Mustafa Barzani

Mustafa Barzani (1903–1979) was the towering figure of twentieth-century Kurdish nationalism. A tribal chieftain and military commander from the Barzan region of northern Iraq, he led Iraqi Kurdish forces in a series of revolts against successive Baghdad governments. In 1946, Barzani crossed into Iranian Kurdistan and played a critical military role in the Republic of Mahabad, commanding its forces alongside President Qazi Muhammad. When the republic collapsed in December 1946 after the withdrawal of Soviet support, Barzani led his fighters on an epic march to the Soviet Union, where they lived in exile until 1958. He returned after the Iraqi revolution and led the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which he had co-founded in 1946. He spent the 1960s–70s waging a sustained insurgency against the Baghdad government, becoming the pre-eminent symbol of Kurdish resistance. After the collapse of the Kurdish revolt following the Algiers Accord of 1975, Barzani went into exile in the United States, where he died in 1979. He is the father of Masoud Barzani, who later led the KDP and served as President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.