Hakki worked in Baghdad as both a lawyer and judge. In the 1950s, she smuggled documents into the US embassy about the treatment of Kurds in Iraq. She founded the Kurdish Women's Federation and served as its president from 1958 to 1975. In 1959, Hakki was the first woman appointed as a judge in Iraq, making her the first female judge in the Middle East. In 1970, she became the only woman in the leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. She was a senior official in the ministries of industry and agriculture in the pre-Saddam Hussein period. As Hussein gained power, she joined the Kurdish cause, fighting as a guerrilla until she was arrested and tortured in 1975. The regime placed her under house arrest and she fled with other KDP leaders to Iran, supported by the Shah. She returned to Baghdad but kept a lower political profile, working in family and civil law. She survived numerous assassination attempts and her husband and brother were killed by Hussein's people for speaking out against the regime's policies. Hakki fled Iraq in 1996, bribing her way out of the country with a valuable carpet. She received political asylum in the United States. She was a member of the Independents Liberal Politician Iraqi Women Group, speaking out about conditions for women in Hussein's Iraq. Hakki worked as an attorney in Northern Virginia and was the vice president of the Iraqi-American Council. She supported her son in his fight for asylum in the US after he was accused of being a double agent. Hakki returned to Iraq in 2003, seeking to put her legal expertise to work in rebuilding the country. She was elected a member of the interim parliament. She was hired by the Coalition Provisional Authority's interim Ministry of Justice to make recommendations about legal reforms to the Constitution Review Committee. However, neither she nor any other woman was able to participate in the drafting process for the new constitution, debate the constitution publicly or review it before the final draft became public. In 2004, Hakki was an outspoken opponent against the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council's decision to cancel family laws and place jurisdiction under sharia, saying, "This new law will send Iraqi families back to the Middle Ages." When Shiite Islamic parties pushed for sharia to be enshrined in the interim constitution, Hakki used her Department of Defense clearance to bring activists into the Green Zone and staged sit-ins in US proconsul Paul Bremer's office until he agreed to veto sharia. She was an adviser to Iraq's Ministry of Justice in 2004 and 2005. In 2005 she said, "I am thankful America liberated us from Saddam Hussein, but I resent how it has been dealing with Iraqis since then."
Personal life
Hakki is a Shia Muslim. Her husband was killed under Saddam Hussein. Two of her sons were evacuated to Guam and held in INS detention: Ali, a doctor with his wife and two children, and his brother who had deserted Hussein's army after witnessing the destruction of a Kurdish village.
