Masoud Barzani.. Peshmerga fighter who walked over the Middle East mines

Shafaq News / Perhaps no politician can tell his biography with such details, as his opponents admit that his effect cannot be ignored. Therefore, different meanings are more expressing when this person is a Kurdish leader.

Despite the positions of responsibility and leadership assumed or transferred to him, Masoud Barzani’s path was not a bed of roses nor an easy journey, it can even be said that his road was very rough and full of ups and downs of hope and frustration, achievements and fractures as well as with bright bets and betrayals on the other hand.

One can hardly distinguish the stages of his childhood and youth from the stages when he became deeply involved in military, political and security fields.

 It’s hard to isolate the beginnings of his political consciousness emergence from the chaos of Iraq in the fifties and sixties of the last century, the disturbances of the world, the fronts of the Cold War and the interests of major and regional powers. 

So if you neglect some of these stages’ detail, you can never have a clear image of Masoud Barzani.

You will not be able to understand Masoud Barzani, who was rising to the forefront of the Kurdish political and militant field, nor Masoud Barzani, who experienced and went through major transformations from the nineties until today.

Masoud Barzani will be difficult to understand, then and now, just as it is not easy to understand the internal secrets of the Kurdish cause and its regional and international complications.  Masoud Barzani in this sense is a image of his cause, not in the tangible, physical sense, but in the human sense intertwined with his dreams, aspirations, and pain.

What’s the way to explore and understand his character? Is it his first upbringing or the international and regional waves that left deep impacts in him, first as a human then as a politician on his long journey through Middle East’s land mines? 

So let’s start from his childhood. He is from Barzan area in Erbil, his father was Mulla Mstafa Barzani from the Naqshbandi family, Naqshbandi is one of the Sufi schools which has been widespread among the Kurds for centuries. The behavior of Sufis has been reflected in his personality and those who know him closely notice he doesn’t talk or eat a lot, he is committed to deadlines, respect for clerics and avoid politicians’ gossip. 

In his interviews, which are few for a leader who has spent all these years in various responsibility positions, his brief answers to highly sensitive questions, commitment to brevity and the absence of exaggeration in his speech and description can easily be noticed. 

His mother was of Zebari tribe. Mustafa Barzani married the daughter of a tribe leader, Mahmoud Agha Zebari, and from 1947 to 1958, his first ten years, until his father, Mullah Mustafa, returned from the Soviet Union, Barzani grew up in the confines of tribal leaders, which leads to a solid opinion and attitude. A sign of leadership confirmation that leads a politician to impose his vision and ideas and commit to it successfully. 

His official biography tells that he was born in Mahabad, Kurdistan, Iran, on August 16th 1946, coinciding with the first conference of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in the house of a Kurdish Faily leader in Baghdad, where Mullah Mustafa was elected as the party's leader in absentia, when he was in the Soviet Union.

With proud Masoud repeatedly boasted about being born under the flag of the Kurdish Mahabad Republic, but he also considers it a responsibility on his shoulders, because according to what was narrated, Judge Muhammad, President of the Mahabad Republic, gave the flag to Mustafa Barzani few hours after the fall of his republic, and told him that he’s trustworthy of it and that the Iraqi and Iranian Kurds despite their many differences share this flag. 

Stormy developments quickly surrounded Masoud Barzani’s childhood with the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Iran, the newly born “Mahabad Republic" was attacked and his father was forced to seek refuge in the Soviet Union, away from his son.

Then the Revolution against the monarchy in Iraq started on July 14th 1958 and the Republic of Iraq was established, which allowed his family to gather again.

Masoud Barzani was only 15 when he was forced to drop out of school, after the dispute between Mulla Mustafa and President Abd Al-Kareem Qasim erupted and the pursuit of the leaders of the Democratic Party that turned into military confrontations, so in 1962 Masoud Barzani joined   Peshmerga forces with the eruption of September 11th revolution, which lasted until 1975.

Here is Masoud Barzani making his first steps between mines and regional storms shortly after joining Peshmerga forces, in 1967 he worked alongside others to establish “Parastin” services, which served as the intelligence arm of the revolution. 

