Massoud Barzani

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I guess that Massoud Barzani has kept more power and control on his PM than Queen Elizabeth with May

If he is wise he has

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Iraqi Kurdish Leader Says Region Will Re-evaluate Relationship With U.S.
Jane Arraf, NPR News, in Masif Salahaddin in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

In an interview with NPR, longtime Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani says his people are re-evaluating their close alliance with the U.S. after the U.S. didn't back the failed independence push that led to his resignation.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

We're going to hear now from the man who for 12 years presided over a semi-autonomous Kurdistan region known as the most stable and prosperous part of Iraq. In September, Masoud Barzani pushed through a referendum for independence, and it backfired. Many of the gains the Kurdish region had made were reversed, so much so that Barzani resigned. Well, today he spoke with NPR's Jane Arraf for his first sit-down interview since the referendum and his decision to leave office.

MASOUD BARZANI: (Speaking Kurdish).

JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: In spite of everything his region has lost, Masoud Barzani says he has no regrets. Barzani, who is 71, stepped down as president of the Kurdistan Regional Government last week. Kurds thought their September referendum would set them on the path to independence from Iraq. Instead, it sent them hurtling down a cliff.

In just a few days, Iraqi troops with Iranian-backed Shia paramilitary forces took back oil fields and the city Kurds thought of as a future capital, Kirkuk. They used U.S. tanks supplied to Iraqi forces to do it. Barzani says through a senior adviser acting as his interpreter that he was shocked to see Americans doing nothing to stop it.

BARZANI: (Through interpreter) They were using the American weapons, Abram (ph) tanks and the others that the American government gave it to the Iraqi army to use them in the fight against ISIS. But they used it against the people, and the Americans stayed silent. That was not expected as well.

ARRAF: We're in his palatial offices at a resort named after the Kurdish conqueror Salah ad-Din. Two weeks ago, in the fallout of the referendum, Barzani stepped down as president. But he still presides over Kurdistan's dominant political party. His supporters consider him a father of the modern-day Kurdistan region. Since 2003, Barzani and the Kurds have been one of the closest allies of the U.S. government. He thinks that might need to change.

BARZANI: (Through interpreter) You know, I can say we have - we are going to have a very serious revising of the relationship.

ARRAF: The U.S. says it doesn't want to see Iraq split into pieces. It warned the Kurds not to hold the referendum now. Other countries fear an independent Kurdistan could destabilize the region. Now, Barzani suggests, maybe the Russians could become better friends than the U.S. He points out that Kurdish fighters, often unpaid and under-equipped, fought and died battling al-Qaida and then ISIS.

BARZANI: (Through interpreter) Absolutely this is not going to leave a positive impact on the public opinion in Kurdistan because the love, the hope and the trust that the people have in the U.S. has declined and is decreasing day after day.

ARRAF: Like his father, Mustafa Barzani, Masoud was a legendary Peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters who took refuge in the mountains to battle Iraqi forces. He's been fighting all his life one way or another for a Kurdish homeland. The referendum was to have been his legacy. But the Kurds are now surrounded by hostile military forces. Iraq is taking back control of international borders the Kurds have overseen since 2003. There's no money to pay for salaries or even keep the lights on. But Barzani is unapologetic.

So you still feel clearly then that it was worth it.

BARZANI: (Through interpreter) Of course. I am very proud of the result. I am very proud that we have given that opportunity to the Kurdistani people to express their vote, and I am not regretting on that.

ARRAF: He says he still believes a Kurdish state is inevitable. A lot of the young generation are not Peshmerga. But Barzani says they're warriors, and they will work for independence.

http://www.npr.org/2017/11/06/562393806 ... ter-really

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KDP accuses Baghdad of cherry picking the constitution

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has accused the Iraqi government of cherry picking articles of the constitution – a practice they claimed is at the core of problems that have fueled wars and domestic rivalries.

The leadership of the KDP, Kurdistan’s biggest ruling party, met in Erbil on Tuesday. Masoud Barzani, head of the party and former Kurdistan Region president, presided over the meeting.

