Shifa Gardi

Shifa Gardi 1987-2017

A brief biography

Shifa’s mother clearly remembers the evening before her daughter’s death. That day Shifa went to bed early and her mother thought that was not when her daughter usually went to bed. But she still let her sleep and was looking forward to opening the garage door for her in the morning to help her take out her car to work.

Somehow she was feeling uncomfortable. She had bad feelings about Shifa’s trip to Mosul in the morning. Her uncle too had had a dream and called in to say that Shifa shouldn’t go to Mosul. She should be stopped. But she reassured her parents and said, “Nothing will happen. I will go.”

Shifa’s sisters were preparing for a relative’s engagement party and were going through their colorful Kurdish dresses for the event. Shifa’s parents saw this as an opportunity to dissuade their daughter from going to Mosul. They invited her to the party, but to no avail.

That morning Shifa was happy. She was going to film a giant pit outside Mosul named Khasfa. She knew no other journalist had been there before. She wanted to be the first to film that dangerous pit which ISIS had turned into a mass grave. She arrived in Erbil with her helmet and flag jacket in hand.

As soon as she got to the office she set off towards Mosul with her favorite cameraman Younis Mustafa and her driver Hawkar Jalal. Like other Rudaw reporters Shifa preferred to go reporting with Younis, a skilled cameraman. The team of three knew their destination and goal but they had no idea how the day might end. They stopped for a quick breakfast in a small town on the way and continued their journey.

They passed through the town of Hamdania. Shifa was sitting in the front seat and looked through the window at the ruin and destruction of this Christian town done by ISIS. She looked on quietly without saying a word.

They arrived at Mosul airport which had been retaken by the Iraqi army days earlier. From there the army was shelling ISIS inside Mosul with mortar shells and Shifa was too eager to cover the film this moment. The camera rolled and she appeared on screen to Rudaw’s audience around the world. She received a call and it was her mother wanting to make sure she was alright. She told her mother she was at Mosul airport, it was calm and safe she reassured her.

That day two other Rudaw teams were in Mosul. One led by Sidad Lashkari and one by Ranja Jamal. They were constantly in contact to help each other with equipment and to make sure everyone was safe. Shifa stopped one more time on the way to cover the flight of Mosul refugees before going on to pursue the ISIS mass grave.

Shifa made a number of calls to her colleagues in the field and to her editors in the news room. She needed the exact location of the mass grave and asked everyone around to lead her to the place. She made several calls to Halo Kaka Wais in the studio and as they discussed the story Halo told her to be careful. They drove on until they passed through a destroyed area. As far as the eye could reach it was dead silent and empty. Bombs had destroyed the few houses and huts in the area. Shifa was determined to find the pit and kept searching until they came across an Iraqi army checkpoint where they were told to turn around and go away for the Khasfa pit wasn’t there.

As they turned back there was silence inside the car. The team had done good filming and reporting that day, but Shifa wasn’t happy. She hadn’t found the pit. They drove and pondered when a convoy of the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi appeared and the cameraman recognized one fighter among them. The team asked about the pit and the commander who knew the places led them there right away.

Shifa was sure that the giant pit turned into a grave was one of the most horrific stories of ISIS crimes. The Khasfa had been taken from ISIS for days, but the police or army hadn’t entered the place and investigate it. Shifa wanted to tell the story of the scary place and the tale of those innocent people who had been executed on its edge or thrown inside alive.

The Hashd commander, Sayid Ali, stopped the convoy near a hill. They were finally there. Shifa and the cameraman picked up their gear and descended the hill. Their driver stayed with some of the Hashd fighters on top of the hill. Shifa was pleased. She had found the place and she was already thinking of returning to the place the next day with a guest, a witness, who could them the story.

Sayid Ali started telling them about the pit and Shifa interviewed him on camera for a few minutes. Shifa wanted like to get closer to the pit to make sure it was what she had seen on the internet. That it was the right place. The camera was rolling in the meantime. The cameraman too wanted to walk to the other side to get a better view.

Moments later Sayid Ali stepped on the fuse of a bomb left underground by ISIS. It was followed by a bang that shook the place and enveloped it in dust and smoke. Hawkar the driver watching from the hilltop saw the shocking moment with his own eyes.

Younis was hit, too. He regained consciousness seconds later and started calling for Shifa but Shifa was nowhere to be seen or heard. His own arm was hit, his though torn open, his eyes closed and his head ringing. He knew this was the day they had all been fearing all along. Shifa’s sisters are watching TV and they saw some news they could not believe nor ever forget. They cried and called for their mother. Their beloved Shifa was dead. Her father was happy at his niece’s engagement party. At some point he left the crowd and went outside where he found his two brothers standing sad and silent. He found out his daughter had been killed. Four Hashd fighters who were still alive ran out from inside the dust and to the hill. From the hill Hawkar ran to the pit where he found Younis crying and saying: We lost Shifa. Hawkar knew Younis was too critically wounded to be picked up by hand so he ran back to the hill and backed up his car, despite the dangers, and picked him up where he lay.

Saman Siamand Jaff, head of Rudaw’s service department and vehicles was nearby with another Rudaw team. They got a call from Hawkar who told them sobbingly that Shifa was dead and Younis was wounded. They too rushed to the place and met Hawkar on the way who was carrying Younis and an injured Hashd fighter. On the hill the fighters told Saman not to drive close and so he walked to the site of the explosion and found Shifa. She lay there with her face badly wounded and her blood running underneath her neck. He lifted her hand but it ffell back. He knew now that she was gone.

