Sheikh Abdulsalam fought for Kurdistan >100 years ago

[Anthea]

KDP nominates Nechirvan and Masrour Barzani for Kurdistan's top posts

Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has nominated Nechirvan Barzani for the presidency of Iraqi Kurdistan and Masrour Barzani as prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a senior party official said on Monday

Iraq's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has nominated Nechirvan Barzani for the presidency of Iraqi Kurdistan and Masrour Barzani as prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), a senior party official said on Monday.

The KDP won the largest amount of seats in a September regional parliamentary election.

Nerchivan Barzani is the current KRG prime minister and Masrour Barzani is its current security chief. They are respectively the nephew and son of KDP leader and former regional president Masoud Barzani.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/wo ... s-10992432

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Nechirvan Barzani to presidency
Masrour Barzani to prime ministry

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) decided to nominate Nechirvan Barzani to become president of the Kurdistan Region and Masrour Barzani to be prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)

Party spokesperson Mahmoud Mohammed made the announcement to reporters in Erbil on Monday after a meeting of the leadership council.http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/031220181

"In the previous meeting of the politburo and today some recommendations were made and later approved. The recommendations consist of the candidacy of Nechirvan Barzani for the President of the Region,” said Mohammed.

Nechirvan Barzani is the incumbent prime minister of the KRG which is forming a new government following a parliamentary election on September 30.

The post of presidency of the Kurdistan Region has been suspended following former President Masoud Barzani’s end of term on November 1, 2017.

“This post has to be re-activated very well and a strong and experienced person shall take the responsibility so that he can keep the situation under control and so that it [the position] can be a place to bring together both the government and other institutions in order to face all possibilities and challenges facing Kurdistan,” said Mohammed.

Chiefly, the presidency commanded the Kurdistan Region’s security forces including the Peshmerga. The presidency’s powers, including security command, were delegated to the prime ministry by the previous parliament.

The KDP won the election with 45 seats, just 11 shy of an absolute majority. It would like to retain the prime ministry.

“For the position of the Prime Minister Masrour Barzani has been recommended. This subject was approved by the politburo and leadership council following discussions and consultancy. These recommendations were finalized in order to discuss this subject with other parties,” said Mohammed.

Masrour Barzani is currently the head of the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC).

Retaking its position as the second-largest party in the KRG, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) won 21 seats. It currently holds the post of deputy prime minster with Qubad Talabani, who won more votes than any other list leader in the election.

Talabani has not been sworn in as a member of parliament, leading many to believe he will seek another high position in government or the presidency.

The KDP spokesperson said that they have not discussed the structure of the government in their meetings.

Some smaller parties like the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) and New Generation have said they will not participate in a KDP-PUK ruled government.

For now, they have formed a negotiations committee which consists of senior KDP members, including: Azad Barwari, Hoshyar Zebari, Jaafar Iminiki, Hemin Hawrami, Firsat Sofi and Mahmoud Mohammed. It could change in the future.

"We will discuss both positions with other parties as one package,” said Mohammed of his cadre that includes Hawrami, the head of the KDP bloc in the Kurdistan Region parliament.

The KDP and PUK are historically the two largest and parties in the Kurdistan Region and their gains were solidified by the electorate.

Mohammed predicts the formation of the next cabinet to go smoothly.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/031220181

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PUK ‘respects’ KDP nominations for president and PM:

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) “respects” the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) decision to nominate Masrour Barzani for the position of prime minister and Nechirvan Barzani for the presidency, the party said in a statement Monday

The PUK will soon select its own candidates for other senior posts and hopes for a speedy formation of government, the party added – more than two months after the Kurdistan Region held its parliamentary election.

“In the meeting we held, we agreed that the caretaker government can’t meet a lot of the wishes of the people. That is why we need to quickly form the government,” Sadi Pira, PUK spokesperson, told reporters following a meeting of party officials on Monday.

“We as the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan respect the decisions of the KDP,” he added.

Earlier on Monday, the KDP announced its nominee for prime minister as Masrour Barzani – the current chancellor of the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) and son of former president Masoud Barzani.

The party also nominated the current KRG prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, for the Kurdistan Region presidency – a post which had been frozen following Masoud’s resignation.

Nechirvan – Masoud’s nephew – has served as KRG prime minister for around 15 years.

The PUK will meet in the coming days to nominate its candidates for the positions it is after, said Pira.

“It is obvious the position of the Deputy Prime Minister will be ours, but who will be put forth for that position, and what the division of ministerial posts will look like will be a topic of discussion between the two sides in the upcoming meeting,” Pira added.