This was the first meeting of the party leadership since the disastrous loss of Kirkuk on October 16 and subsequently other disputed areas after Iraqi forces took control in the wake of Kurdistan’s independence referendum.

The meeting comes after a series of strong stances out of Baghdad against the Region.

A day earlier, the Iraqi government called on Erbil to respect a verdict from the Iraqi Federal Court that ruled there is no clause in the constitution that allows for the secession of any Iraqi component.

This week also saw preliminary approval given to Baghdad’s draft 2018 budget that called the Kurdistan Region “provinces of the north.” The KRG has slammed the term as “unconstitutional” and a sign that Iraq no longer recognizes the Region as a united, single political and administrative entity.

Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, whose government is tasked with holding talks with Baghdad to iron out their differences, was also at the KDP’s meeting.

The readout of the meeting stated that remarks and actions of many Iraqi officials are “far from adherence to the Iraqi constitution which they claim to implement.”

The KDP accused the central government of violating a number of articles of the constitution both before and after the referendum.

They warned that “selective” use of the constitution, interpreting the constitution “according to individual interests,” and the use of force in the face of a difference of opinion, would cause Iraq to enter a new cycle of “war, domestic and foreign disagreement,” just as it had in the past.

“The meeting reiterates the implementation of the constitution, governance on the basis of consensus and balance, and sees it as the solution to the problems.”

Masoud Barzani, who resigned from the presidency of the Kurdistan Region on November 1, had said before the vote that Iraq has departed the principle of the consensus that was the basis of the new Iraq established after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Several Iraqi parties, including the ruling Shiite Dawa party headed by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, advocate for a political majority. Current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is also a member of the Dawa party.

Kurdish parties have said that they will have little to no influence if the Iraqi parliament conducts business through a political majority as they can secure only about 60 seats out of 328 seats in the legislature.

The KDP statement called on all parties of the Kurdistan Region to put aside their differences during this “sensitive” stage and to express their full support for the KRG as a “legitimate party” to enter talks with the federal government.

The statement, though it did not name the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said the some party members committed “treason” that exposed the people of Kirkuk and other disputed areas to the threat of Iraqi forces and the mainly Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi.

It did not provide any evidence, but said that the PUK had accepted its role in the fall of Kirkuk.

A PUK statement on October 24 conceded that a “regional plot” on October 16 exploited internal divisions of the party that partly caused the loss of Kirkuk. The party has since opened an internal investigation into what went wrong.

The PUK’s officials in question are mainly from the family of the party’s late founder Jalal Talabani, including his eldest son Bafel who denies the accusations.

The KDP claimed that cooperation between those PUK officials and Iraqi forces, supported by various foreign parties, meant that years of achievements of the Kurdistan Region were put at risk “within hours” and allowed the Iraqi army and the Hashd to “pressure” the Kurdistan Region.

The party asserted, however, that the identity of the disputed or Kurdistani areas claimed by both Erbil and Iraq will not be changed by a military takeover. The recent Iraqi operation will fail to achieve its objective, just as the process of the Arabization under the former Iraqi government failed, the party’s statement added.

The KDP claimed that the takeover of the disputed areas was prepared long before the referendum.

The military operation “does not seem to be a fallout of the referendum of the people of Kurdistan, but it seems to come from a preplanned plot that began with the end of the Hawija liberation,” the statement read.
(I always believed it was preplanned)

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/071120174

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Western Powers Must Protect Kurds, Urges Iraqi Jew Escorted to Freedom by Masoud Barzani

Please click to enlarge:


For the last forty-seven years, Jamil “Jimmy” Ezra has marked a special, deeply private anniversary on September 1 with a ray of hope in his heart. For it was on that day in 1970 that Ezra – accompanied by his brother and sister – drove in a jeep to the Iraqi border with Iran with Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani and his assistant at the wheel.

Ezra and his siblings were among more than 2,000 Iraqi Jews who were helped by Kurdish Peshmerga to escape from the Ba’athist regime during the 1970s. These were dark days in Iraq, where the remnant of a Jewish community that had only recently numbered 150,000 was convulsed with fear following the public hanging in Baghdad in 1969 of 14 people, nine of them Jews, on trumped-up charges of spying for Israel. Ezra remembers the time with the same deep emotion that grounds his present fears about what the future now holds for his Kurdish rescuers.

