Statue of late Kurdish poet Rafiq Sabir completed for installation in Qaladze

SULAYMANIYAH — A statue of the late poet and writer Rafiq Sabir has been completed and is scheduled to be installed in his hometown of Qaladze, Sulaymaniyah governorate, in the coming months.

Ali Dinka, head of the Qaladze Heritage and Cultural House, told 964media that the statue is finished. The project was proposed and funded by businessman Taha Rasul through his Karim Alaka Foundation. “It is planned that in August, Dr. Rafiq Sabir’s statue, along with several other statues, will be placed in one of the parks in Qaladze,” he said.

The installation comes months after Sabir died on February 28, 2026, in Stockholm after an illness. His body could not initially be returned home because the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran that began the same day closed Iraq’s airspace. He was later buried in Qaladze.

Born in Qaladze in 1950, Sabir is considered a leading voice in contemporary Kurdish poetry. He spent years as a Peshmerga fighter before the 1991 Kurdish uprising and later lived in exile. Among his best-known works is “Lawki Halabja,” a poem addressing the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja by Iraq’s Baath regime, which killed more than 5,000 people and injured more than 10,000. His collections include “Burning in the Rain,” “Mirror and Shadow” and “An Appointment with Light,” with his collected poems issued in two volumes as “Secrets and Doubt.” He also wrote political and literary criticism, including “Culture and Nationalism” and “The Empire of Sand.”