Barzani: fall of the Kurdish ‘lord of the mountain’

A banner bearing a portrait of Kurdish regional president Massoud Barzani is seen as Iraqi forces advance towards Kirkuk on October 16, 2017. (AFP / AHMAD AL-RUBAYE)
Updated 29 October 2017
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Barzani: fall of the Kurdish ‘lord of the mountain’

BAGHDAD: President Masoud Barzani, who said Sunday he was stepping down, founded Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region but was also responsible for sparking its gravest crisis with his drive for independence.
The son of iconic Kurdish nationalist leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani and the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) since 1979, the 71-year-old joined the fight for an independent Kurdistan as a teenager.
Born on August 16, 1946 in Mahabad, capital of a Kurdish republic declared by his father amid unrest in Iran following World War II, Barzani’s dream of independence was also shattered by his own actions.
His mistake was organizing a referendum on independence, held on September 25 despite warnings from Baghdad which branded the move unconstitutional and advice from world powers keen on Iraqi unity.
Weeks after the vote, central government forces launched a sweeping operation, reclaiming territory and oilfields in and around the disputed province of Kirkuk from Kurdish peshmerga forces.
The loss of the oilfields, which provided income that would have been critical to an independent Kurdish state, sparked internal recriminations.
His detractors called for him to quit and the Kurdish parliament stripped him of his powers and met Sunday to redistribute these among the legislative, executive and judicial authorities.

'Pragmatic and stubborn'
Round-faced and sporting a small moustache, the “lord of the mountain” as he is often known, is usually seen wearing the garb of a peshmerga fighter: baggy khaki pants and shirt, a traditional sash and a chequered red and white scarf rolled around his head as a turban.
He is considered to be both pragmatic and stubborn.
His demand for self-rule within all historically Kurdish-populated areas of Iraq put him on a collision course with the Arab-led government in Baghdad and frustrated international powers.
One Western diplomat who asked Barzani to postpone the independence vote was flatly told: “No, I can’t do it. I have a window of opportunity which will not happen again.
“Baghdad is still weak but is getting stronger, and then it will be too late,” Barzani told the diplomat.
“I cannot go back and I believe that the countries which are advising me against holding the referendum will back me later.”
That was his mistake.
Barzani “misinterpreted” the messages of his allies, particularly the United States and Ankara, according to Kurdish affairs analyst Mutlu Civiroglu.
Failing to read between the lines led not only to the isolation of the Kurds but also to the isolation of Barzani’s KDP, a formidable body founded in 1946.
Barzani had headed the KDP since 1978, taking over the leadership from his father.
For decades he was at odds with the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party of Iraq’s late president Jalal Talabani.

Siding with Iran
During the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, both parties sided with Tehran.
That partnership came at a heavy price and brought down retribution from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
In 1987, Saddam launched the Anfal campaign which saw nearly 180,000 Kurds killed and more than 3,000 villages destroyed.
The Saddam regime’s policy of “Arabization” forced thousands of Kurds to leave their homes, to be replaced by Arabs.
Baghdad also used chemical weapons against the village of Halabja, killing 5,000 people.
After the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait, the Kurds won de facto autonomy when Western powers intervened to protect them from Saddam.
The United States and its allies set up no-fly zones in southern Iraq and the northern, Kurdish-majority region.
In 1992 the Iraqi Kurds elected a parliament and set up a government. The KDP controlled the north of the region up to the Turkish border while the PUK controlled the southeast, up to the Iranian border.
Their political honeymoon was short-lived, and in 1994 the PUK and the KDP fought a near civil war over the distribution of the territory’s resources and taxes imposed by the KDP on border traffic with Turkey.
Barzani turned to his nemesis Saddam for help to push back Talabani’s forces.
The episode prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi to chide Barzani recently, saying that pact was a “blot” that had tarnished his reputation.
Barzani and Talabani buried the hatchet in 2003 as the Kurds allied with American troops in the war to overthrow Saddam.
After his ouster, the Kurds unified their administration, with Irbil in northern Iraq as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
In 2005, Barzani was appointed president by the Kurdish parliament and in 2009 elected with 69.6 percent of the votes in Kurdistan’s first presidential election.
His mandate expired in 2013 but was extended for two years and then continued in the chaos that followed the Daesh group’s sweeping offensive across Iraq in 2014.


Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

Updated 56 min 51 sec ago
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Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

  • Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Suspected Somali pirates have seized another Yemeni fishing boat off the Horn of Africa, authorities said.
In a statement late Tuesday, a European naval force known as EUNAVFOR Atalanta said the attack targeted a dhow, a traditional ship that plies the waters of the Mideast, off the town of Eyl in Somalia.
It said the attack Monday remained under investigation. It comes 10 days after another pirate attack on another Yemeni fishing boat which ultimately ended with the pirates fleeing and the mariners on board being recovered unhurt.
Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported. Somali piracy in the region at the time cost the world’s economy some $7 billion — with $160 million paid out in ransoms, according to the Oceans Beyond Piracy monitoring group.
The threat was diminished by increased international naval patrols, a strengthening central government in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and other efforts.
However, Somali pirate attacks have resumed at a greater pace over the last year, in part due to the insecurity caused by Yemen’s Houthi rebels launching their attacks in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
In 2024, there were seven reported incidents off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau.


After decades in exile, Syria’s Jews visit Damascus

Updated 19 February 2025
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After decades in exile, Syria’s Jews visit Damascus

  • The new authorities have said all of Syria’s communities will play a role in their country’s future
  • The synagogues and Jewish school in the Old City remained relatively well-preserved

DAMASCUS: For the first time in three decades, Rabbi Joseph Hamra and his son Henry read from a Torah scroll in a synagogue in the heart of Syria’s capital Damascus, carefully passing their thumbs over the handwritten text as if still in awe they were back home.
The father and son fled Syria in the 1990s, after then-Syrian president Hafez Assad lifted a travel ban on the country’s historic Jewish community, which had faced decades of restrictions including on owning property or holding jobs.
Virtually all of the few thousand Jews in Syria promptly left, leaving less than 10 in the Syrian capital. Joseph and Henry — just a child at the time — settled in New York.
“Weren’t we in a prison? So we wanted to see what was on the outside,” said Joseph, now 77, on his reasons for leaving at the time. “Everyone else who left with us is dead.”
But when Assad’s son and successor as president Bashar Assad was toppled in December, the Hamra family began planning a once-unimaginable visit to Damascus with the help of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based advocacy group.
They met with Syria’s deputy foreign minister at the ministry, now managed by caretaker authorities installed by the Islamist rebels who ousted Assad after more than 50 years of family rule that saw itself as a bastion of secular Arab nationalism.
The new authorities have said all of Syria’s communities will play a role in their country’s future. But incidents of religious intolerance and reports of conservative Islamists proselytizing in public have kept more secular-minded Syrians and members of minority communities on edge.
Henry Hamra, now aged 48, said Syria’s foreign ministry had now pledged to protect Jewish heritage.
“We need the government’s help, we need the government’s security and it’s going to happen,” he said.
Walking through the narrow passages of the Old City, a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site, Henry and Joseph ran into their onetime neighbors — Palestinian Syrians — and later marveled at hand-painted Hebrew lettering at several synagogues.
“I want to see my kids come back and see this beautiful synagogue. It’s a work of art,” said Henry.
But some things were missing, he said, including a golden-lettered Torah from one of the synagogues that was now stored in a library in Israel, to where thousands of Syrian Jews fled throughout the 20th century.
While the synagogues and Jewish school in the Old City remained relatively well-preserved, Syria’s largest synagogue in Jobar, an eastern suburb of Damascus, was reduced to rubble during the nearly 14-year civil war that erupted after Assad’s violent suppression of protests against him.
Jobar was home to a large Jewish community for hundreds of years until the 1800s and the synagogue, built in honor of the biblical prophet Elijah, was looted before it was destroyed.


