Margaret George Shello


Margaret George Shello, also known as Margaret George Malik, was an iconic Assyrian guerilla fighter who joined the Kurdish Peshmerga forces in their fight against the Iraqi governments in the 1960s. She was one of the few female peshmerga commanders in the 1960s.

Biography

Margaret joined the ranks of Peshmerga, probably at the age of 20, in 1960, and was given a leading position in important battles such as the battle of Zawita Valley.
Circumstances that led to her early death are still disputed. Stories about her death usually state either that she was killed by a lover who rejected a marriage proposal, or assassinated by Kurdish leaders because she asked for a leadership role, or assassinated by the Iraqi Army.
Michael M. Gunter describes Shello as "a sort of Kurdish Joan of Arc" in his Historical Dictionary of the Kurds.
In 2013, Shello's brother Adad Ashurseen visited Iraqi Kurdistan to meet with Masoud Barzani to try to find answers to Shello's assassination.