“My heart breaks for the 30 million Kurds, divided between Iraq and Turkey, Syria and Iran, and abused and suffering,” Ezra told The Algemeiner on Monday.

Ezra will be speaking about his experiences with Masoud Barzani – son of the legendary Mullah Mustafa Barzani and, until last week, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) – at downtown Manhattan’s prestigious Center for Jewish History on Tuesday night, during a special two-part series on the Kurds sponsored by the American Sephardi Federation. It is a story that began when Ezra was a boy of 17 in Baghdad, living with his aunt and uncle, and still grieving from the sudden death of his father from a heart attack on the very same day in July 1968 that Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist comrades seized power.

“One day in 1970, my brother Farid was walking in the street when he was stopped for an ID check,” Ezra recalled. “He had a permit exempting him from serving in the army, and on every page it was written in red, yahudi, yahudi, yahudi (Jew).”

Farid was arrested and imprisoned on a spying charge. His voice breaking, Ezra recalled how his brother was beaten and tortured by his jailers until he suffered a nervous breakdown. Farid was then transferred to a prison for the criminally insane.

“In the hot summer, the prisoners would all run outside to drink the unfiltered river water that was brought in by a truck in the morning — they would fight over the dirty water,” Ezra said. “My aunt would send me with food and clean water for my brother, and he would beg me to take him away.”

At this point, Ezra said, he and his sister Gilda decided that it was time to leave Iraq. He ventured north to Iraqi Kurdistan, then enjoying a measure of autonomy under an agreement with Baghdad that was soon reneged upon by Saddam Hussein. Arriving in the Kurdish town of Haj Omran on the Iranian border, he came across an Iraqi Jewish family he knew who were taken across the border into Iran that same night. Ezra, meanwhile, was given a mattress in a room where he bedded down with ten Kurds. “I told them about how the Jews were suffering,” he said. “They promised to take me to Mustafa Barzani the following day.”

The next morning, Barzani’s aides hatched a plan that involved Ezra and another Jewish family returning to Baghdad to collect their relatives, after which they would travel to a meeting point back in northern Iraq. “That was on Monday; on the Thursday, back in Baghdad, I woke up my brother Farid, who was suffering badly from his trauma in prison, and I told him, ‘Come on, you and me and Gilda are going on a short vacation,'” he said.

Had they been stopped and discovered at one of the many security checkpoints along the way, certain imprisonment in a Ba’athist jail would have awaited — and, indeed, the family was pulled over by a soldier. “Luckily, the guy was an idiot,” Ezra remembered. “He couldn’t understand why my brother had an exemption permit from the army, so our driver kept explaining, ‘He’s not well, he’s not well.’ Eventually, the soldier said, ‘Ok, ok, you can go.'”

Arriving at the meeting point agreed with Barzani’s advisers, Ezra remembered that a high-level Kurdish intelligence official “came out and started briefing us.”

To maintain secrecy around Kurdish assistance to escaping Iraqi Jews, the official instructed Ezra and those with him to personally approach Masoud Barzani, who would be sitting in a cafe at an agreed time, and pretend they had a brother imprisoned by Kurdish forces. “We had to act,” Ezra said. “We had to beg and plead in front of Masoud.”

Following this ruse, the Ezra siblings got into a jeep alongside Masoud. At the border with Iran, Masoud got out and bade his farewells. “We had a gift for Masoud and his adviser,” Ezra said. “It was a Parker 21 pen, that was a big deal back then. We wanted them to take it, but they refused and refused. They said, ‘We are doing this because we care and we want to help you.'”

“They never took any money, any gifts, unlike the smugglers who would rob the Iraqi Jews they were supposed to be helping,” Ezra continued.