The Kurdish scene was full of conflicts, divisions and allegiances.  

The Parastin will put him eventually in an inevitable collision with the opponents of the revolution. For In the world of security and intelligence, challenges and dangers surround and test you under fire, to polish your piercing eyes, and strength your behavior to be more cautious when you have no other choice in the midst of death storms. While carrying a decade-old legacy of the Barzani family on the path of the Kurdish liberation.

This is not merely a legacy, but also a heavy burden that tests your eligibility and proficiency day by day, year after year.

We can say that 1970 was the first political test for Masoud Barzani.  Two major events in his life, the first joining a Kurdish negotiating delegation with the Iraqi government, and the second being elected by the eighth Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) Congress in the party's central committee.

The completion of negotiations with Baghdad’s government didn’t last long, as the autonomy agreement quickly collapsed, so the sounds of weapons returned to the mountains and valleys.  However, Algeria’s agreement between Iraqi Vice President Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, supported by the Algerian President Houari Boumédiene in 1975, marked a sharp turn in the procession of Massoud Barzani, as the new circumstances imposed on the Kurdish movement a little retreat and repositioning to deal with the conditions of the new stage and it’s difficulties, but it paved the way for the explosion of the Kurdish "Golan Revolution" that was supervised and led by both Masoud and his brother, Idris Barzani.

However, Mullah Mustafa was not in his best health condition so Masoud accompanied his father while he was receiving treatment in the US between 1976 and 1979.  And in this specific stage, Masoud was taking a political role behind the scenes, as he opened a secret communication channel with Khomeini's office in Paris, which was seeking to topple the Shah’s system.

At that time, Masoud went through a direct test with death after he survived an assassination attempt in the Austrian capital, Vienna, in 1979. In a crime attributed to the Iraqi intelligence services, when two of his companions were injured.  

It is also narrated that Masoud survived an inescapable death much earlier, in 1961, when the Iraqi Air Force launched a raid on Barzan region, where Mullah Mustafa family lived.

We can imagine Masoud Barzani at that moment in Vienna, in front of a treacherous death, the moments of his thirty years passing in front of his eyes quickly, since his birth in Mahabad and growing up away from his parents, up to his membership in the ranks of Peshmerga, then hoping for change with the fall of the monarchy of Faisal II and Nuri Al-Saeed, and the opportunities of cooperation with the Iranians to bring down The Shah and seize a moment to achieve the Kurdish aspirations.

Was all this a video tape imagined before this dreamy man?

That dreamer young man didn’t wait too long, as the Shah actually fell, and Barzani quickly landed in Tehran to pursue the Parisian understandings with the leadership of Khomeini.  But tragic news was waiting, for he was informed that his father passed away as soon as he landed! 

Several other stages and major transformations passed on Masoud Barzani in the following years; He was unanimously elected by the Ninth Congress of (KDP) as its president in 1979.

Then the scene of death repeated again, targeting not only him but also his tribe and the people of his region, in what was known as the "Anfal Operation" that’s launched by Saddam Hussein in 1983 and killed thousands of people, According to the official archive of Masoud Barzani, 37 members of his family were killed.

While the Iraq-Iran war seemed to present an opportunity to reinforce the aspirations of the Kurdish struggle, after Saddam Hussein tore “Algeria’s Agreement" - or accused Iran of violating it - ,this war struck at the same time with the Successive opposite predestinations, As the wave of the Iraqi attack broke out at the beginning of the war inside Iranian territory, so Iran shifted from the defensive to the offensive , Saddam Hussein poured his revenge on the Kurds, which reached a climax in the chemical genocide in Halabja in 1988, also in the major Iraqi military attack near the Turkish border in what was known as in the "Khawakork Epic ", which Masoud Barzani embodied with the Peshmerga fighters as they confronted the attack. 

Masoud Barzani was working during the years of Iran-Iraq war on a parallel line to fortify the Kurdish arena, which was reflected in his joint efforts with his brother Idris Barzani that led to form Kurdistan opposition front in 1982 that included (KDP), Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Communist Party of Kurdistan, the Assyrian movement, the Kurdish Socialist Party, and the People's Party.