Lebanon official media says Israeli strike kills one in south

Updated 19 February 2025
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Lebanon official media says Israeli strike kills one in south

BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said Israel struck a southern town on Wednesday, killing one person, a day after Israeli troops withdrew from most of the border area apart from five points.
"An enemy drone struck a vehicle... in the town of Aita al-Shaab," near the southern border, the official National News agency said, reporting one person was killed.


Israel army says charges five soldiers for abusing Palestinian detainee

Updated 19 February 2025
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Israel army says charges five soldiers for abusing Palestinian detainee

  • The detention center near the Israeli border with Gaza was created to hold detainees from the Palestinian territory early in Israel’s war with Hamas

Jerusalem: The Israeli military said Wednesday it had filed charges against five reservist soldiers for abusing a Palestinian detainee in July last year.
“Today, the military prosecution has filed an indictment against five reservist soldiers under the charges of causing severe injury and abuse under aggravating circumstances... against a security detainee held in the Sde Teiman detention facility,” it said in a statement, referring to a site used to hold Gazans since the war began.
“The indictment charges the accused with acting against the detainee with severe violence, including stabbing the detainee’s bottom with a sharp object, which had penetrated near the detainee’s rectum,” the statement said.
It added “the acts of violence have caused severe physical injury to the detainee, including cracked ribs, a punctured lung and an inner rectal tear.”
It said the incident took place on July 5, 2024, following an instruction to conduct a search of the detainee during which he was “blindfolded, and cuffed at the hands and ankles.”
The detention center near the Israeli border with Gaza was created to hold detainees from the Palestinian territory early in Israel’s war with Hamas, sparked by the militant group’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.
Earlier this month, an Israeli military court sentenced a soldier to seven months in prison after he admitted to “severely abusing” Palestinians at the same detention facility.


Baghdad-Beirut flights sell out ahead of Nasrallah funeral

Updated 19 February 2025
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Baghdad-Beirut flights sell out ahead of Nasrallah funeral

  • Beirut airport will close for four hours during the funeral

BAGHDAD: Flights from Baghdad to Beirut are nearly at capacity as airlines increase services ahead of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral, officials said.
The pro-Iran group has called for a huge turnout when Nasrallah, killed in a September Israeli strike, is laid to rest in the Lebanese capital on Sunday.
“Iraqi Airways will increase its flights to Beirut from one flight a day to two, starting on February 20,” said transport ministry spokesperson Maytham Al-Safi, citing heightened demand ahead of the funeral.
An Iraqi airline official told AFP that “all seats on Iraqi Airlines flights from Baghdad to Beirut are booked.”
A source from Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines (MEA) reported increased flights between Baghdad and Beirut from Friday to Tuesday.
The airlines’ websites show that Iraqi Airways flights are fully booked until Sunday, with MEA nearly sold out.
Iraqi lawmakers and officials are expected to attend Nasrallah’s funeral privately, an Iraqi official said.
Representatives from pro-Iran Iraqi factions, Hezbollah’s longstanding allies in the Tehran-led “axis of resistance,” are also expected to participate.
Beirut airport will close for four hours during the funeral.
Hezbollah has said 79 countries would be involved in the commemoration, either officially or through “popular” support.
Sunday’s funeral will also honor Hashem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah figure who had been chosen to succeed Nasrallah, before he was killed in an Israeli strike in October.
After decades at the helm of the group once seen as invincible, the killing of the charismatic Nasrallah sent shock waves across Lebanon and the wider region.
Since Nasrallah’s death, portraits of him, either alone or alongside other slain pro-Iran commanders, have been displayed throughout Baghdad and other areas of the Shiite-majority country.
On Sunday afternoon, thousands are expected to attend a “symbolic” procession for Nasrallah in Baghdad’s northwestern neighborhood of Kadhimiya, which is home to a Shiite shrine.