both contributes to and challenges the body of jihadist poetry. Though the very idea of a caliphate, for instance, invokes modern pan-Arabism and pan-Islam, Kosari uses the concept to advocate for an independent Kurdish nation-state. Where he could formally reference the Islamic poetic tradition, Kosari uses free verse. Where he could choose the Arabic tawhid to name Islam’s concept of oneness, he chooses instead the Kurdish yektaparesti. Kosari lived and wrote across contradictions.

The translation of Jihadi poetry has its own peculiarities. On the one hand, as is the nature of good poetry, regardless of it being violent or not, it can always astonish its readers. On the other hand, translating Jihadi poetry, unlike other kinds, might seem to propagate for that ideology. The purpose behind translating the works of Kosari is to bring more scrutiny to the possibilities of a simultaneous striving for both Jihadism and nationalism. The pinnacle of expression in any culture is best articulated in its poetry. Jihadism is no exception.

As a powerful propagandist for the KIM and successful recruiter for the movement, Kosari posed a significant threat to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two ruling parties in the KRG. On December 12, 1993, at the height of the Kurdish Civil War, by many accounts, the PUK assassinated Kosari. Wahid, Ali Bapir’s brother, recalls, “On his deathbed, Kosari begged me, ‘Bring the recorder. I have poems in my chest I haven’t yet said.’” The work Kosari left us offers the difficult reconciliation of his various identities. We can only imagine the poems we won’t get to hear.