After crossing into Iran on September 1, the Ezras survived a long and arduous journey to Tehran, where they stayed at the aptly-named Hotel Sinai — then full of escaped Iraqi Jews in transit with the Jewish Agency’s assistance. “On October 2, we arrived in America,” Ezra said. “We came to New York.” Many other Iraqi Jews who escaped around the same time went to Israel, as well as the UK, Canada and other countries.

Ezra’s thoughts over the last month have been dominated by the fate of the Kurds, whose 93 percent vote in favor of independence in the September 25 referendum resulted in an Iranian-backed onslaught involving Iraqi government forces and the Shia Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary group. More than 50 percent of the territory liberated from ISIS by the Kurds has been lost, including the historic city of Kirkuk, while Kurdish political leaders have been painted into a corner as they try to maintain as much autonomy from Baghdad as feasible.

“I follow the news of the Kurds, I pray for them,” Ezra said. “I know their history, how they were divided between four countries after World War One. America has betrayed them, Britain and France have betrayed them. Israel tried to help, but they were limited by the Americans dictating to them how much they could do.”

Ezra wants American Jews to urge their legislators to protect the Kurds, a long-standing American ally. “What happened to the Jews could still happen to them,” Ezra said, casting an eye on Saddam Hussein’s infamous attempts to obliterate the Kurds with chemical weapons attacks in the late 1980s. “Measures need to be taken to prevent that,” he said. “

This should be an emergency for the UN Security Council. The issue of the Kurds has to be kept alive every day of the year.”

https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/11/06/w ... r-barzani/

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Iraqi forces entered Kirkuk with US, British knowledge

The timing of the referendum was right and it has secured the future of the Kurdish people, says Masoud Barzani, the Kurdish president who led the initiative and rallied millions towards independence, adding that the Kurds will do all they can to avoid bloodshed and confrontation with the Iraqi army.

“We believe the timing was good...because those Iraqi forces who are currently implementing their policies to change the demography and situation in areas that they are in right now, they had this program and this plan in mind even before the referendum.” Barzani has told Newsweek in an interview.

“They are using the referendum as a pretext to cover their plan and plot against the Kurdish people. We went ahead with the referendum in order to avoid...bloodshed, in order to avoid battles and conflict because those [Iraqi forces] who are now fighting us...want to impose a new status quo in the area. Our mistake is we should have held the referendum earlier and not later.”

Barzani who left his post as president at the end of October and handed over his powers to the government and parliament, say that the referendum was a collective decision by all political parties and that it was in fact a success.

“So the process was successful... and I do believe this referendum has secured the future of the Kurdish people. It’s true that there has been some...obstacles...post-referendum, but...it doesn’t mean the determination of the Kurdish people was lost.”

Barzani tells Newsweek he believes that “Without the role and sacrifices of the peshmerga, ISIS would not have been rolled back and defeated, nor would Mosul have been liberated,” and that it was a big surprise for the Kurds that America allowed its weapons used by the Iraqi army against them.

Asked by Newsweek’s Adla Massoud if he believed the US approved the Iraqi plan to enter Kirkuk and other Kurdish-held areas? Barzani replies: “We do believe, yes, that the operation to take over Kirkuk was led by the Iranians with the knowledge of the U.S. and British officials.”

Telling NPR radio earlier this week that the Kurds will re-evaluate their relations with the United States in light of what happened in October, Barzani tells Newsweek that “But with regards to the relationship between Kurdistan and the White House...I can’t say whether we have a relationship or not.”

Barzani says that “Iraqi decisions are in the hands of Iran. The Kurds are not going to confront the Iranians nor compete with Iran.”

He also adds that it “will be decided in the future,” whether the Kurdistan Region will work with Iran or not.

Barzani echoes the official Kurdish government sentiment for dialogue with Baghdad and prevention of military conflict.

“Our policy is to seek dialogue, to seek peaceful ways for conflict resolution and conflict prevention with Iraq. If the international community and the coalition...genuinely want to prevent another armed conflict, they can. But if a battle erupts, it means they gave it the green light.”

Barzani says that the control of disputed territories by Iraqi forces will not change the identity of their people and constitutional status, explaining that the Kurds withdraw from them only to prevent bloodshed.

