This paper examines the struggle for control over the city of Halabja’s historic legacy of martyrdom as a lens onto state-society relations in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. About 5,000 Halabjans were killed in 1988 when the Iraqi military bombed the city with chemical gasses, and the city’s fate has since become a cornerstone for legitimating the need for Kurdish self-determination. In late 2013 Kurdish and Iraqi officials approved the designation of Halabja as a province, something Halabjan activists had long demanded and that would bestow new levels of financial support and political representation. The move -- and its accompanying announcements—were a striking departure from typical relations between Kurdish authorities and Halabja residents. Despite Halabja’s prominent place in the Kurdish national narrative, relations between Halabjans and party authorities have been strained and contentious for almost a decade. In 2006 local people protesting the Kurdistan Regional Government destroyed the Halabja Monument of Martyrs built there to honor their own dead. Since then Halabjans have engaged in a variety of extrainstitutional and conventional tactics to try and wrest control of the town’s symbolic legacy—and the material and political aid it bequeathed—from Kurdish political elites. For a brief time in 2011 activists even proclaimed Halabja an independent commune. The paper examines the ways Halabja community members and activists have sought to control the symbolic resource of Halabjan martyrdom. I argue that local activists’ ability to use this resource as leverage in political bargaining with both Kurdish and central Iraqi authorities, and to mobilize through street protest, associational activism, and the media, changed the balance of power between state and society in Halabja. Such changes are evidenced not only in the designation of Halabja as province but in many other material and political developments ranging from how the annual Halabja commemoration ceremony is planned to the paving of roads in the town. The new politics of protest of which Halabja was part also offered a new definition of the Kurdish national interest that went beyond protecting Kurds from external threats and incorporated new demands for better governance at home. The article is based on field work in the Kurdistan region of Iraq between 2009 and 2014. Sources include in-depth interviews, media and official statements, NGO and government reports, and observation.