Syrian Olive Trees Put Down Roots in Kurdish Iraq

Suleiman Sheikho, from Syria's Kurdish Afrin region, is believed to be the first person to introduce the olive oil business to Iraqi Kurdish farmers. AFP
Suleiman Sheikho, from Syria's Kurdish Afrin region, is believed to be the first person to introduce the olive oil business to Iraqi Kurdish farmers. AFP
TT
20

Syrian Olive Trees Put Down Roots in Kurdish Iraq

Suleiman Sheikho, from Syria's Kurdish Afrin region, is believed to be the first person to introduce the olive oil business to Iraqi Kurdish farmers. AFP
Suleiman Sheikho, from Syria's Kurdish Afrin region, is believed to be the first person to introduce the olive oil business to Iraqi Kurdish farmers. AFP

Tucked away in the rolling hills of Iraqi Kurdistan is a hidden treasure: tens of thousands of olive trees, thriving in a new homeland after being smuggled from neighboring Syria.

Their branches are heaving with bright purple-black olives ready to be picked.

Their caretaker, Syrian Kurdish businessman Suleiman Sheikho, is proud to have brought the olive oil business to Iraq's autonomous north, AFP reported.

"This year was a good year," said 58-year-old Sheikho, who has been transporting trees from his native Afrin in northwest Syria into Kurdish Iraq since 2007.

"On this farm I have 42,000 olive trees, all of which I brought from Afrin when they were three years old," he told AFP, gesturing to neat rows reaching the horizon.

In early 2018, his mission took on a new urgency.

Turkey, which saw the semi-autonomous Kurdish zone of Afrin on its border as a threat, backed an offensive by Syrian opposition groups to take control of the canton.

The operation, dubbed "Olive Branch," displaced tens of thousands, many of whom had made their living for decades by producing olive oil in the area's mild climate.

Sheikho himself is a fourth-generation olive farmer and had 4,000 trees in Afrin that are older than a century.

The slender businessman, who once served as the head of Afrin Union for Olive Production, sprung into action.

He transported some of his trees legally, but smuggled others across the border, managed on both sides by autonomous Kurdish authorities.

Some of the new transplants joined his orchard, located among luxurious summer villas near the regional capital Arbil. He sold others to farmers across Kurdish Iraq.

Raw olives are a staple on Levantine lunch tables, while their oil is both used in cooking and drizzled on top of favorite appetizers like hummus.

The oil can also be used to make soap, while the dark, sawdust-like residue from olives pressed in the autumn is often burned to heat houses in winter.

- Fertile ground ahead -

Olive trees struggle in the blistering heat and desert landscapes of Iraq, so the yellowish-green oil was long imported at great expense from Lebanon, Syria or Turkey.

A domestic oil industry could change all that.

Sheikho was relieved to find the soil near Arbil as rich as in his hometown, but the warmer temperatures meant his trees required more robust irrigation networks.

According to AFP, there are two harvests a year, in February and November.

He built a press, where the olives are separated from twigs and leaves, pitted, then squeezed to produce thick, aromatic oil.

Dressed in a charcoal grey blazer during AFP's visit, Sheikho tested the quality by drinking it raw from the press, before the viscous fluid was poured into plastic jugs.

"For every 100 kilos of olives, I produced 23 kilos of olive oil," he told AFP.

Olive oil production had not taken root when Sheikho began working there, but has thrived since Syrians displaced by their country's nearly decade-long war began moving there.

According to the Kurdish regional government's (KRG) agriculture ministry, there were just over 169,000 olive trees in the Kurdish region in 2008.

Since then, the ministry invested some $23 million in planting and importing the trees, which now number around four million, it estimates.

There are around a half-dozen olive presses, employing many Syrian Kurds from Afrin.

Sheikho sees more fertile ground ahead.

"The farmers here have great ideas and they are extremely ambitious," he told AFP.

"With the hard work and experience of Afrin's farmers, they are going to create a very bright future for olive business."



Fear Stalks Tehran as Israel Bombards, Shelters Fill Up and Communicating Grows Harder

Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
TT
20

Fear Stalks Tehran as Israel Bombards, Shelters Fill Up and Communicating Grows Harder

Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)
Shops remain shuttered Tehran's historic Grand Bazaar, Monday, June 16, 2025. (AP)

The streets of Tehran are empty, businesses closed, communications patchy at best. With no bona fide bomb shelters open to the public, panicked masses spend restless nights on the floors of metro stations as strikes boom overhead.

This is Iran’s capital city, just under a week into a fierce Israeli blitz to destroy the country's nuclear program and its military capabilities. After knocking out much of Iran's air defense system, Israel says its warplanes have free rein over the city's skies. US President Donald Trump on Monday told Tehran's roughly 10 million residents to evacuate “immediately.”

Thousands have fled, spending hours in gridlock as they head toward the suburbs, the Caspian Sea, or even Armenia or Türkiye. But others — those elderly and infirm — are stuck in high-rise apartment buildings. Their relatives fret: what to do?

Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300, a human rights group says. State media, also a target of bombardment, have stopped reporting on the attacks, leaving Iranians in the dark. There are few visible signs of state authority: Police appear largely undercover, air raid sirens are unreliable, and there’s scant information on what to do in case of attack.

Shirin, 49, who lives in the southern part of Tehran, said every call or text to friends and family in recent days has felt like it could be the last.

“We don’t know if tomorrow we will be alive,” she said.

Many Iranians feel conflicted. Some support Israel's targeting of Iranian political and military officials they see as repressive. Others staunchly defend the country and retaliatory strikes on Israel. Then, there are those who oppose Iran’s rulers, but still don't want to see their country bombed.

To stay, or to go? The Associated Press interviewed five people in Iran and one Iranian American in the US over the phone. All spoke either on the condition of anonymity or only allowed their first names to be used, for fear of retribution from the state against them or their families.

Most of the calls ended abruptly and within minutes, cutting off conversations as people grew nervous or because the connection dropped. Iran’s government has acknowledged disrupting internet access. It says it's to protect the country, though that has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world.

Iranians in the diaspora wait anxiously for news from relatives. One, an Iranian American human rights researcher in the US, said he last heard from relatives when some were trying to flee Tehran earlier in the week. He believes that lack of gas and traffic prevented them from leaving.

The most heartbreaking interaction, he said, was when his older cousins with whom he grew up in Iran told him “We don’t know where to go. If we die, we die.”

“Their sense was just despair,” he said.

Some families have made the decision to split up.

A 23-year-old Afghan refugee who has lived in Iran for four years said he stayed behind in Tehran but sent his wife and newborn son out of the city after a strike Monday hit a nearby pharmacy.

“It was a very bad shock for them,” he said.

Some, like Shirin, said fleeing was not an option. The apartment buildings in Tehran are towering and dense. Her father has Alzheimer’s and needs an ambulance to move. Her mother's severe arthritis would make even a short trip extremely painful.

Still, hoping escape might be possible, she spent the last several days trying to gather their medications. Her brother waited at a gas station until 3 a.m., only to be turned away when the fuel ran out. As of Monday, gas was being rationed to under 20 liters (5 gallons) per driver at stations across Iran after an Israeli strike set fire to the world's largest gas field.

Some people, like Arshia, said they are just tired.

“I don’t want to go in traffic for 40 hours, 30 hours, 20 hours, just to get to somewhere that might get bombed eventually,” he said.

The 22-year-old has been staying in the house with his parents since the initial Israeli strike. He said his once-lively neighborhood of Saadat Abad in northwestern Tehran is now a ghost town. Schools are closed. Very few people even step outside to walk their dogs. Most local stores have run out of drinking water and cooking oil. Others closed.

Still, Arshia said the prospect of finding a new place is too daunting.

“We don’t have the resources to leave at the moment,” he said.

Residents are on their own

No air raid sirens went off as Israeli strikes began pounding Tehran before dawn Friday. For many, it was an early sign civilians would have to go it alone.

During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Tehran was a low-slung city, many homes had basements to shelter in, and there were air raid drills and sirens. Now the capital is packed with close-built high-rise apartments without shelters.

“It's a kind of failing of the past that they didn’t build shelters,” said a 29-year-old Tehran resident who left the city Monday. “Even though we’ve been under the shadow of a war, as long as I can remember.”

Her friend's boyfriend was killed while going to the store.

“You don’t really expect your boyfriend or your anyone, really to leave the house and never return when they just went out for a routine normal shopping trip,” she said.

Those who choose to relocate do so without help from the government. The state has said it is opening mosques, schools and metro stations for use as shelters. Some are closed, others overcrowded.

Hundreds crammed into one Tehran metro station Friday night. Small family groups lay on the floor. One student, a refugee from another country, said she spent 12 hours in the station with her relatives.

“Everyone there was panicking because of the situation,” she said. “Everyone doesn’t know what will happen next, if there is war in the future and what they should do. People think nowhere is safe for them.”

Soon after leaving the station, she saw that Israel had warned a swath of Tehran to evacuate.

“For immigrant communities, this is so hard to live in this kind of situation,” she said, explaining she feels like she has nowhere to escape to, especially not her home country, which she asked not be identified.

Fear of Iran mingles with fear of Israel

For Shirin, the hostilities are bittersweet. Despite being against the theocracy and its treatment of women, the idea that Israel may determine the future does not sit well with her.

“As much as we want the end of this regime, we didn’t want it to come at the hands of a foreign government,” she said. “We would have preferred that if there were to be a change, it would be the result of a people’s movement in Iran.”

Meanwhile, the 29-year-old who left Tehran had an even more basic message for those outside Iran:

“I just want people to remember that whatever is happening here, it’s not routine business for us. People’s lives here — people’s livelihoods — feel as important to them as they feel to anyone in any other place. How would you feel if your city or your country was under bombardment by another country, and people were dying left and right?”

“We are kind of like, this can’t be happening. This can’t be my life.”