“What’s going on in [Kurdish territories]...is just temporary because nobody can change the identity of those areas,” he says. “We are not going to recognize any forced demographic change. The identities of these areas are still Kurdish. We withdrew from many of the areas so as to prevent any kind of conflict and bloodshed. We wanted to prevent any kind of military confrontation to pave the way for dialogue.”

“We are ready to go as far as it’s possible to avoid fighting with the Iraqi army...as long as they are not...changing the [autonomous] status of Kurdistan.”

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/08112017

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After Iraqi Kurdish Independence Vote
Backfires ‘I Do Not Regret It,’ Says Barzani



The following article was originally published in NPR:

There’s a light rain falling in the hills around Masoud Barzani’s palace north of Irbil. Last week, Barzani stepped down as president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq, a position he’s held for 12 years. But the building, with its soaring staircases and footsteps of staff echoing through vast marble hallways, is still distinctly presidential.

The Kurdistan region Barzani was instrumental in carving out from the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq has been turned upside down. Barzani, 71, pushed through a historic referendum for Kurdish independence in September. But it backfired, and instead of the repercussions he expected — economic sanctions and temporary border closures — the Iraqi government sent in troops.

Iraqi forces, including Iranian-backed Shiite paramilitaries, took back the city of Kirkuk, oil fields and towns and cities in a large swath of northern Iraq. Federal troops are retaking borders with Iran, Turkey and Syria that the Kurds have controlled since the 1990s.

The Kurds have also lost territory they’ve held since 2014, when Peshmerga fighters moved in to fight ISIS after entire divisions of the Iraqi army collapsed.

It’s undeniably a disaster. Barzani, though, seems unchanged.

Although no longer president, Barzani remains head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the dominant party in the regional government. Crucially, he still leads Peshmerga fighters loyal to his party. And as one of the founders of modern-day Kurdistan, he retains enormous influence in many parts of this tribal region.

He walks into an interview with NPR — his first since Kurds went to the polls on September 25 — wearing his usual traditional Kurdish clothing, khaki baggy pants and a tunic with a cummerbund, along with the red and white headdress of his Barzan tribe. He has the bearing of the Kurdish fighter he cherishes as his core identity.

Barzani professes to have no regrets. He says “of course” the consequences his region has suffered were worth it to make clear that Kurds want independence.

“I am very proud of the result. I am very proud that we have given the opportunity for the Kurdish people to express their vote – and I do not regret it,” he says.

Asked about the expectation that he take some responsibility for the aftermath, Barzani says it was a collective decision to hold the referendum and not his alone.

He accuses specific Kurdish leaders from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of treason in handing over Kirkuk. And he blames the United States for allowing Iranian-backed Iraqi paramilitaries working with Iraqi troops to attack the Kurds.

“They were using American weapons – Abrams tanks and other things the American government gave to the Iraqi government to use in the fight against ISIS. But they used it against the Kurdish people, and the Americans stayed silent,” he says.

The U.S., the U.K. and almost every other ally had warned Barzani not to hold the referendum in September. U.S. officials brokered a deal with Baghdad to open negotiations with Irbil. If those failed, the U.S. would promise to recognize the need for a referendum.

But Kurdish officials say the offer came too late – two days before the vote, when Barzani had already made clear the referendum would go ahead.

After Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign against the Kurds in the 1980s, the United States created the conditions for the Kurdistan region to flourish, leading a no-fly zone in 1991 protecting the Kurds from air strikes. For the first time in Iraq, the Kurds gained control of their borders, creating a region that — while not exactly democratic — was seen as the most stable, prosperous and US-friendly in Iraq.

Kurdish leaders had made clear the September vote would not trigger an immediate declaration of independence. Until the last moment – at a press conference the evening before the referendum – Barzani seemed to think the worst repercussions would be border closures or economic sanctions. But with so many fault lines in the Middle East, no country was willing to see the breakup of Iraq.

“We were expecting some kind of reaction, but we had not calculated on military attack,” Barzani tells NPR.

