Mustafa Barzani

Born

1903, Barzan, Ottoman Empire (today in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq)

Died

1 March 1979, Washington, D.C., United States

Nationality

Iraqi; Kurdish

Known for

Founding and leading the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)

Also written

Mullah Mustafa Barzani

Early life

Barzani was born in the village of Barzan in the mountains of what was then Ottoman territory and, after the First World War, became part of the British-mandated state of Iraq. His family led a religious and tribal community that was repeatedly in conflict with central authority, and he was involved in armed movements from a young age, including the revolts led by his elder brother Ahmed in the 1930s. Periods of imprisonment and internal exile followed.

Mahabad and exile

In 1946 Barzani travelled to Iran, where a short-lived Kurdish republic had been declared at Mahabad under Soviet protection, and served as a commander of its forces. When Soviet troops withdrew and the republic collapsed the same year, he led a column of fighters on a long overland march into the Soviet Union. He remained in exile there for roughly a decade.

The 1958 revolution in Iraq brought a change of government and an invitation to return. Barzani came back to Baghdad and resumed leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which he had helped found in 1946 and which became the principal vehicle of Kurdish political organization in Iraq.

War, agreement, and collapse

Relations with successive Iraqi governments broke down repeatedly, and from 1961 Barzani led a prolonged armed conflict in northern Iraq. It ended in a negotiated settlement in March 1970, under which Baghdad recognized Kurdish autonomy in principle and agreed a framework for implementing it. The agreement was never fully carried out, and the central points of disagreement — territorial boundaries and control of oil-producing areas — remained unresolved.

Fighting resumed in 1974. The Kurdish movement had by then received external backing, principally from Iran, and that support ended abruptly with the Algiers Agreement of March 1975, in which Iran and Iraq settled their border dispute. Deprived of supply routes and sanctuary, the Kurdish position collapsed within days.

Final years and legacy

Barzani left for Iran and later for the United States, where he received medical treatment and died in Washington in March 1979. He was buried initially in Iran; his remains were later returned to Barzan.

He remains a defining and contested figure. To many Kurds he is the founder of the modern national movement; critics, including rival Kurdish factions, have faulted his reliance on tribal structures and on external patrons. His son Masoud Barzani led the KDP after him and later served as president of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, making the family one of the most consequential political dynasties in the region.

Relation to the name

Barzani is almost always written Mustafa in English, following the standard transliteration that English-language sources apply to figures whose names were never recorded in Latin script — the convention described on the Mustafa spelling page. Kurdish, written variously in Arabic and Latin scripts, renders the name in several forms; the underlying Arabic is the same مصطفى discussed on the meaning page, and the name is common across Kurdish communities for the same devotional reason as elsewhere in the Muslim world.

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