Masoud Barzani

Biography

Masoud Barzani was born in 1946 in Mahabad, Iran, during the brief Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, a son of the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani. In 1979 he succeeded his father as leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and survived an assassination attempt in Vienna. With his brother Idris he led the party's fighters alongside Iran against the Iraqi army in the Iran-Iraq War.

After the 1991 Gulf War, Kurdish self-rule took hold in northern Iraq, and the KDP and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan split the vote and the ministries after the 1992 elections. Fighting between the two parties began in 1994, and in 1996 Barzani called in Saddam Hussein's army against the PUK; a 1998 settlement brokered in Washington left the region divided between them.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq the two parties formed a joint regional government. Barzani sat on the Iraqi Governing Council and held its rotating presidency in April 2004, and in June 2005 the regional parliament chose him as President of the Kurdistan Region. He won a popular vote in 2009, and his term was extended in 2013 and again beyond its expiry.

In 2017 he called an independence referendum. When Iraqi forces responded by retaking Kirkuk and other disputed areas, he announced he would step down, leaving the presidency on 1 November 2017. He has remained KDP leader and an intermediary with Syrian Kurdish groups.