The Kurds reaffirmed the leadership of Masoud Barzani through electing him by the tenth Congress of the KDP held in December 1989 as party leader for a second term, a few months before Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, an aggression that will change Iraq and the entire region. The Kurdish issue will not return as it was before the invasion in August 1990. With the re-liberation of Kuwait and the outbreak of uprisings in the north and the south against Saddam Hussein, Masoud Barzani led the fight in Kurdistan’s Front.

Saddam Hussein committed the most devastating mistake of his life. And fate seemed to finally smile, Masoud Barzani seized the moment by striking the forces loyal to Saddam while at the same time, studying the possibilities of a political option with Baghdad, which he visited in May 1991 for the first time, presided over Kurdistan’s Front to negotiate a political solution.

Many things have changed since he went that time in the 1970s, for negotiation as well, in Masoud Barzani’s life, in Baghdad and Kurdistan and in the Middle East where peace is impossible. 

Masoud at the age of 24, and Masoud at the age of 45. These are centuries of events, storms and transformations.

Disappointments from Baghdad were many, for this time also the political negotiation option was not successful, though the military progress was more effective, as it allowed Masoud Barzani to initiate historic steps in the Kurds’ march that strengthen their political entity by working towards establishing a parliament and government, as what was before 1990, is never the same after it. 

Then the black bloody years started. The two parties, (KDP) and (PUK) started a bloody conflict, while the interests of Baghdad, Washington and Tehran interfered.

Although it took a lot of efforts on the part of the (KDP)’s leader to bridge the rift with Jalal Talabani, with several American mediations, a truce resulted in 1998, but Masoud Barzani has become a difficult figure in the regional political scene, which is evidenced by the his increasing presence in meetings with leaders and officials from around the world, including, for example, French President Francois Mitterrand, senior Iranian leaders, Turkish President Turgut Ozal, British Prime Minister John Major, and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

The new war drums were beating loudly in the area. 

In 2003, Saddam Hussein regime ended, and Iraq is no longer how we used to see. From the coalition authority to the Transitional Governing Council all witnessed an impressive presence in the decision by Masoud Barzani, until 2005, when the Iraqis approved the new constitution in a popular referendum, that assured that Iraq is a federal state and recognized the borders and powers of Kurdistan. 

Indeed, the Kurds have become essential partners in authority in Baghdad.

Here is Masoud Bazrani, the first president of Kurdistan in 2005. But yet the presidency has its costs and burdens, for the neglected Kurdistan needed to develop in construction, investment and science.  

Perhaps it’s the first time for Masoud Barzani to be placed before such a test of state responsibilities, as business has flourished in the region, and the title "Second Dubai" has become popular in the international media.  As for him, he has become a welcomed guest in Washington, Vatican, London, Tehran, Ankara, Damascus, Cairo, and Riyadh on one hand and an inspiring leader who receives the most prominent leaders and world officials in Erbil on the other hand.

Masoud Barzani’s latest destiny tests was returning to the mountains to fight the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014, he once said that he asked for support from the obvious allies but none helped, so he asked Iran for help and  “Birds of Darkness" arrived the next day at the gates of Erbil, Baghdad, and Najaf, which made Masoud once again felt let down, but that did not stop him from going to the frontlines to induce bravery and defeat the invaders.

Masoud Barzani has established his feet in the Kurdish leadership, despite the many broken dreams; it is known that in his interview , he shows do much modesty.  

Under his spotted keffiyeh (is a chequered red and white scarf that is usually worn around the neck or head), generally a smiling face with rounded cautious eyes after all those infidelities and incendiary mine storms

All those experiences polished him to be stronger and wiser, showing his wisdom in the fall of 2017 by giving up his political position and commitment to popular independent elections. 

It is difficult to draw a fixed image of Masoud Barzani, who’s effected by tribal values and with values of a blood free future for his fellow Kurds, but still you can see a fighter in Peshmerga is a clearly conceivable image of him, for he has been so for half a century. 

This today... That child who was born in Mahabad grew up and became a leader who fought hard to make his dreams a reality in the minefield Middle East.