KurdistanObserver.com

Talabani Wins Second Term As Iraqi President

BAGHDAD, April 22, 2006 (AFP) -  Jalal Talabani, the first Kurdish president in Iraq's history, was reelected Saturday, cementing his people's powerful role on the national stage after suffering years as second-class citizens.

A sworn enemy of Saddam Hussein, the 72-year-old former outlaw was picked for a second term in a testament to his deft maneuvers since becoming head of state in April 2005.

Known for his lifetime struggle championing Kurdish rights, Talabani's first year in office saw the former guerrilla fighter lead the resistance to outgoing Shiite premier Ibrahim Jafaari's bid for a second term.

Miffed at Jaafari for his failure to squelch a rise in sectarian violence, Talabani forged an alliance with Sunni politicians to effectively shut down the selection process for the next government until the Shiite prime minister agreed to step down on Thursday.

Talabani, a close ally of the Americans, has defied expectations throughout his term, striving to smooth strained relations with Syria and Iran as part of efforts to end the two regional powers suspected efforts to feed the insurgency in Iraq.

An imposing, barrel-chested man, he has won praise for his efforts, if not his success in walking a conciliatory line with Arab insurgents and disaffected Sunni Arabs who had largely boycotted the political process.

Talabani, married and a father of two, has dominated Kurdish political life along with his rival Massoud Barzani, with whom he cut a deal to become Iraq's president. In his mountainous northern fiefdom of Sulaimani, Talabani is known simply as Uncle (Mam) Jalal.

Born in 1933 in the rustic Kalkan village in the depths of northern Iraq, as a young man he was quickly seduced by the Kurdish struggle for a homeland to unite a people scattered across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

Today impeccably dressed in Western suits, he has an unaffected manner and a sense of humour, and is known to ask Iraqi journalists to give him the word on the street. His preferred catchphrase is: "My door is open to all Iraqis".

After studying law at Baghdad University and doing a stint in the army, Talabani joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Mullah Mustafa Barzani and took to the hills in a first uprising against the Iraqi government in 1961.

But he famously fell out with Barzani, who sued for peace with Baghdad -- the start of a long and costly internecine feud among Iraqi Kurds.

Talabani joined a Kurdish Democratic Party splinter faction in 1964 and fled to neighbouring Iran with his future father-in-law, Ahmed Ibrahim, in protest.

He formalised the break-up in 1975 by establishing his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan after Barzani's forces, abandoned by their Iranian, US and Israeli allies, were routed by Saddam Hussein's army.

Talabani's long career in troubled modern Iraq has also witnessed some of the lowest moments in Kurdish history.

A renewed uprising in the 1980s against the Saddam regime sparked the notorious Anfal campaign of 1988 in which the army razed hundreds of Kurdish villages and gassed thousands of people.

Kurds were driven from their homes across north-central Iraq, particularly around the oil city of Kirkuk, as Saddam set out to Arabise the region.

Worse was to come in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war, when the Kurdish uprising collapsed, prompting hundreds of thousands to seek refuge on the mountainous borders with Iran and Turkey in the heart of winter.

Western intervention allowed the Kurds to re-establish control over the three most northerly provinces of Iraq but the rebel enclave fell far short of Kurdish claims for full independence.

The rivalry between Talabani and the Barzanis, led by Mullah Mustafa's son Massoud, degenerated to all-out war in 1993, as Talabani challenged the rival KDP monopoly over customs revenues levied at the Turkish border.

The disastrous struggle climaxed with a KDP-invited invasion and re-conquest of Arbil by Saddam's forces in 1996.

True rapprochement came only in 2002, when it became clear that Washington intended to topple Saddam. Since then Talabani and Barzani have sought to set aside their rivalries and unite to safeguard their hard-won gains.

Even today, the two men control separate fiefdoms -- Talabani's in Sulaimani province and Barzani's in Arbil and Dohuk to the northwest. As part of the deal giving him the presidency, Talabani agreed Barzani would be president of Kurdistan's regional government, grouping both men's fiefdoms.