The Kurds and their Peshmerga fighters have been one of the strongest U.S. allies for two decades. US-backed Kurdish forces — often unpaid and under-equipped — played a crucial role in the multinational fight against ISIS.

Barzani sees the U.S. willingness to allow Iran-backed Iraqi forces to attack the Kurds as an inexplicable surrender to Iranian influence.

“We regard ourselves as friends of the people of the United States, as friends of the government of the United States but … we have to revise our relationship with those who are responsible for this,” he says. “I can say we are going to have a very strong revising of our relationship.”

He says the Kurdish people see it as betrayal.

“From 2003, the people of Kurdistan have received the American people with hearts and flowers,” he says. “The love and hope and trust that people had in the United States has declined and is decreasing day by day.”

Instead of relying on the United States, Barzani says, the Kurds could improve their relationship with Russia.

Barzani’s nephew Nechirvan is the region’s prime minister. He and deputy prime minister Qubad Talabani – another of the new generation of Kurdish political leaders – have been trying to persuade the Iraqi government to sit down to talks.

In much of the rest of the country, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi is riding a wave of popularity for regaining Kirkuk. He insists the Kurds have to renounce the referendum – declaring it null and void – before he’ll sit down to negotiations to stop further Iraqi military movements.

Masoud Barzani says that’s impossible. In a concession, the Kurdish government has said it would “freeze” the results of the referendum and put seeking independence on hold.

“Who can annul 3 million votes?” asks Barzani. “It’s really very meaningless, this insistence. There is no way they can be annulled.”

This article was originally published in NPR.

https://thekurdishproject.org/stories/i ... aign=story

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Masoud Barzani: No court can cancel 3 million votes for independence

Kurdistan Region’s former president Masoud Barzani said the Iraqi Federal Court has no legitimacy to issue a ruling on the Kurdistan independence referendum and no such court can declare the votes of millions of people “unconstitutional.”

The Federal Court issued a ruling on Monday cancelling the referendum results after declaring the vote “unconstitutional.”

Barzani, who remains head of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said in a written statement on Monday evening that both the Iraqi government and the Federal Court are in violation of the Iraqi constitution.

“Everyone must know that there is no legal and constitutional basis that can consider the votes of three million people unconstitutional because the people themselves are the source of legitimacy, laws, and the constitution,” he stated.

“The decision by the Federal Court is unilateral, political, and has used the constitutional texts in the interest of some political parties,” Barzani added, saying that the court has turned a blind eye to violations of the constitution committed by the Iraqi government.

He explained that the Iraqi government violated 55 articles of the constitution, including failing to implement Article 140 to resolve the disputed areas and cutting the Kurdistan Region budget.

The man who led the bid for independence stressed that the constitution, as stated in its preface, is the guarantor of the “free union” of Iraq.

He said the Federal Court itself lacks legitimacy because it was established before the adoption of the current Iraqi constitution in 2005 and should have been replaced with a new Supreme Court, as per the constitution.

And he questioned why the court stayed silent when the Iraqi army and state forces were used against the people of Kurdistan to settle a political matter.

Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani earlier in the day said the Iraqi constitution must be fully implemented in order to have a stable Iraq.

“KRG’s stance is very clear,” Barzani told reporters. “Before and after referendum we have always said it that if the Iraqi constitution is implemented we’d have no issues with Baghdad, but the constitution is something that must be implemented in its entirety.”

“In Iraq too, they talk about the constitution but they only pick what they like. Iraq wasn’t ready to implement the constitution that’s why we had a referendum,” he added, noting that a third party may be required to help interpret the document.

Erbil has already stated that it respects an earlier ruling by the Federal Court issued on November 6 that stated the Iraqi constitution does not allow the separation of any part of the country. Kurdish authorities, however, ignored a court ruling in September suspending the vote.

Kurdistan held a vote on independence that saw nearly 93 percent support for leaving Iraq. Erbil has offered to freeze the result in return for open dialogue with Baghdad.

Baghdad is yet to respond to calls for negotiations with Erbil, though the international community, including the United States and the United Nations, among others, has pushed in this direction.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/201120174