An ambulance arrived and Saman put Shifa on it. At a nearby hospital they hoped a doctor could save her. Perhaps she was still alive. Maybe things could be turned around. But unfortunately, she was gone for good. Younis’s injuries wre too critical. He couldn’t afford the drive back to Erbil for treatment. Rudaw’s director general contacted the office of the prime minister and through them arranged for an Iraqi army helicopter to fly Younis to Erbil where his colleagues were waiting for him at the airport and at the hospital.

It was a cold winter day in 1987 at Zewa refugee camp in eastern Kurdistan when Shifa was born to a young married Kurdish couple of under 18. People inside the camp were mourning the death of Idris Barzani, the eldest son of Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani. People here were all Peshmerga and had fled to the camp for their revolutionary work. Shifa’s mother Golnaz was lucky. Just days earlier Iraqi jets had killed 15 refugee Kurdish women some of them pregnant. But here she was, having just given birth to a beautiful and healthy baby girl. The father was a Peshmerga on the mountains and was a little shy among his friends about the news of his daughter’s birth. But he was proud deep within. There was little disagreement over a name for the baby. They named her Shifa (cure) hoping she would mark the start of good times for the Kurds.

Shifa’s family are of the Gardi tribe who live on both sides of the border between south and north Kurdistan. They have been part of the Kurdish revolutions and struggle for freedom for generations. The little Shifa grew up in the beautiful nature of the mountains and border area. When the Peshmerga fighters came home they rode horses, including her dad who had a horse of his own. She was fond of the animals and her dad let her ride the horse.

Three years after her birth, in 1991, the Kurdish region of Iraq was freed in an uprising and Shifa’s parents left the refugee camp and returned home. They settled in a camp made by the Iraqi government for displaced families named Basrma near Erbil. Here, life continued to be tragic because many of the families had lost their loved ones in the Anfal campaign. Some of their new neighbors were also Shabak Kurds from Mosul who had been forcefully removed by the regime. Shifa went to elementary school at Basrma and Hejar Argushi was a childhood classmate of hers. He still remembers the smiles of the young girl who was quick-witted and clever. She was also like a protector for her female classmates against teasing and bullying of the boys.

For middle school she went to Harir. There she got involved in student activities and became a member of the student union. Being a girl in an environment like hers never hindered her ambitions. One day she came home and told her parents that she wanted to go and study in Erbil. For the parents it was a difficult choice for they wanted to be near their daughter. Moving to Erbil was a big change in Shifa’s own life, too. It was a big city with many challenges and opportunities, but she faced it head on. She graduated from the computer department at Erbil technical institute. After graduation a friend of hers named Hiwa Argushi asked her to do a voice test at Zagros network. The manager and staff of the station loves her voice, but she herself said she didn’t like it and never wanted to be a newscaster.

She still was hired and later became an anchor at Zagros TV. Her parents were proud of her the day she appeared on the screen for the first time. Some of their neighbors blamed them, but the parents were proud of their girl. In 2009 the Kurdistan Region had one of its most contested elections with a new political party in the vote. The US state department wanted to support an independent daily newspaper for the duration of the election campaign through a journalism course. The organization needed a Badini speaker to lead the Badini edition and for this a team of six reporters were selected Shifa being one of them.

In 2012 a new chapter in Shifa’s life started. Rudaw Media Network was set up and Shifa was one applicant who got hired right away and was put through training courses. Director general of Rudaw Ako Mohammed remembers the day he first met Shifa, and thanked the person who recommended her for the job for sending such a skilled woman. The British trainers were happy with Shifa’s performance and her teams were always among the best during the training courses. On the day and moment of the launch the Rudaw network decided that a male and a female host must do the opening of the TV for which millions of Kurds were waiting eagerly. They picked Shifa along with Shaho Amin and she shone that day like a star. Shifa had been studying journalism at Salahaddin University since 2011. She would commute between school and Rudaw. She was living a busy and productive life. Her family used to come to Erbil and visit her.

In 2014 she submitted her final thesis to her school which was on Rudaw’s election coverage and upon graduation a new chapter of her life started. On the one hand she was promoted to head of output at Rudaw and on the other her parents moved to the town of Permam near Erbil and she started to live with them again. The output department at Rudaw is one of the most sensitive positions as everything that goes on air on TV or radio is the responsibility of its head. This made Shifa’s job ever more challenging, but she met the task with fervor and made sure her colleagues too became TV stars and the TV network performed successfully. The military operation to liberate Mosul was launched in the second half of 2016 and Shifa embarked on covering this major event through a special program of her own titled Focus Mosul. She would invite experts, military strategists and eye-witnesses to appear on her show as guests.

She dedicated her time to the success of this program through research, follow up, interviews and field work. Her program was soon a big hit and her trips to Mosul city to investigate the topics of her story won the heart and approval of many of her viewers. One of her memorable shows was one day when she appeared on TV with a wounded rabbit she had saved from Mosul. Shifa died on February 25, 2017 while chasing a story for her program and her audience in Kurdistan and around the world. She died, but her star keeping shinning.