The “broadening” of the government by adding a second deputy PM would be costly, he warned. There had been rumors of the Change Movement (Gorran) demanding such a position.

Kosrat Rasul’s son, Darbaz, is widely touted as the likely second deputy PM alongside another PUK candidate as the first deputy PM. The PUK is also demanding the role of parliamentary speaker.

Based on its share of seat in the parliament, the PUK says it id “entitled” to positions on the presidential board.

Pira dismissed rumors the PUK is trying to block other parties from securing government posts as “propaganda”.

The PUK emerged from the September 30 parliamentary election with 21 seats – an improvement on the 18 it secured in the last parliament. Significantly, Gorran was pushed into third place with 12 seats, down from its earlier 24.

The KDP came out on top with 45 seats – but fell short of an outright majority. This, along with the complex tradition of power sharing between the Region’s two tribal parties, obliges them to share the spoils of office.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/031220182

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How the Barzanis are looking to
consolidate power in Iraqi Kurdistan

Kurdistan’s dominant clan announced today that it was nominating Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani to succeed his uncle Massoud Barzani as president of the Kurdistan Regional Government. A spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) added that Massoud Barzani’s son, Masrour Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan Region Security Council, had been nominated to take over as prime minister.

The post of the presidency has remained vacant since Massoud Barzani stepped down following the ill-fated referendum on Kurdish independence in September 2017. But the elder Barzani continues to rule from behind the scenes.

Why it matters: The nominations are meant to consolidate the KDP’s power and maintain unity inside the party, which has yet to fully recover from the effects of the referendum. The referendum saw the Kurds lose Kirkuk and other “disputed” territories to the Iraqi army and Shiite militias. The nominations may also be calculated to gently diffuse a simmering rivalry between Nechirvan Barzani, a pragmatist who effectively controls the Kurdistan region’s lucrative energy sector and is married to Massoud Barzani’s daughter, and Masrour Barzani, the less flamboyant, Western-educated maestro of Kurdistan’s intelligence world. Massoud Barzani wants to avoid any potential confrontation between the family branches.

Who gets the better post? It depends on whether the newly elected Iraqi Kurdish parliament restores the powers of the president, which were trimmed after the referendum. It also depends on whether other Iraqi Kurdish parties that won seats in the October parliamentary elections agree to cede control of the two top positions to the Barzani family. The KDP won the Kurdish regional elections and feels it deserves to have both posts after Barham Salih of the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which came in second, was tapped to become president of Iraq.

What’s next: A lot of horse-trading is in the cards as the PUK gears up to claim other plum positions in exchange for backing the Barzani nominations. Saadi Pira, a PUK spokesman, said his party welcomed the nominations, calling them a “good step forward.” This suggests that a deal between the traditional rivals has already been hatched. The KDP’s foreign relations office declared that the presidency would be decided by a vote in parliament. The KDP and the PUK together hold 66 seats, giving them a comfortable majority in the 111-member parliament.

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/origin ... istan.html

[Anthea]

The Barzani dynasty without which
there would be NO Kurdistan

No family is better known to three generations of Iraqi Kurds than the Barzanis. They are the only constants in a rapidly changing region, where newcomers are emerging fast throughout the Middle East, replacing politicians who have been in power since the 1960s.

The powerful Barzani dynasty was founded by Mullah Mustafa, the inspirational leader of the Kurdish revolution against the central government in Baghdad, from the mid-1930s until his death in March 1979. He is the grandfather of the prime minister and president, and father of the former president Masoud. His father, grandfather, and brother were executed by the Ottomans at the turn of the 20th century for harboring separatist ambitions.

Mullah Mustafa Barzani worked with anybody willing to support his cause, from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to US secretary of state Henry Kissinger. He also dabbled with both the Iranians and the Syrians, ending up in exile near Tehran and dying at a US hospital weeks after the Iranian revolution.

The new Kurdish president is 52 and has served in the family party’s political bureau since 1989. Six years later, he became deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan region, assuming the premiership from 2006 to 2009, and then again from 2012 until 2018. During the interim period, another Kurdish politician named Barham Salih served as prime minister and has been the new president of the Iraqi Republic since last October. Nechirvan played a vital role during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, putting his full weight behind the toppling of Saddam.

His cousin Masrour, 49, presently serves as chancellor of the Kurdish Security Council, overseeing military intelligence and the security apparatus, a position assumed during the presidency of his father, Masoud Barzani. He joined the Kurdish military resistance, known as the peshmerga, at the age of 16, and took part in a 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein. He was schooled in Iran and completed his undergraduate studies at the American University in Washington DC. During the past few years, he gained prominence for his strategic role in the fight against ISIS, advising on counter-terrorism strategies both in Iraq and Kurdish-held parts of Syria.

The decision was announced on Sunday in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government, after a parliamentary election concluded in September, where the Barzani family’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) won 45 seats, just 11 short of an absolute majority.

Masoud’s rule comes full circle

The consolidation of power by the younger Barzanis can be seen as sweet revenge for the aging Masoud, who stepped down as president last year after a controversial statehood referendum was held in Iraqi Kurdistan that sparked off a military confrontation with the authorities in Baghdad.

Masoud was born in August 1946, coincidentally on the very same day that his father established the KDP, making him the same age as the family’s political party. He lived with his father in the former USSR during the 1950s and took part in two military uprisings against Baghdad, in 1962 and 1976.

The Kurdistan Regional Government was formed in 1992, shortly after of the US-led war for the liberation of Kuwait greatly weakened Saddam’s grip over the country. Power rotated between and his long-time compatriot Jalal Talbani, another historical figure who chaired the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). He and Barzani had both led the Kurdish underground against Saddam from their temporary exiles in Iraq and Syria. Each of them took 50 seats in the first Kurdish parliament.

A civil war in the Kurdish territories erupted in the mid-1990s, resulting in two rival administrations, one led by Talbani in Suleimanieh and another by Barzani in Erbil. They eventually reconciled in 2002, with Barzani becoming president of a united Kurdistan and Talabani becoming president of post-Saddam Iraq. Talbani left office in 2014 and died in October 2017, leaving behind a giant hole in Kurdish politics – deepened and made all the more worrying by Barzani’s departure in September of the same year.

Taking blame for misreading the geopolitical landscape – and for believing that the Trump administration would support Kurdish statehood – Barzani resigned in the wake of the referendum.

The resignation was hailed as brave and historic, the first in a region where presidents either die in office, are assassinated or toppled after decades in power. Now that his son and nephew are fully in control of the state, many are wondering how the dynasty will operate as power is bequeathed – democratically – from one generation to the next.

Challenges ahead

Masoud Barzani’s son is now prime minister, while his nephew is president of the semi-autonomous state. The family legacy is well preserved, and so is their hereditary role in Kurdish politics. First on their agenda will be repairing relations with the central government in Iraq, which has been strained since the 2017 independence vote. At the time, Iraq shut its borders with Kurdistan, laying siege to its tiny neighbor and closing down its airports. With the support of Shiite militias, the Iraqi army stole the strategic city of Kirkuk, which the Kurds had freed after they liberated it from ISIS, it is part of “historic Kurdistan.”

Relations thawed after the election of Adel Abdul Mehdi as prime minister last October. He is a good friend of the Kurds and served as the representative of his political party in Kurdistan in the 1990s. He also has an excellent working relationship with Iraq’s Kurdish president, Barham Salih, a long-time associate of the Barzanis. Baghdad recently waived heavy tariffs on goods traveling to Kurdistan and welcomed Masoud Barzani for a landmark visit, receiving him with a red carpet.

The Barzani cousins have to live up to a promise they made to their people to hold a referendum vote on the future of Kirkuk, to see whether its people want to remain part of Iraq or to be annexed by Kurdistan. According to the constitution, that vote should have happened 11 years ago.

Some lawmakers are demanding the reduction of presidential powers and the empowering of the premiership instead, something that if pursued seriously, might lead to friction between the Barzani cousins. If it doesn’t, they need to join forces in the fight against remaining pockets of ISIS in both Iraq and Syria – a task that Masrour Barzani will probably lead, due to his expertise in counter-terrorism.

http://www.atimes.com/article/in-iraqi- ... ll-circle/

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KDP ready to be kingmaker in new Kurdistan Regional Government

The winner of Kurdistan Region’s legislative elections, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), wants the speaker of the parliament to be elected before the end of the year and then form the new cabinet with other parties after the holiday season

The KDP is holding internal meetings to plan its schedule.

“Reaching an agreement on forming the government will be easy if parties can reach a deal on electing a speaker to the parliament,” a PUK MP said.

On December 3, KDP leadership nominated Nechirvan Barzani for the post of president the Kurdistan Region and Kurdistan Region Security Council head Masrour Barzani for prime minister.

A KDP delegation will on Tuesday visit Sulaimani to meet with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Change Movement (Gorran).

“We will be first trying to elect a speaker to the parliament and reach a deal on who will be deputy prime minster before the end of this year, and will then go into details about forming the cabinet after the New Year holiday season ends,” said a KDP MP in the Kurdistan Region’s parliament.

Some KDP officials do not want Komal in the government. But no final decision has been made on this matter.

“A strong government is possible when its participants are serious partners, not half-opposition. I think the KDP and PUK can form a strong government together,” said a PUK MP.

As for the Change Movement, the KDP wants Gorran to be part of the government. But Gorran wants an answer on whether the Peshmerga will be unified and the financial crisis will be resolved in the new cabinet before deciding on whether to take part in the government.

“The promises which the KDP delegation might be making will be taken to the Assembly meeting which will make a final decision on whether Gorran will take part in the government,” a Gorran official who didn’t want to be named said.

A strong government and a strong Kurdistan was the KDP’s election slogan. But the KDP is certain it cannot have either of these if the party treats the PUK and Gorran on the basis of the number of seats they won in recent elections.

“The KDP will have 9 ministries, PUK 5, Gorran 3, Turkmen and Christian parties will each have one ministry. But it is not yet clear which party gets which ministry to run,” said Hevidar Ahmad, a KDP MP in the Kurdish parliament.

The PUK has rejected the premise that parties will be given government positions on the basis of election merits and number of seats, a PUK leadership member said.

“The size of our zone is 625 kilometers – two provinces. This is the reality of how situations are on the ground. And this territory is bigger than KDP’s zone of sphere. This is the basis on which we look at negotiations on this matter, not the number of our seats,” the PUK official said. “In the war on ISIS, we made more sacrifices than the KDP. We are governing this area. That is why this kind power-sharing is not acceptable to us. But anyway, we are waiting for the KDP’ delegation team.”

A KDP official said if parties can reach a deal on electing a speaker to parliament and a nominee for the post of deputy prime minister, “reaching an agreement on key ministries will not be difficult. The ministries which are sought after are finance, natural resources, interior, and Peshmerga. These ministries will be distributed according to an agreement on who will be speaker of the parliament and deputy prime minister.”

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/11122018

[Anthea]

Sheikh Abdulsalam’s vision for
Kurdistan still inspires 104 years later

Friday is the 104th anniversary of the execution of Sheikh Abdulsalam Barzani, the leader of one of the first Kurdish rebellions against the Ottomans in present-day Iraq

Born in Barzan village in 1887, Sheikh Abdulsalam was the older brother of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, the father of Masoud Barzani.

Having studied Sufism, the mystical side of Islam, he became the leader of the Naqishbandi Sufi order after the death of his father.

In 1907, he sent a telegraph to the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II, with the backing of Kurdish tribal leaders and sheikhs, demanding cultural and political rights for the Kurds.

His demands included Kurdish becoming an official language, Kurdish education in schools, local officials in Kurdish areas being Kurdish or speaking the language, and for locally-collected taxes to be spent on roads and schools in Kurdistan.

Wary of a potential uprising, the Ottomans sent an army to Barzan to capture Sheikh Abdulsalam.

In 1908, Sheikh Abdulsalam kicked the Ottoman forces out of Barzan.

In 1913, Mosul's governor sent another army, forcing Sheikh Abdulsalam to flee to eastern (Iranian) Kurdistan and then to Georgia where he met the Russian tsar.

He was captured on his return to Kurdistan – another Kurdish sheikh informed on him. On December 14, 1914, he was executed in Mosul.

Sheikh Abdulsalam’s legacy is still felt in Barzan. An early environmentalist, he banned hunting and the cutting down of trees. The Barzan area remains a wildlife protection zone. He also introduced societal reforms – banning arranged child marriages, doing away with the dowry system, and giving Jews and Christians the freedom to worship and celebrate their religious holidays.

"Sheikh Abdulsalam Barzani is the founder of the Kurdish nationalist movement, since, compared to that period in southern [Iraqi] Kurdistan, he brought in some modern concepts of political struggle into the Kurdish liberation movement at the time," said Badr Shiroki, a writer from Soran.

He also used diplomacy to gain international support and established a disciplined Kurdish nationalist army.

The most important part of Sheikh Abdulsalam’s legacy, said Shiroki, was establishing a “Kurdish Front,” that brought together Kurdish princes and tribal leaders.

Kurds are still demanding similar things that Sheikh Abdulsalam asked for and can learn a lot from the history, added Shiroki.

Disunity among Kurds played a role in Sheikh Abdulsalam having to flee, he pointed out.

Sheikh Abdulsalam was a "nationalistic, religious, and knowledgeable" man, said Karam Sarhadi, a researcher and historian from Diyarbakir.

http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/141220181